When last I left the recesses of my alcohol riddled memory we had just finished playing the first of two Pianos shows for our ‘residency’…Which leads us to…

February 10, 2007 Exitfare presents…Care Bears On Fire took the stage first…and not to sound mean, but they are 11-12 years old. So when you’re in a bar and these kids are setting up and tuning guitars and sound checking you think this has got to be a joke, a publicity stunt…believe me its not…I had listen to them before on their myspace, and was impressed…I still didn’t believe that they were 12 and this good, but they proved me wrong. I had talked to their bassist Lucio(?) after their set and he informed me that they had been playing for almost 2 years already, and had known each other since they were young…haha…young? That’s funny if you think about the fact that they’ve been playing together longer then most bands twice their age. Anyway, to actually understand them you would have to see them live. Indie, punk, blues I think isolates them enough to hear it in your head. They played to a packed crowd of 20-somethings, 40-something parents, and 12 yr old kids…all of whom were singing and swaying while the Care Bears tore through a blazing set about Unicorns, and Baby Animals. Oh and if that wasn’t enough to win you over, they played “Should I Stay, or Should I” Go by the Clash as an encore to end the night.

Next up was Age Rings. The chances that we would be playing with a Boston based band on the same night as a Boston based blog came down to sponsor us….1::2…. So this 6-piece(maybe 7 I can’t remember) is hanging out, and we talk here and there and I have to say none of them had a “Boston Accent”, at least not the guys I talked too. So Age Rings headed on stage around 8 o’clock post meridian UTC-5….and true to everything I had read up about them they played solid rock show. Never letting the crowd catch their breath…the sweaty handshakes after the set was enough to know they put in 110% into this show. For anyone interested Age Rings will be playing SXSW next month, and I would recommend checking them out.

It was now our turn to woo the crowd. Unfortunately this night would end up being the worse show that we played while in New York. It had turned out that we were given way to many drink tickets by one of the promoters, and after almost 4 hours of drinking, we weren’t in any condition to play a decent show. It was funny to still hear a good response from the crowd afterwards, but they probably didn’t know what to expect. So I apologize to everyone that thought it sucked, and to everyone that enjoyed it but just didn’t know it wasn’t as good. Sorry.

Last up was Bridesmaids. Who I unfortunately missed most of their set. Around the time they went on stage, for their first show ever I believe, I found out that our singer had been up for almost 36 hours due to work and life and whatever else you can imagine, and he had to drive back down to southern New Jersey to work a double on Sunday. Oh, Yeah, like the rest of us he was inebriated. So another apology to the Bridesmaids…They sounded great as I walked in and out of the downstairs venue. They sounded like a funky pop-jazz band. I’m not sure who was actually in the band…almost all but the singer/flutist had sheet music in front of them during the set, and I actually saw the singer writing out some notes earlier in the night.

February 16, 2007 The Battering Room hosted the Knockout! Round 2 at Union Hall in Brooklyn. This would end up being our best played show, even if the start of the night for us was the most stressful out of all the shows this month…It all started with the snow. It had finally snowed a substantial amount in the city. This in itself was not a problem. I enjoyed having some snow to look at and ice to slip on finally. The problem was in the transport of band mates from Glassboro, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, & West Chester, PA. Everyone had left with plenty of time to spare, and since we had said we would supply the backline for the rest of the bands…this was a good thing. Load-in was around 5:30pm. I got calls saying that 5/7ths of the band was only 20 miles away around 4:00. This was great news. We didn’t have a van, so it would take multiple trips to Union Hall to drop of all of our gear. Around 5:20pm those people that were 20 miles away were just arriving at my apartment. I called and said we were on our way and that although we appreciate the opportunity to sound check, we would have to decline. We drove back and forth 5 times total. And then around 6:30 our singer(s) called and said that they were right outside the Holland tunnel and would be there soon. Now I don’t have a car, but I know that it’s not far from the Holland tunnel to the Manhattan Bridge. At the most on a bad day I would guess 25-30 minutes. Well this was the worst traffic in the history of traffic. It took them over an hour to drive less then 3 miles….regardless of everything up to this point the outcome would be spectacular.

8:00pm The Antlers hit the stage right on time. (Even though I was over hearing people say we were 2 hours behind schedule). I was still busy running around like headless chickens at this point, but did catch a few songs. It would be fair to say that he reminds me of a young Jeff Magnum mixed with some Arcade Fieriness and an amazing voice from somewhere in the late 50’s.

Shortly before 9:00pm The Muggabears went on...I had seen The Muggabears briefly in late November/early December, and maybe it was booze or I’ll place the blame on the sound guy…but I wasn’t as enthralled in with them as I was this night. How does one describe The Muggabears sound? If you were to take artists like Sonic Youth and John Cale, and The Sonics, Steve Malkmus and anything avant-garde noise pop related and you may be able to hear a brief whirlwind of the Muggabears in your head. Intense is really the only way to describe their set. I’ve never seen anyone die on stage, but for a brief second I thought Travis had died on stage in the middle of a song. It turns out that he passed in the middle of an earth shattering scream…I asked him what happened after the show, and he said, “I knew had to stop, but something in my brain told me to keep going”. Pretty fucking rock’n roll if you ask anyone. So A+ to The Muggabears…Go see them as soon as you can.

So before I try and describe our set, I want to point out the one good thing that happened before the show…Bryan from Subinev made us into robots…. So as previously stated, the pre-show running around had gotten me all out of sorts, and to be honest I wasn’t sure about how the show was going to turn out, but close your eyes and swallow your fears….*blink* and people were sing and dancing and having a grand time. It felt great to put on a show that was better then we could have hoped. It sucks that we won’t be back in the city for a few months.

Surprisingly, the crowd started to demand an encore from us after our set, but time is always a factor and right at 11:00pm Johan stepped up and this quartet from the Netherlands after not playing in the US for sometime gained the respect of the other bands and quite a few new fans. It was great…phenomenal…I’m really glad I had a chance to see them play one of their two shows in the United States.

Its all been fun, and I’ll post my Tony Awards thank you list tomorrow morning since I can’t concentrate with the Bluth family on television

-Sean (Sure Juror)-

The Once-Great Gender Debate – Sure Juror (Live in West Chester, PA March 24, 2006)