It musta been a couple years ago when I spotted Rick Froberg (aka Rick Fork) of Pitchfork/Drive Like Jehu/Hot Snakes fame at a Mission of Burma show (I think), and he told me about a new band he had goin' called Obits. Well, they're finally
ready for prime time. They played their first show at Cake Shop (lower east side, nyc) last weekend and apparently blew away the crowd. I missed it, but thankfully somebody posted the show online and I've been groovin' to it all week. Anyway, we're hittin' their show at Union Hall tonight and I can barely wait.
Obits have that distinctive Rick Fork sound goin' on, no question. But it's much more accessible and even vaguely poppy at times, relatively speaking. Unlike Jehu and Hot Snakes, there's not much noise. Some of the tunes, especially
Widow of My Dreams have a great surfy, 60s spy flick theme quality. They have a couple tunes up on their MySpace
page. Both are great, but I especially dig the poppier one,
Talking to the Dog.
At the Cake Shop show, they covered The Kinks'
Milk Cow Blues and really made it their own.
Oh, and how's this for cool?
The Live Ones are playing two shows this month! They're at the
Lucky Cat on the 14th and
Trash on the 22nd. Both weekend shows, too. Nice. They're on the bill with
The Underthings (the latest incarnation of Chris, Andy and Sam from Spitoons -- good stuff, super poppy, feel good rock 'n' roll, and Andy can wail on the geetar...) and
Clean Teens.
I love this new pic Live Ones bassist Brett (aka Falcon) posted....
Update 3.9.08: Not sure what I was thinkin' yesterday when I posted about the Live Ones playing twice this month. The show at Trash bar on the 22nd is actually
Live Fast Die. Duh. It's right on my cool wolves-themed calendar hanging on the wall next to the computer I used to make the post. Duh.
Oh, and for the record, the first Obits show was not last week but sometime in January. Double duh. Also, the Kinks song they do was actually an old tune the Kinks covered -- not exactly surprising.
Last night's Obits show was damn good, by the way. If I recall correctly, they played all the tunes from the first show, plus they started the set with a new song I dug a lot. The venue kinda sucked though. I liked the band space OK, but the place was kinda frou-frou yuppie. The kinda joint that serves overpriced trendy food and attracts guys with too much fashion sense. They weren't stingy with the whiskey, though, which was nice. Also, they have a bocce court, and it was fun watching douche bag jocks attempt to play the game but treat it more like bowling. Zero grace.
