What You Missed || October 30, 2006

The wreckage of Fra Pandolf's set as Sonic Youth

Saturday's Our Band Could Be Your Band concert at Dan's Silverleaf deserved an adjective I normally reserve for Madonna: immaculate. It's hard to begin complimenting the show (a 13-local-band tribute to the musicians featured in Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life), since so much of it went right. Even the least interesting performances (Inaction Park as Big Black, Raised By Tigers as Husker Du) were still plenty worthy of their source material, while the best stuff rose above "tribute" status and assaulted the crowd with memorable energy and power.

The entire Drams lineup, known already for legendary boozin' in their Slobberbone days, announced early in the evening that they were "getting hammered" in order to perfectly cover The Replacements. And man, did they ever; by the end of the incendiary--and spot-on--set, bassist Keith Killoren had lost his sense of balance, drummer Tony Harper's pants were filled with beer and lead man Brent Best was a heap of rubble.


The Drams' Brent Best becomes a heap of drunken rubble

Fra Pandolf, already known for its quality Sonic Youth love affair, started the first frantic slam-dance of the night with its SY tribute, on which Shiny Around The Edges singer/siren Jennifer Seman joined the group and exploded in a rare, shrieking frenzy. Record Hop stepped that energy up to ignite a flurry of crowd surfing during a mighty three-song Fugazi set (on which drummer Josh Prisk surprised the crowd with a quality turn on vocals...do that more often, Prisk). Birth to Burial killed, as did The Baptist Generals, History At Our Disposal, This Ain't No Picnic...I could go on and on, but, eh, just watch the low-quality videos I recorded while being beat upon by the dancing crowd. -SM

Baptist Generals as The Butthole Surfers
The Drams as The Replacements
Record Hop as Fugazi

Unhappy with the video quality? Not-so-simple way to fix that: On those video links, choose to download the AVI versions. Then load those in Windows Media Player and increase the brightness in "Enhancements" -> "Video Settings." Once you do that, you'll be able to see everything, including Brent Best bum-rushing the crowd.