Our thoughts: Geno's Rock Club (Portland ME)

October 31, 2008

w/Manwitch, The Hot Tarts

Unlike the WMPG performance, The show at Geno’s totally crushed. The Shondes dropped off the bill last minute, which was disappointing from a musical standpoint, but a bit relieving from a logistical standpoint, so everything ran a lot smoother. Cruella’s decorations were by far the best and creepiest I have seen her do thus far (and it’s not like she did a mediocre job on previous halloweens.) This year had a “Birds” theme, as in the Alfred Hitchcock film.

It seemed like it was the Hot Tarts turn for some technical difficulties (tuning in this case), but they muddled through with their usual charm. And because they have so little gear (just drums and a guitar combo) we were pretty well backlined before the HT’s started, so we didn’t have that panic of setting up right before we played. Sound onstage was atypically good and we nailed every tune. Parts of certain songs that perviously were ok sounded so … majestic. (The middle section of “Night Terrors” has these pregnant pauses where you could here a pin drop.)

Man-Witch played what might be their last show, not because they are breaking up, but because they want to convert the band into a musical puppet show with videos (a bit like Green Jello/Green Jelly.) Their set was awesome as usual. It’s so hard to explain them without seeing them, and If you’re not into metal you might not get the joke, but they’re definitely a spectacle.

Amusedly, on the way over to the gig Runtt asked me if we were playing anything other than our new material, and at that point I realized we had done ZERO planning from a musical standpoint – no set list, nothing. I guess gigs have become so commonplace for us that we don’t need to. So, our 5 newest tunes and “Serpentarius” made a tidy 45 minutes.