Top Marks For Not Trying

Having never been to the Electric Factory nor volunteered at a show for Y-Rock before, Thursday was an interesting night in a few ways…the Arctic Monkeys sold the place out, which is pretty impressive seeing as how the building was a whole lot bigger than I ever could have imagined…I had only ever been to places as big as the TLA (or whatever it’s called this week), and the Mann Center is a different kind of concert, but the Factory is positively HUGE…I got there with a bunch of other Y-Rock people, who have already welcomed me as a part of their goofy, music-centered family…ages and Y100 memories aside, I think I blend in pretty well…the show was good, the Arctic Monkeys sounded essentially just as they do on their records, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing…the opening act, Be Your Own PET (and it’s apparently spelled with ‘PET’ in all caps) made me nervous…Erin said she liked them (oh, did I mention that Erin and her friend Maura were there too?…well, they were), but they were a bit too bangy and not melodic enough for my tastes…oh well…after the show, I handed out all of my Y-Rock handbills (which I swear I’m getting better at cutting them), and did not buy an Arctic Monkeys t-shirt…$30 is pretty steep for a band that no one is going to remember in 20 months…sorry boys, but enjoy it while you can…

Friday was pretty neat…Slo-Mo’s Free At Noon concert made me think of how much I like his debut album, Novelty, as well as how little the following albums did for me…I’m a fan of Slo-Mo the man, not so much Slo-Mo the band…for the unfamiliar, Mike “Slo-Mo” Brenner is a local steel-guitarist and singer who used to play with various local bands (Marah, G. Love, etc.)…his first album was a fusion of country spiked hip hop with sampling, brilliant songwriting and tunes that absolutely blow the mind…since then, Brenner has teamed up with various Philadelphia musicians, such as Lauren Hart, the girls from Stargazer Lily (both of whom I like in their own careers) and, most notably, rapper Mic Wrecka…the first album from this new band was last year’s My Buzz Comes Back which was, on the whole, a neat album (even if most of the songs all sounded the same)…it was a fun album, but distinctly different from Brenner’s solo work…Though in concert, the band has a tendency to go into searingly good, lap steel-based jams (best seen on the live versions of Novely’s “Thank God She Cooks”), this has taken a slight turn in recent months…the new album from the group is Smokey Mountain, again in the vain of My Buzz Comes Back…Put simply, the music is still fun and enjoyable, but it’s not that unique…I realize that bands establish ’sounds’, but it seems like the new Slo-Mo band is quickly straying away from the vision (or at least, the original music stylings) of Slo-Mo the man…Of course I’ll enjoy seeing them, but something inside me wishes that he would go back to his freak-country roots…I mean, Wilco just did it!

All that aside, Erin was at XPN on Friday, too, and we got to meet Keith and Ezra from Trout Fishing In America (though I had met Ezra before, it was always good to see them again)…My Y-Rock

This entry was posted on May 21st 2007 at 12:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.