I hadn’t been to The Brewery in what seems like forever. Last night they had 8 bands playing so, finding myself with nothing better to do, I bopped on down.

The first band that came on after I got there was Though He Slay Me. They were pretty tight but lost points on the non-metal looking front. I know, I know, the music doesn’t really have anything to do with the look but is it reaqlly that hard to change out of your street clothes?

The next band up was one I’m going to call The Band After Though He Slay Me because they never said their fucking name. Anyway, the set was tighter and they had the look down better (although its pretty hard to look like a really BAMF when you’re a 17 year old suburban white kid) but I didn’t like the music quite as much.

The next band was Steryle from Roxboro. These guys rocked. The performance was tight and the music was good. I’ definitely planning one catching these guys again.

After Steryle was on, something else came up and I left before the last bands played. Sorry. Shit happens sometime.

I know it looks like I haven’t been going to see any bands lately or supporting local music in any way but you’d be wrong to think that. What you’d be right to think is that I went and got too drunk to write rationally about it. So, for the record, in the last couple of weeks I went to The Brewery on the 19th, 26th and last night and went to Downtown Live and caught the Tubes and Cracker on the 27th.  Out of all the bands I saw at The Brewery I recall exactly two of the bands’ names*. Why two, you ask? One was Hotspur. I remember their name because they had cards printed that they had laying around for people to pick up. I remember MecanIkill because he said his name several times during his set. See my previous whining bitch posts about bands and why you should pimp you band. I’ve liked several of the bands I saw over the last few weeks but will never get to see them play again unless I luck into it. This is not the way to make it as a musician and give up your day job as a barrista at Starbuck’s, kids.

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Last night nothing else came up and I was kind of Jonesing for some live music so I went to the show at the Lincoln Theatre and caught Brad Benson, Barbarella, Eulogy & Guerilla Radio.

Brad Benson is out of Cary and did an acoustic set with another guitar player whose name I didn’t catch. He was supposed to have somebody on the Congo drum (I think, I wasn’t really paying attention while they were getting ready) but there was a busted head or something so they played without. I thought it was really outstanding. The thing about acoustic sets is that you can’t cover up bad playing or fuck-ups like you can with an electric.

Next up was Barbarella out of Chapel Hill. I’m not sure how to describe them. Kind of a bluesy rock vibe with healthy doses of Lenny Kravitz. Hugh Swaso’s guitar playing was masterful.

Then Eulogy took the stage.  Eulogy is a Tool tribute band. I have mixed feelings about tribute bands. One the one hand I think musicians should be oriented toward creating music or at least “re-imagining” (I hate that term but it fits). On the other hand, I’ll never get to see Tool in the Lincon Theatre. That said I thought Eulogy did a really excellent job. I would have liked for them to have played more off of Lateralus but that’s just because it’s my favorite album.

Last up was Guerilla Radio, a Rage Against the Machine tribute band.  The mosh pit went nuts while these guys were on stage. Several times during their set the lead singer had to tell people to chill. There were a couple of bleeding head cuts that I saw and the bouncers had to take one (really big) guy (who didn’t leave without a fight) down. It took a couple of them to beat the crap out of him bad enough to get him to walk out on his own. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t as active as the pit during the Fuel show at Lake Boone Country Club but there weren’t as many people there last night. It’s hard for me to say who was better (because everything’s got to be a competition, right?). Tool is probably my favorite band and I really have to be in the mood to listen to RATM so I’ll just call it a toss-up.

Hard to argue with 4 bands over the course of 4 hours for $10. Oh, and, Lincoln’s beer price went up $0.25 for domestics to $3.25 since last time I was there. My only bitch about the night was that it seemed to take extra long for the tear down/set up between sets.  My regret is that I couldn’t make my way over to the really cute scene girl on the left side of the stage. She had the most fetch septum and would have been perfect with a couple of cheek piercings  a layer of black hair and maybe a raccoon tail. But anytime you can come home with your ears ringing and your music bits all smiling and happy for $10,  you’ve got to call it a win.

Ok OCA just finished up. They were pretty good. Their bass player did some tapping that was pretty interesting. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard that done on a bass.

Now I have a complaint that doesn’t apply just to OCA but several of the bands I’ve seen lately. Would it be too much trouble to look a little like rockers instead of like you just left your java programing job at IBM?

And why is it that vocalist donbt seem to have any idea what to do with their hands anymore?