Everybody Come Down

The show last night was mostly great, and I'm still replaying it in my head this morning.

First off, the Hot IQs, who are one of the better local bands around. I'd never seen them before, but they're the flavor of the month right now, and they headline at clubs the size of the Larimer Lounge sometimes. Hooky power trio, and the guitarist/singer has a good voice, unfortunately the sound guy had the guitar set way over everything else, and I couldn't get more than a scattering of lyrics. They have a goodlooking girl drummer who looks like she just finished a set with the 5-6-7-8s. She was wearing a little Candy Striper uniform and was getting a lot of deserved attention. There were also a couple of other Asian women there in Japanese schoolgirl outfits, which I was able to suffer through somehow. Conincidentally, their bass player has a Gibson G-3, which is the same kind I have and am starting to practice with again. Nice to hear someone who know what they're doing play one. I'm sure practice and talent has a lot to do with it, but I think a light stringed bass like the Gibson sounds a lot better if you're going to do more than just play the root of the chord. If you're playing three chord hard rock though, you'd want the thunder of of a Fender Precision.

Crooked Fingers is really just Eric Bachmann's backing band, and he was solo last night. He played one wonderful half acoustic, half electric set, which was about two sets too few for my and the crowd's taste. He did a couple of Archers of Loaf songs, but the highlight for me was Broken Man from the first Crooked Fingers CD. Sometimes the vagaries of the music business are a total mystery to me, since here's someone that's been writing and singing great songs for over a decade, and if you added up the sales for the four Crooked Fingers and five Archers CDs, they might equal what Justin Timberlake sells in a week. In the meantime, I hope he keeps coming back, and for selfish reasons, it's great to be able to hear him in a 200 person venue, and chat with him while he works the T-shirt table.

The Delgados new album is a bit of a departure for them, and all I can say is Wow!. They've stripped down the sometimes overly complicated arrangements of their last two CDs, thrown in some more hooks, and made one of the best pop records of the year. They sound great live, with Emma Pollock handling about 75% of the vocal chores. Nothing against Alun Woodward's vocals, he's good, but I think she's really special. They're touring with a couple of their regular session players, so a six piece group live, and they were all on, and putting out some glorious sounds. Most of the songs were from Universal Audio, but they did dip into Hate and The Great Eastern a bit. If you've stumbled onto this blog by accident, and you're on the West coast, you still have a chance to catch this tour, but hurry.


Alan