Went to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and others on Saturday at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Hometown act Cheer-Accident, who played last (although SGM seemed to be the “headliner”) was ok, they were plenty “prog”, in an indie\/math rock sort of way, but somehow their aesthetic was just a bit too “bar band” for me, especially after seeing all the weirdness that came before.<\/p>\n
SGM was great, and truly a weird bunch. I could listen to the singer read the phone book, he just has the coolest voice. They certainly aren’t an easy-listening experience, especially when the guy who plays the percussion instruments made of salvaged junk is going nuts, but they keep your attention.<\/p>\n
Faun Fables, which is a duo consisting of the main SGM guy and his girlfriend, played some sort of folk music mixed with some SGM-like insanity. Good, but not quite mind-blowing.<\/p>\n
And then there was the opening band, The Dresden Dolls, who were actually my favorites of the night. Again, it’s a duo, with a girl on piano and vocals, and a guy on drums. Both of them are pretty heavy-hitters, though I was surprised how “musical” the whole thing was with only two melodic sources. The songs were just really good, where I was not only able to connect immediately with the music, but also with the lyrics, which is pretty rare in a live situation especially when it’s your introduction to the band. Ok, I wasn’t really able to “connect” to the lyrics, since they come from an angsty twenty-something female, but I did appreciate the creativity, delivery, and dark humor in them. If I was going to give an Alzn-like review, I would say “The Dresden Dolls: this sounds like music Alzn would like.”<\/p>\n
I thought of buying their CD at the show, but decided I didn’t care that much, especially since I’m thinking of making an effort to wean myself off physical CDs. But then the next day, when I still had one of their songs running through my head (“Coin-Operated Boy”, which I think any woman would love), I figured maybe I should get the album after all. I checked iTunes, but unsurprisingly the album wasn’t on there. However, when I checked the band’s website (dresdendolls.com) to see where I could order it from, I did find a place where I could pay to download it. It wasn’t as quick and easy as iTunes because it was set up as a “micropayment” thing, so I had to install another little software app, and download and extract each song individually, but it was still a lot faster than mail-ordering it from somewhere. And at $0.75 a song, it was cheaper too. If the digital download option wasn’t available, I might have lost interest and thus not spent any more money on the band, so I really hope that more and more bands start to offer their music online for a price (or free, if they really want to). Because physical CDs are for dorks! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Went to see Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and others on Saturday at the Bottom Lounge in Chicago. Hometown act Cheer-Accident, who played last (although SGM seemed to be the “headliner”) was ok, they were plenty “prog”, in an indie\/math rock sort of way, but somehow their aesthetic was just a bit too “bar band” for me, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concert"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gregie.com\/neil\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}