Freezepop, Barnicle, Bon Savants and The Toothaches at The Middle East
This post comes far too late after the show for me to write any worth reading. On December 12th, 2008, Karl and I went to see Freezepop, Barnicle, Bon Savants and The Toothaches at The Middle East nightclub in Boston. All the bands rocked enough that if I don’t already have at least one of their albums, I’m planning on purchasing one. Autography below.
(not so) Recent Concerts
Since my last update, I’ve been to two shows at the Middle East in Boston. I’ve been sitting on this post for weeks and weeks now, and in the interest of getting things off my plate, I’m posting it as-is without any images.
The first show took place downstairs and featured Freezepop, with The Information [myspace], The Main Drag[myspace] and Michael Hensley. The Main Drag’s performance was so much better then I had expected from such an early act. Their cover of LCD Sound System’s All My Friends is to die for. The Information is another great northeastern rock band that I really enjoyed. I’ve picked up “8 Track”, but I’d really like to get their other album as well. Freezepop played for an hour and a half and put on a great show. Their stage presence perfectly balances being larger-then-life rockstars and down-to-earth scenesters, and it feels like they show is a dialog with the crowd. Icy roads made it so I didn’t get home until 4am.
The second show was upstairs and featured Casiotone For The Painfully Alone [myspace], with Clue to Kalo [myspace], Musee Mecanique and Pants Yell. I went to the show for Casiotone and I wasn’t disappointed by Owen Ashworth’s performance (although he wasn’t set up to perform some of my favorite songs). The other bands weren’t my cup of tea, but the beer was good (Sam Summer and Harpoon Munich Dark on tap) and my friend Karl lives within walking distance of the club, so everything worked out fine.
iPod Nano Commercial
Jenny and I were at Zach and Sara’s house tonight when an iPod Nano commercial came on TV. The commercial features a series of hands moving various colored iPod Nanos around, and they are all playing the same music video (seen below). Zach asked me if I knew who the artist in the video was, and although they sounded familiar, I couldn’t place the band. When I got home tonight, I opened up yahoo and saw that their featured news story was titled “That iPod Nano Video”. From the article:
Queries on “ipod nano commercial song,” “ipod nano song,” and “ipod nano commercial” all jumped over 350% over this past weekend. Seems everyone wants to know who possesses the enchanting voice behind the raspy “1, 2, 3, 4.”
It turns out I have heard the band before. They’re called Feist (see also Feist’s myspace page), and their song Sea Lion was getting good rotation on Pig Radio some months ago, and Karl had mentioned to me separately that as band I should check out.
The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players
I was reading up on the band King Missile [wikipedia], now known as King Missile III, and saw that Wikipedia said “Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players member, Rachel Trachtenburg, has served a subsitute bass guitar player for King Missile.” The group name Trachenberg Family Slideshow Players was enough to pique my interest. As the name implied, the group consists of the Trachtenberg family: Jason Trachtenburg, his wife Tina Pina Trachtenburg and their daughter Rachel Pina Trachtenburg (yes, it’s the 13 year old daughter who’s played for King Missile). They perform to a series of slides that they collected from “estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores, etc.” but I think Eugene Mirman sums them up best:
I think the Trachtenburgs are basically like a really fun Batman, where it’s sort of like revenge against not fun, i.e. it’s very fun.
You can get an idea of what their performances look and sound like on youtube, but here’s one of their catchier videos for a song called Mountain Trip to Japan, 1959:
They look like they would be wicked awesome live, so I’ve added them to the list of bands that I check periodically for local regional shows.