April 11, 2002

 
Quick reviews of shows which I've seen in the past few days:

Guided By Voices at the Warsaw - great show, nearly three hours. They played almost all of the new songs plus the following in a non-specific order:

I Drove A Tank, Instrument Beetle, Edison's Memos, Fair Touching, The Brides Have Hit Glass, Glad Girls, The Enemy, Twilight Campfighter, Teenage FBI, In Stitches, Things I Will Keep, Pop Zeus, Tight Globes, Soul Train College Police Man, Alone Stinking and Unafraid, Submarine Teams, Get Under It, Waved Out, Cut-Out Witch, Don't Stop Now, Motor Away, A Salty Salute, Game of Pricks, Watch Me Jumpstart, My Valuable Hunting Knife, I Am A Scientist, Tractor Rape Chain, Hot Freaks, Echos Myron, Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory, Smothered In Hugs, Peephole, Liar's Tale, Shocker In Gloomtown, and Baba O'Riley as the closer.

All of the Bee Thousand songs were played together as the first encore, or as Bob called it "The Bee Thousand Encore!" It's really cool to have them all played together in a concentrated dose like that. I was especially happy to hear "Echos Myron" "Hot Freaks" and "Smothered In Hugs", I haven't seen them do those in quite a while now. I was also quite glad to hear "Edison's Memos" and "Submarine Teams" again. The crowd was very intense, more so than usual even. I love the way hardcore GBV fans all bond in the crowd through high-fiving and pumping their fists in the air...when I see GBV, I feel like this is what rock shows and rock fans should be.

The Walkmen show at the Knitting Factory certainly exceeded my expectations. I knew that they would be good; but never thought that they'd be as tight as they were, or that the singer would be as handsome and charismatic as he is. I left that show liking the band even more, and wanting to see them again as soon as possible.

The Danielson Famile show at the Knitting Factory was a very interesting experience - they played on a bill with three other bizarre avant Christian groups, each more entertaining than the last. I was particularly impressed by Soul-Junk, who play this manic game of switching around from indie rock to improv jazz to hip hop to drum & bass etc and still manage to be quite good at all of them. They pulled it off nicely. I bought one of their records, and while it's not as good as the live show, there's some nice tunes on there.

The Danielson Famile were cute beyond all belief - I wasn't expecting them to be as tight or professional as they were, but I was glad that they were. Daniel looks a lot like Luke Skywalker in person, and the girls in the band are so cute when they sing along and do little interpretive dances. They were so good-natured and fun, and at the same time, weird weird weird. They played a good setlist, but didn't play my favorite "Fathom The Nine Fruits Pie". I was in the front row, and asked the girls if they were going to play it towards the end of their set and one of them said "oh no, not tonight! that song is really hard to play, it's like torture!". I thought about it for a moment, and realized that they were right. That song must be kind of hard to pull off live. Too bad.