Live in CLE (Last Night)

Last night I went to a four-band, $5 show at the Happy Dog, which is probably one of my favorite places to see bands play. Full disclosure: as much as I love going out, sometimes instead of being packed in elbow to elbow with a bunch of people I don't know, I kind of just want to sit down, eat a hot dog, and listen to some music and the Happy Dog is the only place in Cleveland that lets that dream of mine come true. Also, I don't know why, but the older I get, the more skeptical I am about going out, but last night was a temporary break in my bad attitude and a nice reminder that cheap late nights can easily be as fulfilling as nights where I literally fall asleep face down in an English translation of a Norwegian novel, which is actually how most of my nights have gone lately.

Anyway, last night offered up four bands, two local (Library Time and Prisoners) and two touring (Party Photographers from Philadelphia, PA and SPORTS from Rochester, NY.)

I had never seen Library Time before -- they play fractured pop songs held together by synths & a saxophone. To my knowledge, they don't have any releases currently available, but you can stream their song "Africa" on their MySpace and if you like what you hear, they have a Cleveland show set up at the Cool Ranch on Nov. 12th.

Party Photographers were a four piece with a lead singer who looked like Clare Grogan and sang like Calvin Johnson, which is basically all I could hope to dream of re: people who front bands. They were touring in promotion of a new 7" (if they're not playing in your city, you can order it online via their MySpace.)

SPORTS from New Rochester reminded me of Elvis Costello & The Attractions. They were passing through Cleveland on a two day mini-tour and will (I hope!) tour more extensively when their LP is released. I'm currently having non-buyer's remorse over the fact that I didn't pick up one of the CDs they were selling because they were just so solid & fun (definitely listen to "Side Effect of Talk" on their MySpace.)

Prisoners played last & they sounded great. If you're in the Cleveland area & you haven't seen them play yet, you should come out next time they play. They've got a full-length LP out on Smog Veil and their second album is forthcoming. Prisoners have upcoming shows at Now That's Class and the Happy Dog, you can get the dates on their MySpace.

Upcoming Shows at the Happy Dog can be seen here.

1 comments:

Tim said...

This is a fine review but sorely lacking in coverage of the man in a Buckcherry t-shirt who was in attendance. A better journalist would have explored the man-in-Buckcherry-shirt-that-Tim-saw angle quite a bit further, I dare say. Also, this would be a fine time to speculate over why their name is a play on Chuck Berry. Do they draw some sort of inspiration from the great, pervy, chickenwalker? Is this coincidence? Is their some other riddle within their name? FuckHairy? SuckWary? Surely these are unreasonable suggestions, but I make no claim to Journalism.

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