Saturday, August 04, 2007

The Ludlow Shuffle

The Star Spangles; The Holy Kiss; Woman
@ Cake Shop
New York, NY - August 3, 2007


About 3-4 years ago, the Star Spangles were everywhere. They were on Letterman, they were written up in Rolling Stone, and they played packed gigs to the likes of Little Steven Van Zandt at CBGB, with the Bamboo Kids playing beforehand. Then they sort of vanished. Now in 2007 they are back with a new bass player, a new record, and a string of gigs throughout the city to get their sea legs again. Ominously (or on purpose), they have been playing the midcard on bills in small places like Arlene's Grocery and here at the Cake Shop. The crowd was decent sized (a couple of cute rockabilly girls around for whatever reason) but not packed. Problems immediately set in when guitarist Tommy Volume had string and other tech problems. These problems persisted. Guitars were switched, but problems still persisted. Then the lights went out. I took a break upstairs for about 10 minutes, came back downstairs to find them doing a song with the lights on. The wheels were finally on the road though most of the crowd had left. Then more tech problems for Tommy. Tension, yelling, that whiff of a band about to implode in the air. Then finally, the band belted out "I Don't Wanna Be Crazy Anymore" and called it a night. In a week, they will be on the midcard at Midway with their old friends the Bamboo Kids. Then a week after that, they're headlining the Luna Lounge. I predict by Luna, everything will be back on track.
The Holy Kiss are a San Francisco band best described as bluesy metal. Dressed like they work for an undertaker down in the Delta, they are really hard to pin down. It got tiring after awhile but it's certainly unique and worth a listen. The crowd for them included a couple gals who looked like they were going to an Amish funeral and I kind of hoped they were the band going on after the Star Spangles but they weren't.
Women are an all-male quartet from NYC who do the loud hard rockin' thing pretty well. But after a few songs, I decided to go a couple doors down to see:

Emperor City Motorcade
@ Pianos
New York, NY - August 3, 2007


I once saw this band play at a bar on Grand St in Williamsburg on a bill that included the Violets, and was sponsored by some gravelly voiced old timer named Frank Black. ECM, at that time, had a lot of R & B infused with some good solid modern rock, but nowadays they appear to be more of a ballad band trying to come up with some sort of a genre. They still rocked out on a couple numbers, sounding very arena rockish but their last bit, "Mary Jane" was very Alice in Chains, and that's not such a bad thing.

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1 Comments:

At August 13, 2007 at 8:40:00 PM EDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dude, Bluez Metal rox and Alice in Chains are so underrated bra...

 

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