ENERGY. FUN. AWESOME!
These are the right first words to use when writing about last night’s headliners at the Turf Club, Dance Band. I had a great time watching them rock out up on stage … it was almost as fun as watching the crowd rock out on the dance floor. I swear the dude next to me spent the whole set doing the robot guy from the Chapelle Show.
The fast pace was definitely set by the band and it’s four front-people. The guitar player kept a series of spacey riffs and geeky tweaks cascading over the top of the pounding beats. Never over-dominant, I’d look over and watch his fingers just fly over the fretboard. The bass player had some of the fastest lyrical stylings I’ve seen since Atmosphere. That’s right, besides funking the funk out, the bassist raps — and gives the band a good third sound when the two singers take much-earned breaks from their own intense rocking. These leading co-conspirators of the dance dance revolution consist of a short ball of brunette energy (fittingly adorned in a Christmas tree hat last night) on female lead, and a shaggy, over-bearded Caucasian of rock-persuasion on male lead. As it happens that guy, Paul, is an old classmate from my younger, formative school years. It was a real treat to see how he’s crafted his nerdy retro-rocker onstage persona, especially since I know he was a star running back on our freshman football team. Armor chinked? Check.
Self-styled “geekfunk” never had it so good. With song themes based on zombies, Sega video games and UNIX code you get the sense these guys don’t have to stray too far to find song inspiration. You can check out their website which links straight into their Myspace page. For geeks, they should be doing a lot more online, but I was told they have these things called “day jobs” that prevent this from happening. Dunno, I’m dubious.
Opening for them were the bands Estate and Mystery Palace. Mystery Palace took a nice chilled, German laptop rock sound and built heavier, dissonant layers on top of it. It worked, if not a little down-tempo for the night’s theme. I spoke to their singer/keyboardist Ryan afterward and he talked about how they bring their jazz influences and traditions into their work. I’ll definitely be watching the wire for any of their other shows in the area, though it sounds like they’re headed to NYC for a while.
So do yourself a favor and go see Dance Band, and shake your baby maker!
Peder with a D 