I saw two shows in 72 hours this week. I'll talk about the second first and the first one some other time.
One of the most entertaining live acts out there is the Old 97s. If you're not familiar (shame on you!) it's sort of country-punk from my grew-up-in-town of Dallas. This tour was celebrating the 15th anniversary of their great Too Far To Care album. Since it's the thing to do now they did the album in it's entirety start to finish. I've commented on this before, but (there's always a but) this album is so great it's fine with me.
Here's a video of them doing the album's (killer) opener "Time Bomb." It's about 5 years old but you'll get the idea.
Yeeeeee-haw!
I think Rhett Miller is one of the best front men around. He's good looking, a great lyricist, and a very engaging performer. I try (horribly) to model my stage presence on good old Rhett. I think if you're watching a band, you should be entertained. It is entertainment, right? I read that in a manual somewhere. And the Old 97s definitely enterain. High energy, lots of fun, great songs.
They did TFTC to start the show. For the second half they did (from memory) "Mama Tried," "Victoria Lee," "Murder (Or A Heart Attack),""Jagged,""Valentine," "Rollerskate Skinny," "Dance With Me," "Champaign, Illinois," "Every Night Is Friday Night (Without You)"and "Brown Haired Daughter." I might have missed something but that sounds right.
Rhett himself opened the show with a 20 minute acoustic set. Very cool. The support band was called The Travoltas. Not much to say of them except the singer has produced the 97s last few records, the keyboard player seems like a cool dude to hang around with, and they got nice suits. My neighbor said it best: "It went from cool to kitchsy to long." Another plus, there was not much dead time between sets, Very fast turnaround and I am old now so I like that.
Here be some photographic evidence of the good-time-had-by-all.
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| This man is Stewart Ransom Miller and he's a serial lady-killer |
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| The Travoltas. Nice suits. |
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| Just a little band from Texas |
I remember the first time I saw them...They were opening a few shows for Wilco on the Summerteeth tour. Looking largely like they got directly out of the van, they walked out on stage, launched into Timebomb and I was hooked...
ReplyDeleteMy memory then flashes forward to a year and half later when Ken Bethea nearly decapitated you at some second floor dump of a club in Baltimore...
I buy their records and gave them all a fair listen but none of their material has the impact as Too Far to Care. Fight Songs is pretty good, Satellite Rides is spotty at best and everything after that hasnt grabbed me the way Timebomb did on that fateful night at 930.
Maybe it was that specific time of my life; maybe it was the era. Whichever it was they were heady times...good times.