The Sailor Jerry Blog

11/04/2007

Cavestomp! 07' Day 2: Report

Before I get into the details of the night's events I want to set the background of the whole weekend's festivities by painting a picture of the venue for those that haven't been.

The Warsaw is located in the Polish National building in Brooklyn and is indeed run by an all Polish staff. The Main Room is a classic ballroom complete with chandaliers, large paintings and a really old "disco-ball" that looks more like a weird piece of antique costume jewelry than anything else due to it's irregular shape (Imagine a giant earplug hanging from the ceiling.

There are a ton of Polish beers bottled and on tap and even a kitchen serving up delicious plates of Kielbasa and Pierogis for $5 which we dined on both evenings so far. Pretty fucking awesome, huh? Ok, on the last nights events...

Due to a combination of waiting too long for the subway and a well-intentioned effort to not get there an hour early like the prior night, we missed The Higher State's openng set. I'm really fucking bummed on this because this was one of the band's I had planned on kicking complete ass. My sadness over this was only compounded by everyone boasting about how wonderful they were. Oh well, I did pick up an LP and a 7" from the merch booth so it's not a total loss.

The Urges from Dublin were up next and we took a spot up against the stage. Aside from meeting the very drunk and very Mick Jones-esque guitar player the night before I'd heard their tunes before and knew we were in for a treat. We were. The band fucking ripped through their highly energetic set of surf-tinged garage like a lost tornado and by the time they played "The Urges Theme" they had the entire place eating out of their hands. Fucking fantastic set by The Urges and definitely one of the highlights of the fest and the best band (that I saw) on the second night.

Next on the bill was the The Alarm Clocks. This legendary reformed recently and have a single and LP out on Norton. The thing is, as fun as their older shit is, I just don't dig the new LP. It's not bad it's just really boring to me so I was hoping that the live show would make me reconsider. It didn't. Better than the LP, but still really stale.

Chicago Nuggets stalwarts the New Colony Six came on after dressed entirely in matching Colonist costumes and in doing so really drove home the whole "founding fathers" analogy. Their set was a mixed bag, whenever they played the more garage-y tunes the band was dead on and so great that you totally forgot that you were watching a bunch of dressed up old men. They played some songs off a record of unreleased material coming out on Rev-Ola that was very rockin' and def peaked my interest in getting it when it's out. But unfortunately, the band veered into a lot of later and boring stuff and ultimately sounded like what one person described as "a band on a cruise ship". It basically went like this: Songs with 2 Keyboards = Boring. Songs where the Keyboard player grabbed a guitar = Awesome.

And finally... The Strawberry Alarm Clock! Also a Nuggests classic, this heavy psych band has always been hit or miss with me. Some of their shit is just sooo fucking ridiculous that it's almost embarrassing to listen to. I remember a few weeks ago coming back to Philly after driving for awhile , putting on their Anthology CD and remarking that, while I like them, I literally felt gay er with each song. ha.

However, live, the band was fucking solid as can be. I don't go to Jam Band shows so maybe this is a common thing, but I was continually blown away by the interplay between the 3 guitars. Literally, the is the first band I'd ever seen where 3 guitars made sense. It was loud and powerful and every member aside from the keyboardist was really nailing it. Don't get me wrong he was good on organ, but I'm sorry: Roland Keyboard's are fucking stupid and sound like shit in rock n' roll.

The band came across a bit more prog-y then I thought but it was a somewhat welcome change from the stuff we'd been hearing all weekend. I must say that I enjoyed The Strawberry Alarm Clock live a lot more than their records and it was a real treat to be able to see them perform live.