Good and Bad

So until the bad football meltdowns and the unfortunately spill onto the laptop, it had been a pretty good weekend.

We started out having drinks and pulled pork sandwiches at Standard, which was this small outdoor biergartenon 14th street. The food was really, really good. Then we went to the 9:30 Club to see the Naked and the Famous. The concert was ok...the opening act of the Chain Gang of 1974 was almost better.  The N&F mostly just performed theirs songs as they were on the album without a heck of a lot of change.  No crowd banter. And it was so damn loud, my ears were ringing. We liked the show, but both came away wishing we had been able to experience more of the band's personality.  The music is fun and upbeat and dance-able, but that was it. Something was missing.

The Fanfarlo concert was much better, we thought. Double Ghost opened, and this Brooklyn band and they played this music/image computer/technological sound that was very unique. The crowd was certainly puzzled by it, but in retrospect it was a good complement to the Fanfarlo show.  Fanfarlo was almost everything that N&F was not--it was understated, with some crowd back & forth, and they performed changed-up versions of all of their older stuff. Their new material was woven into the set, and it looks very promising. The crowd certainly wanted to hear old favorites like Harold T. Wilkins, the Finish Line, and the Walls are Tumbling, and it was not disappointed. Their songs were shorter, it seemed like, too. I was glad to get a preview of the new album. The Red Palace is such a great venue. It's intimate and you get real music fans there. Going out the Saturday of Halloween weekend was fun, too.