Daniel Johnston

I saw Daniel Johnston perform on February 9, 2008 in Omaha at Slowdown. This, of course, does not prove that I was there, that I had heard of him first, but I did go. Then I blogged about it, pissing off one of the guys backing Johnston. (What? It was a good critique.)

Good venue that Slowdown.

One of My Favorite Venues: The Crocodile Cafe

I spent some time in Seattle during the summer of 1997. While there, I was able to catch a couple of shows at the Crocodile Cafe.

The venue was (is?) owned by Stephanie Dorgan, one-time wife of REM's Peter Buck and has been a fixture in the Seattle music scene since it opened in 1991.

There was a cafe out front, seedy bar in the back, and a small stage and dancefloor hidden behind a retractable wall. It was part of my indie rock mecca. I'm glad I was able to see some bands there.

There were two shows I attended that summer. The first was Teenage Fanclub and Bettie Serveert. Both bands put on really solid shows. Carol van Dyk has one of the best voices in the indie world and she was amiably backed by guitarist, Peter Visser.

The second show was part of an AIDS benefit show that featured Modest Mouse. MM played a short, equipment-failing set, but they rocked through material from what would become 1997's Lonesome and Crowded West.

6 Hours for 30 Minutes

Published earlier from my real blog on February 1, 2008...

I had two tickets for last night's Band of Horses show in St. Louis, but no one wanted brave the snow to see them.

Then, an eleventh-hour reply to emailed pleas gave me the permission I needed to take on Old Man Winter and make the trek to see Band of Horses. My friend TJ came through and together we headed to St. Louis.

The roads weren't actually that bad for most of the trip, but as we closed in on St. Louis, our progress slowed. It took us two hours to hit the city's outskirts which isn't far off the pace on a clear day. However, the snow was beginning to pile up and we found ourselves behind a line of snowplows that caused us to add another hour to our trip.

Somehow we found the venue, The Gargoyle, hidden in the basement of a student center on Washington University's campus. It was thirty minutes into Band of Horses' set, but we had arrived!

BoH were really solid live. Front man Ben Bridwell's voice sounded almost human without the heavily engineered effects of the band's two Sub Pop releases, but it was still powerful enough to hold its own among the guitars, bass, and drums. The band overall was tight but loose enough to cause the prerequisite head-bobbing one expects.

TJ and I had to laugh that although we had missed half of the band's set, we still got to hear the "hit", aka "The Funeral". But that wasn't even the highlight of the set. The band played a Credence Clearwater Revival b-side called "Effigy". This has to be one of my all-time favorite tracks, especially the version recorded by Uncle Tupelo for the No Alternative compilation. It was a pleasant surprise.

After the encore, we had to make our way back to highways which had only accumulated snow while we were at the Gargoyle. A drive that usually takes me just under two hours, took us over three. Between the drifts, fishtails, and iced over windshield, we were lucky to get out that quickly. It was so bad at one point that we turned onto an exit to clear the windshield and knock the ice off wipers that ended up placing us on a whole other highway.

We eventually made our way back to I-70 and back in COMO. It took us three hours to get there and three hours to get back. All that for thirty minutes of rock and roll, but it was worth it.