Love this Life

well, I didn't mean to harsh everybody's weekend. I tried to end that last post on an up note; the restorative and healing power of music.

Crowded House put on a pretty good show last night. I've got to admit though, that I was always a much bigger Split Enz fan. CH always seemed to me to be trying a bit to hard to be the perfect Triple A format band. Which they succeeded at, btw.

I wasn't going to get tickets for the show, but then I saw the web site had the Frames as the opening band. The Frames are great; a scottish band, and I really wanted to see them, so I got some tix late. Balcony, which still has great views at the Pabst. Then I got the tickets, and they band was listed as 16 Frames. Which is not, unfortunately, a new name for the band I wanted to see. But they were still pretty good.

Crowded House's new stuff is pretty good though, and they were having a great time on stage. There's a fair number of very fervorous fans here. Twice during the show they just went totally off the reservation; the first time, Finn discovered a non-functional key on his piano, so he used the little noise it made as the basis for a bass piano riff, which the band then jumped on. Later, the bass player said something that was remarked to sound like a Meatloaf lyric, so they tried to jam a Meatloaf-esque song out of it.

Later, Finn walked to the front of the stage to have all the PA turned off, so he could sing part of the song "Weather With You" with the audience, who fortunately knew all the words. It worked in the way that church music works; the beauty of several hundred voices raised in song. I don't know what it is about the Pabst that inspires so many of the artists that come there to try this; but it's always a nice thing to try. The best to date though, was Elvis, and he did it both at the Pabst AND the Riverside in recent years.

But last week was just a really tough week on news, and I felt like summing up. It is always nice to remember the real track record of the Only Republicans We Have when other parts of the right wing nut-o-sphere are humming about trivia like Beauchamp.

Tonight we're going to see a young Milwaukee ska band, Something To Do, at their record release gig. Nothing more energizing and life affirming than a good ska band, and these guys are as good as I've seen. Fun times, and maybe the news next week won't be so gloomy, hey?

Sorry about the hangover Snag.