Thursday Night at the 9:30 Club: A Retrospective

On Thursday, August 11th, 2005, the greatest thing ever happened. Well, maybe not ever, but it was pretty good: the brickwife and I left our baby in the capable hands of others, went out to a club and pretended like we were still cool. Not that we ever were. If I remember right, the bricksister-in-law said we were "dorks" when we were still in college. And it's all downhill from there. On to the review.

The Club: I don't know which of my readers have been to the 9:30 Club already, but for those of you that haven't, I highly suggest it. It is a great place to see a show. Big, but not too big. Plus, the side balconies are really cool. The bars are easily accessible, though we didn't drink anything last night, and have cups and pitchers of water right out front for anybody to take, which is what we did. The location is just the right amount of sketchy. I would definitely go back at some point in the future.

The Secret Machines: What can I say, these guys blew me away. The first thing you notice about them is the pounding, relentless rhythm section. The drummer rocked out harder than anyone else all night. What was great was that, while rocking hard and banging his head, he still managed to be almost mechanically precise! The beat never wavered, it just came at you in wave after wave of total rockingness! The same cannot be said about the KOL drummer, but we'll get to that later. The second thing you notice is the lighting. I think the lighting crew for the Secret Machines spend as much time as the band members do in preparing the songs. It was almost like a light show. I think this might be a coping mechanism since the band is not very amicable with the audience. Not mean, just a bit detached. But that doesn't matter because they play such awesome music! The third thing I noticed was that they played their biggest "hit" first. Usually bands save the most popular song for last, but last night they definitely saved the best for last: the thunderous nearly-ten-minute First Wave Intact. It was a brilliant closer. A few people in the audience probably thought that the show dragged on in the middle (they were on stage for an hour) but not me. I was into it the whole way, even when the played a molto ritardando cover of Bob Dylan's Girl From the North Country. Plus their cover of Harmonia's De Luxe was exquisite (and in German!)

The Kings of Leon: These guys (who I've totally been in love with for more than two years (take that you dunderheads that might've wanted to call me a poseur)) were excellent, though as I look back on it, almost a little disappointing after the Secret Machines. But that's because they are a totally different band. It's a little hard to switch from watching a band that's all about drama and crescendo and drive to watching a band that's all about drinking and partying and beating the heck out of their instruments. But that's not fair to KOL. The one complaint I do have is that the drummer was pushing the beat the whole show. Either that or the other three (I'm especially looking at you, bass player) were always behind the beat. Of course the slight off-beatness might stem from the fact that they played each song at least 10% faster than they are on the albums. For those of you that haven't seen the KOL in a proper venue (i.e. not a big stadium), the show is all about energy. Fast, dirty beats and unintelligible lyrics. It's great head-bobbing, or even dancing music, but the crowd last night apparently didn't notice. Since it was a sold-out show, I thought that there would be a lot of hard-core fans there, but I don't think that was the case. Most people just stood there like statues. Maybe that's the cool thing to do nowadays. The most that the crowd got into it was when the KOL totally burned the place down with their penultimate song: Spiral Staircase. It should have blown everyone away, but alas...

Overall Show Grade: A+

Various Observations:

• It's better to have a really drunk guy in front of you than behind you. Getting fallen on is better than getting puked on.
  
• There are reports that Barb and Jenna Bush were in the house last night and had an afterparty with KOL.
• The brickwife is a hottie.
  
• The crowd was way, way different than I thought it would be. I expected to be near the upper end of the age distribution, but I think we were right about average.
• There was a really cool dancing grandpa ( maybe 60?) up on the balcony.
• If the District smoking ban goes into effect, I won't mind. I had to take two showers to really get that stink off.
• The frat guys in front of us were funny. They seemed so excited to be there it was almost cute.
• The 9:30 Club would have been an awesome place to see a band like Nirvana just before they went huge. I bet they would just detonate the club.
  
• There was very little pushing and shoving. All in all it was a very polite crowd.
• A huge thank you to Mr. Fantastic and his wife Nurse Stacy for being willing, at the last minute, to babysit the brickbaby. We are so grateful that you were there to help us out after we blew off our other babysitters. And don't worry. We think you did a great job. The brickbaby is hard to put to sleep, plus he was having way too much fun with you to want to go to sleep. I'm not sure if the Mr. Fantastic moniker is going to stick though, because right after you left last night, he said "Mike?" not "Mr. Fantastic?"