I realize I haven’t actually written much about music lately, but here’s a list of concerts I’m excited for:
Girl Talk, other crappy stuff
@ Sonar, Bmore
11 Oct 2008
The last time I saw Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis was in a 2007 documentary, Good Copy Bad Copy (which is worth yr time, by the way), and he looked pretty normal, maybe even a little boring. For 2008, though, he’s gone with the “James Franco in Pineapple Express” look. I don’t think it really works, especially since by the end of a show he looks more like a bug-eyed meth addict than the charismatic face of MP3 piracy.
But it was riotous fun, thanks to a rambunctious, energetic crowd and a crush of people on stage. I don’t have much else to say about the show: it was fun, I was tipsy, the end.
Coda: old taxi drivers are pretty cool.
TV on the Radio, the Dirtbombs
@ the Electric Factory, Philly
10 Oct 2008
First off, let me say that the Electric Factory is incredibly impersonal. It’s essentially a warehouse with a balcony framing the back and right sides. Add in the bizarre crowd-control barriers and it feels more like a holding pen than a concert venue inside, despite the thick layer of posters (The outside is a little more charming).
Anyway, I assumed that if the listed time was 8:30, the show itself would start around 9:15 or so, but it apparently punctuality is one of the Electric Factory’s strong points. When we showed up around 9, the Dirtbombs were ending their set–by the time we’d gotten into position, Mick Collins was playing his guitar behind his head just prior to leaving the stage.
But the three or four minutes of their set I saw was just a bonus. I didn’t drive two hours to see the Dirtbombs, and luckily, TV on the Radio didn’t let me down. They hit a pretty good mix of tracks from their early EPs and newer albums (tracklist, near as I can remember, after the jump). And they locked up their spot atop the “sexy band” rankings, thanks largely to Tunde Adebimpe’s robot-moonwalk-pogo that only one man in a thousand could pull off. Word to the roadie with the low-rise skinny jeans, though: Hey, get some pants that fit. Or lose some weight.