Nate finally gets a night out!

It was great to get out of the house, and no worries about homework or papers! So, Anishka and I hit the 'ol Club Congress for some high grade Canadian Indie Rock.

The show opened up with Cadence Weapon, a 19 year old rapper from Edmonton. He was good, but more importatnly, he had a good sense of humor. The songs were all rapped over a pre-recorded track, which made it a little less-interesting to observe, but it he got bonus points for have synth heavy tracks, nothing that sounded like polished main-stream rap, and that's a good thing. He was basicly rapping for a bunch of 20-something indie kids, and although I think people dug it, not one soul was getting down. He did manage to get the crowd clapping, and then proceeded to label Tucson a good, "clapping town." Now I can die proud.

The second band was Why?, a three piece from Oakland (According to Nishi, they were way bay area). They were very interesting, and the drummer was particulary impressive. Let's just say he was quite busy (they all were reallyy.) He would play his kit, the glockenspiel and sing at the same time! It was poppy and psyhchodelic at the same time, and the performance gave me Pavement flaschbacks. Very Entertaining.

Islands... they took forever to make it to the stage (I'm now old, and wasn't doing enough dancing or drinking to pass the time and take a load off) and when they did, they were all dressed in white, and they were 20! Well, probably older, but I was surprised by the numbers and the white. But they brought it. 2 of the members acted as multi-instrumentalists, focusing on keys and strings, while one of the guitar players turned out to be a bass clarinet player, and played it most of the show. (gave me TMBG flashbacks ). It was a pretty good show, they pulled off most of the songs with a fairly high level of success. This is no small feat, when the studio album involves some many different levels of instrumentation. I have to admitt, the bass clarinet with the violins did give me a few DMB flashbacks.

Here's what a flashback looks like:


What brought the band down a little for me was the attitude of the lead singer (I know that makes me sound like a 2nd grade teacher). He was drunk, and did stupid things:

1. Insult Us (although he did give nishi and I props when we danced, he hated the fact that no one was dancing)
2. Light a smoke bomb and throw it into the crowd
3. abuse the microphone
4. He took the band of stage and then almost didn't come back, and this was about an hour before the bar was suppose and they hadn't played the hit songs


However, they did come back out and play the hits, and feather Cadence Weapon, The lead singer of Why? and the guitar Tech as rappers on "Where there's a will there's a whalebone" cool.

For $9 and two buck well Vodka drinks, it was a good show. Enjoy a video of the show: It's 'Rough Gems" performed by Islands here in Tucson, filmed by me! Enjoy!