Index of Shows | Homepage | Write to me
Quite a day! Shows all over Massachusetts today.
The Iron Horse in Northampton has little tables around the edges of a central dance floor. The Stone Coyotes start quiet, with Barbara Keith playing piano and singing a few mellow, wrenchingly lovely songs while her rhythm section provide quiet fill. Then she switches to acoustic guitar, and bassist John Tibbles takes up a double-necked bass/guitar hybrid for a few songs. Finally, she switches to electric guitar and they go all out. Their sound is a basic, countrified bar-band rock, perfected. Drummer Doug Tibbles plays driving, interesting rhythms with only four instruments in his kit. John gets fancy, with fiercely complicated bass lines. And Barbara is a commanding presence, plays seriously smoking lead guitar, and has a way of howling around the melody that makes me scream. By the third electric song, the anthemic "First Lady of Rock," the dance floor is packed. They do a great job alternating balls-out rockers and chances for us to breathe a bit, play for nearly two hours, play my request, and only stop because there's another show in the same room tonight.
Since they've finished early, we haul ass back east and make it to the Blue Jay in Sutton in time for most of Valhalla Kittens' set. (We later learn that we've missed only one song.) I'm sorry, I'm kind of an urban elitist, but the Blue Jay is a frightening townie bar in the middle of nowhere. The good people of Sutton seem totally nonplussed by the delicious weirdness that is the Valhalla Kittens experience; the one girl who's totally into it proves to be the headliners' lead singer's girlfriend. Undaunted and apparently unfazed, the Kittens rip into their set. Oddly enough, the mix is the best I've ever heard at one of their shows. Highlights for me include "Little Witch," all in fives and tens and rapidly becoming my favorite VK song, and the kick-ass cover of "Walk On the Wild Side." ("And the kittens go 'do, do do, do do, do do do do, do do, do do....'") There is enough of a crowd response that they play an encore, and Biopop (the headliners) seem totally into it.
Then Biopop play, and it's pretty regrettable. For the most part, they're good at what they do, which is straight-up metal. It just isn't my thing. When they play their big Cheap Trick cover, they badger us to sing along--"Come on, you all know it!" I may never have heard this song before in my life. The drummer is good, and the bassist is good as a rhythm instrument, but I've just seen two bands with bassists that play phenomenally interesting bass lines, and this guy doesn't even come close. The noodly guitar solos are hard to hear with ear plugs, and without ear plugs I may never hear anything again, so I can't really comment on that. The lead singer is really bad: pitch, tone, and melody. Add in the bassist constantly yelling at us to be having more fun, and I decide to have more fun by getting the fuck out of here.
