e-town

Went to a taping of etown last night. My only experience with etown has been listening to it on KBCO while driving home from the Denver hash a few times. I always thought it was kinda boring. In that sense, I wasn't disappointed last night.

Matthew Caws, lead singer of Nada Surf, opened up. I don't know much about Nada Surf other than they have a bunch of crappy pop songs and had a huge hit a few summers ago. If your music is average at best when you have a plugged-in band behind you, doing a solo acoustic show isn't gonna make it any better.

But the reason I was there was to see the Flobots, who have been my favorite band recently. Think they'd put on a killer live show, but the format of etown really crushed the vibe. I felt like I do when I hafta wear a suit - I'm miserably uncomfortable but I can't let on that I'm having a horrible time. The Flobots got to play five songs, including my two favorites, Handlebars and Mayday, but again the way etown ran the show made it more like I was watching a recording session than a concert.

The Flobots have a much younger following then etown is used to, and that made for some funny moments. The two hosts, who seem as if they've had a stick up their ass for their entire lives, got pretty frustrated with the crowd being noisy when they weren't supposed to. At one point, they were taping the plug for the sponsors. "We'd like to thank Ben & Jerry's, Webroot, Chipolte, blah, blah, blah...." When the chick mentioned Silk (that soymilk crap), some dude way in the back started screaming "SILK! HELL YEAH SOYMILK!" and generally going crazy. Guess you had to be there, but I almost pissed my pants laughing.

That being said, the finalie of "So Happy Together" with everyone on stage was pretty cool.

Still, I can't believe I threw down about the same amount of money for the Spearhead show, which was one of the most electrifying shows I've ever seen, for this clunker. The Flobots have a few shows coming up at the Gothic in Denver, hopefully I'll get to see them in a better venue soon.