We got to the venue as it opened around 9. I decided to try bringing my new camcorder and see how it would work taping, and I wanted to be sure I got a good place to stand. That being said, The End is a pretty small venue, and I figured I needed to be pretty inconspicuous, so I had a coat on throughout the show. This made the entire night unbearably hot, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
We scored a good table over to the side with a good view of the stage, and sat back to watch the people as they came in. There seemed to be a few metalheads there, but it seemed to be mostly friends of the band and music-industry types. The total crowd was about 80-100 people, which was decently full for the venue, but not packed. The band came on around 10 or so. They played before a couple local hardcore bands, thankfully sparing us from sitting through two sets of bland screaming and thrash.
As for the band, I’d never seen Johnny Rabb live, but I’d seen some of his live vids live on the net before. I agree with what someone said earlier about technical mastery and speed being boring, but while he can go fast, he really did a good job here. I was kind of scared he’d be the type to try to fill every song with fast rolls to show off, but he definitely didn’t and had a pretty cool style.
Duane Denison did a great job on guitar as well. Most of the songs had somewhat of a Jesus Lizard feel in parts.
Paul Barker hasn’t aged since 1988. Seriously, this guy’s been in a time capsule or something. He only played bass, but did a cool job nonetheless.
I’d never heard of Gary Call before either, but he’s a pretty cool fromtman. He was definitely into it, and did a great job with vocals. He’s prett animated.
Overall, the sound was pretty reminiscent of the mid-90’s scene here in town. I could probably compare them to several Nashville bands, but none would mean anything to you guys unless you hung around here back then. Think kind of grungy with a little more thrash and a few backing samples. I really liked it, and went from “Eh, so Paul just does bass.” to ready to buy the album as soon as it’s out.
They played for about an hour. The crowd really seemed to enjoy it, and the band did as well. Seemed like they were all really excited to show off what they’d been working on lately. After they got done, the crowd pretty much vacated before the local bands took the stage. We stayed for two songs, but they were pretty much blah, so we left. But that part’s not important anyway.
There was a guy who seemed to be with the band (he walked in with Paul and his wife) who filmed the show with a pro camera. There was also another guy who may have been with the band who filmed it on a smaller camera (he got right in the singer’s face too. Must’ve been annoying). So in addition to my shot, which looks like crap (more on that later), there may be a couple other recordings.
The setlist (not all full titles, as they’re pulled from a copy of the setlist):
Old Flowers (listed as “Autumn” on the setlist")
Dead Voices
Blue
Cruel
Middle
Cab Ride
Endless Summer
Peculiar
Holy Sugar Water
Forget Your Sound
Wasteland (on the setlist, but not played)
I filmed the show with a pretty decent shot of the stage, but as mentioned above, I was in stealth mode, so I couldn’t watch through the viewfinder to make sure the shot was good. I was also burning up, tired, and uncomfortably nestled between a pole and a chair. I’d owned the camera for less than 24 hours when I filmed it, so I really wasn’t familiar with it. All that to say that the shot is ok, but crooked. If you turn your head 45 degrees, it looks pretty decent, except for when I had to readjust myself and wipe off my sweat between songs.
No time to play with it all today, but I’ll have the recording, imperfect though it may be, ready for sharing soon. I’ll let you know when.