Islands - Idiot Glee -- Black Cat - Feb 22 2012

Idiot Glee - One guy on keyboards, electronics, and microphone. More often than not, a losing formula for me. But we shall see. No, it's lush dull modern pop music. You really have to come up with something 'out there' to get me interested in this. Nothing bad about it, there are just so many elements of interest lacking. A couple of songs came close with some counterpoints or edginess to warrant extra involvement, but most of it just rolled along. Enough of the crowd was into it and the young guy seemed like a decent enough sort. Feel free to continue on if this works for you. And yes, I've heard of Lexington, Kentucky and your number one basketball team. Have you heard of Active Ingredients and Red Interiors?

Islands - Oh where to begin or end? The Black Cat had the back section cut off and not only were the tables and chairs up front, but they had several rows of folding chairs just behind that. Interesting as a moderate sized crowd came out and filled them quickly with several people standing behind in front of the sound table. This four piece came out and played quiet pop music with some subtle touches and evidence of some good songwriting. The vocals were good and there were some formula variances as the set went on. It was overly cute indie music at times, but good writing made it effective. Early on, these two guys in the back who were kicking me in the back often and yukking it up with loud chatter and laughter were told off by a very angry woman. I turned around and agreed with her (after giving them a couple of glares earlier, one they clearly saw). She said others agreed and a couple other people also added their agreement. Later these two started up again when the band was asking people to get rowdier or words to that effect. She stormed off in the back and I went back as well. One of the guys went back and debated with her trying to defend his position. I elected not to join in, but my position of over-enthusiasm as a part of the music is something I can live with and even like, but their loud drunken disconnected chatter is rarely something to respect and allow for. A few minutes later, the band told everyone to get up, come up front and ignore all this chair nonsense. Excuse me? Like this was not planned in advance? I'll take a wild guess and say the Black Cat does not set up this way unless instructed, unless there is some new policy I am not aware of. And you are not exactly rocking the house down. You may be north of Mike & the Mechanics or Supertramp, but not by much. And those two guys basically used that as an excuse to rant how right they were.

Quote of the Night: From the Islands lead vocalist (early on)... "...Chatty Cathy's here, seriously, shut the fuck up." Now wait a minute, were you just telling someone to shut up who was talking during your quietest song and then you want to pretend you are Neil Young and Pearl Jam later in the set? I will leave you to your scenesters until y'all figure it out.

This is day 22 of my 29 Days Later experiment and there will be conclusions to be made on my first day off. But there is one week left and my mind will be sonically overdosed some more before I know what they are. But I am getting some ideas...