 |
| The Distillers Live at the Bottom Lounge 2003 |
Last Sunday was horrible driving weather. This would have been a pretty good reason to take the train there instead of driving (The Bottom Lounge is on the near-west side in the Meat Packing District). Of course, on top of the snowfall, the parking situation in the area is less than ideal. Even if you want to pay, there are no parking garages nearby. If you search reviews on The Bottom Lounge, one of the pluses people give is that there's plenty of parking due to the small lot next to the place. However, when I went there, the lot was closed. I'm not sure if it's normally closed or not but it was rather disappointing.
When we got in there, there was a band already playing. I'm not sure what they were called but the whole band was two acoustic guitarists and two electric guitarists (peculiar instrumentation). They were pretty good at what they did. It was just softer, laid-back, rock/folk. However, it got pretty stale after awhile. There wasn't much variance between songs. Probably the most notable thing to mention here is that one of the electric guitarists had a gazillion (I can't believe gazillion passes the google spell check lol) pedals. I couldn't even begin to count how many pedals he had. He had them all bolted or taped (or something) to a piece of plywood for easy transportation (probably because he didn't have any money left to buy an actual pedal board to put them on after buying all those pedals).
 |
| READY, SET, GO!!! G.E. Days is a great way to kick off a show! |
You can check out videos of the whole concert on their Facebook page here.
After Bet the Levels was a band called Slightly Irritated. They were decent to say the least. They did mostly covers... mostly covers of blink-182. They covered "Dammit," "All the Small Things," and "Feeling This." They also covered "The Hell Song" by Sum-41 and "1985" by Bowling for Soup. The few originals that they had were rather unmemorable. There was one that sounded pretty good but it also sounded like a blink-182 clone so it really didn't stand out in the overall scheme of things. Probably the first thing you will notice about this band is that the singer has a very high voice. This wasn't particularly a bad thing; he used this asset mostly to his advantage. However, he decided to take "The Hell Song" an octave down in the chorus. This really wrecks the song. All of the build-up that happens during the verses has a very lack-luster climax to follow it up if you take the vocals an octave down. Not to mention that when the lead vocalist takes it an octave down, he does it less angrily. By the end of the song, it certainly left me Slightly Irritated (hahaha, I can see you cringing at your computers now as you read that horrible joke).
Speaking of the name of the band, they seemed a lot less than slightly irritated. A better name for the band probably would have been Generally Content. Every song that they did was probably on the most pop side of the pop-punk genre that you could get (besides "The Hell Song" which lacked anger when they played it anyways). Everything was rather peachy. The guitars were bright. The singing even seemed overly cheerful at times. Probably what bothered me most about their sound was the sound of the bass guitar. Being a bassist myself, I suppose I can be overly critical of bass guitar; especially since I have pretty specific preferences on how bass guitar should sound in certain genres. This guy basically had his mid knob cranked all the way and his tone cranked all the way down. I don't think I've ever heard bass sound so peachy in my life! It sounded like he would fit right into one of those Disney Channel bands for their next child star. Actually, the bass guitar itself was a pretty interesting modding concoction. If I'm not mistaking, he took an Ernie Ball Stingray neck and attached it to a Fender Precision Bass body. The pickups looked like stock pickups but the aesthetic was a unique black body with a red pickguard. I'm not really sure what would incline someone to combine an Ernie Ball Bass neck with a Fender body as the Ernie Ball basses are generally of a higher quality anyways. But, as I just talked about, I don't really seem to understand the appeal of his sound to begin with.
Oh, I almost forgot that they did a cover of "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World. This cover was pretty alright except for the intro. They changed the intro (or botched it, I'm not sure which) so much that I couldn't even recognize the song at the beginning (which the intro is pretty iconic). When doing a cover of a well-known song, it's a requirement that the most recognizable parts of the song remain intact. They failed at this, miserably.
I suppose one other thing I would like to mention about Slightly Irritated is that the bass player's back up vocals were very out of tune on "Feeling This." They were so bad that the lead singer was singing a layer over the bass player's Mark Hoppus parts in the hopes of drowning him out. Yikes!
After Slightly Irritated, I ended up leaving due to having a final exam the next morning and the weather conditions. It took awhile to get home. I also ended up seeing firetrucks and police cars at an accident along with a spun out Camaro stuck in the snow. On top of that, I saw a guy in a Chevy Cobalt spin out right in front of me after flying past me a few moments before. It was certainly an interesting trip home to say the least.
Anyhow, I'll keep you updated on Bet the Levels. I will likely do a review of their next show and post it on this blog site. Also, I am anxiously awaiting the release of Bet the Levels first studio album Little Miss Perfect. Late last week, the band announced that they had finished recording it. Obviously, if you have been to a Bet the Levels show, you have probably heard most of the songs already. If the studio album is anything like the live show, it's going to be one hell of an album. I'm impatiently waiting for my copy.
The Distillers Image: http://bottomlounge.com/gallery/
Bet the Levels Image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=404541879649381
No comments:
Post a Comment