Half-Hearted Update!

I've seen some shows recently:

Ted Leo @ Great American Music Hall
The band who was main support was kinda cool, but I forget what their name was. Ted Leo was even more cool, possibly ICE COLD. He played a great mixture of songs from every album between The Tyranny Distance and Living With the Living. He also ended his encore with a Chumbawumba cover. I think half the crowd was underwhelmed by the new songs, and the encore, but that's just 'cuz they can't handle Ted Leo. He's too real for them. YEAH, I WENT THERE. At the risk of sounding like a total dufus, I'm actually pretty serious about that. Ted Leo likes what he likes, writes what he likes, and represents it to the fullest. If you don't like Ted Leo playing a Chumbawumba song then you are A) a moron, B)unaware that Chumbawumba isn't just "Tubthumping", C) a moron. Sure, it may seem a strange choice for a cover, but only if you haven't considered the awesome cross-section of artists he's covered, including Jimmy Cliff, Lauryn Hill, Split Enz, The Jam, etc... In conclusion, Ted Leo is TOIGHT.

GO!GO!7188 @ The Independent
Go!Go!7188 headlined the 2007 edition of the annual Japan Nite tour, which included acts such as HY, Oreskaband, The 50 Kaitenz and Asakusa Jinta. A quick rundown of each band's performance is as follows:

Asakusa Jinta: Weird ragtime, but with a saxophonist prettier than possibly any girl I've ever seen, and also with a voice more annoying than any girl I've ever heard. Overall, an enjoyable band.

The 50 Kaitenz: Run of the mill garage rock band, but with some enjoyable antics, lyrics and banter. The guitarist looked a mixture of Mineta from Ging Nang Boyz and Jason from Short Round.

Oreskaband: A 6-piece, all school-girl ska band. They really love the Specials. They used the song "Little Bitch" as their intro music, but apparently I'm the only person who found that hilarious. They covered "Monkey Man", albeit not a true Specials song, and it was significantly better than the butchered piece of crap that these girls had the gall to release on CD. The rest of their songs were cheesy 3rd wave that I probably would've enjoyed when I was 15, but now I can't really stomach that sort of stuff. Nevertheless, their energy was great. In particular, the trumpeter and trombonist's rapport and banter made me enjoy their set. They gave a lesson on Osaka-ben, or as they called it "New Osaka language". This is where the American audience was treated to a skit involving two crazy girls pretending to fight and one of them screams "DOMESTIC VIOLENCE!!!"

HY: Think of this band as Maroon 5, John Mayer, and Vanilla Ice rolled into one horrible band. What I'm trying to say is that this band was whiter than the whitest, soul-lacking gringo, and they aren't even white!!! Apparently every Japanese person alive loves this band. I walked out in the middle of their set and was pleasantly surprised to see at least 40 red-blooded Americans outside with me avoiding the sonic torture that is HY.

Go!Go!7188: Everyone from outside came back in to catch Go!Go!, even though a bunch of wack Japanese fans left after HY had finished. BAH! Good riddance, I say. Go!Go! is amazing, and I had forgotten just how good until I saw them again. They started out with "Jet Ninjin" from their first album, and ripped through a set of classics, including "Thunder Girl", "C7" and "Ukifune". The encore "Bungu" was terrific as well. The best quote of the night came from the weird lifeless singer Yuu when she said, seemingly unprompted, "I am not child. I am adult."

Some doofus videotaped the band setting up at the show and posted it HERE on youtube, but didn't actually videotape any of their set. What a dufus?? HUH? Yeah, I know.

Taft's Brigade and Pteradon @ Graeme Matthew
There's not much I could say about Pteradon and TB that I haven't said before (albeit not in this blog). They are tight.

BUT, the other bands this night were like every ska-punk band from 1997-2000 reincarnated in a new generation of kids who don't know better. Between them, they played at least 4 Rancid covers, and 2 bands covered the same song twice that night, NOFX's "Bob". I love me some ska, and I love me some punk, but I just wish these sorts of bands wouldn't base all their musical ideas on Rancid and NOFX. How about ripping off some better bands, like Operation Ivy or Fruity? Having formerly been in a mediocre ska-punk band, I totally know what I'd wanna do were I start another ska-punk band.