Date Night!!
or spending the night with three of our favorite Irish blokes
Okay, so it's not technically "date night" since we don't have precocious progeny to pass off to self-absorbed, text-obsessed teens with raging hormones and gnat-like attention spans who charge a small fortune to tend to our cherubs every need in between G3 gossip fests... but still, we left the familiar confines of our house on a Saturday night to partake in a tasty Merlot and listen to live music amongst random adults in a crowded cafe. So, yeah. Date Night.
Anywho, as the years roll on it seems to take the threat of a ginormous stack of Acme dynamite under our buttocks to get Geo and me off our comfy couch and back out the door once we're snuggled in the bat cave. I'm usually up for almost anything, but Geo has much more discerning taste. The talented lads from the Emerald Isle known as Bell X1 fit his criteria.
It's been a year since lead singer David Geraghty and friends played our fair city. (See, I've learned his name since last year's post here. He still reminds me of Michael Cera though.) Instead of jamming all six band members atop the tiny stage, only three band mates toured this time around. Just a guitar, bass, keyboard and ... an iPod??!?
Yep. An iPod. It provided the back beat for their opener "How Your Heart Is Wired".
Technology kicks ass! Or in this case kicks a mean rhythm.
What we've learned by going to Club Cafe... less equals more. Less performers on stage equals more welcomed chatter with the audience. Dave answered inquiries tossed out from the crowd, pondered the term business casual regarding the dress code for their West Wing tour the next day and told some entertaining stories including one about Bono being heckled during a particularly pompous moment, but it was the music that shined brightest. His hypnotic delivery of old hits, Flame, Mr. Benn and of course The Great Defector as well as future classics, Velcro and Night Watchman from their yet-to-be-released CD, was brilliant.
Embracing their inner nerd, we witnessed a little background vocal pre-production to round out "Ribs of a Broken Umbrella".
Like last time, the merch guy pushed the tables up against the platform prior to the show leaving a singular narrow path to the stage making it nigh impossible for them to gracefully walk off the staging. Once again, we all played along as the guys pretended to leave for the encore, because really, what's the point. They had fresh, fan-bought beers so it wasn't like they had to go backstage to down a couple cold ones to soothe their parched throats. Plus there was that whole penned-in-by-the tables thing.
You remember how all the bands we saw this summer did a cover at the end of their shows? Alejandro Escovedo covered The Stones' "Beast of Burden", Ingrid Michaelson did Britney's "Toxic" and Guster regaled us with Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight"... Well in keeping with this trend, Bell X1 tacked on our favorite Smiths tune to their final song of the evening.
A perfect ending to another enchanting evening of music in a year filled with song.
