a review is better than nothing

I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend, which involves me often not telling you, reader-friend, about the shows and events that I’m excited about and planning on attending. I’m not sure why this is, but I regret it because if I had played it up some, maybe, JUST MAYBE, more than a handful of people would’ve been at the Lawrenceville Moose last night to witness Savage Republic. Slightly embarrassing turnout and slightly uncomfortable banter from Thom Fuhrmann aside, the show was one of those not-to-be-missed ones; perhaps the oil drums weren’t flaming, but they were there, and before the end of the night one of them was definitely kicked offstage. The set itself had its high and low points, and at points it was tough to tell what Fuhrmann was up to (not taking it seriously? having fun joking around with us? annoyed with the fact that this weird show was stuck in between a couple presumably killer shows in Chicago and NYC?), but the striking thing was that this didn’t have the feel of a bunch of guys who were doing this when I was an infant; they still carry an energy that most current band trying the same tricks just don’t have. (By way of an aside, the only reason they came back out for a second encore was, I believe, because we kept clapping because Roman was on the stage right after they left it, and it was funny. Good thing that happened, because the second encore was phenomenal and made me essentially forget all but a few brief highlights of the rest of the set.)

Sweet sets from Tamburo (decidedly “acoustalyptic,” yes) and (((microwaves))) sweetened the deal, as did the fact that Manny was really stoked on Savage Republic, and I rarely see him actually stoked on anything, much less a band that’s playing.

On tap for the rest of the weekend: chill time with the family, a little bit of birthday revelry for the eldest nephew (16!) (not even kidding).