why is this the only decent photo you have? Well… Am picking up real photos from Desh today Can view the whole photoset here: Brass Monkey Concert

This is a crap review cause I haven’t slept since the Brass Monkey concert. Wasted my camera trying to get photos of Swinly’s bottom (for the people) and the thing was dead by the time anything happened. Desh gave me the vital shots, but y’all’ll have to wait till I wake up and collect. As a preliminary:

I would say the Brass Monkey concert was awesome. The dance floor was dominated by a toddler and an 80 year old man left his crutch by the piano to do the twist with the bassist. By the end of the night there was a 7 year old on the mike and Anik (?) was singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with a giant snake. It was great cause it was alive, and so different from the start of the concert. At the beginning the main crowd was fully 20 ft back from the stage on lawn chairs. Behind them a mass of cool kids were loitering by the MTV trailer. Standard guys in jeans and T-Shirts and fit girls looking bored. The music was good, especially the brilliant cellist/bassist/guitarist, but the crowd wasn’t moving. Then this toddler got on the dance floor and started doing a sort of breakdance. Literally, he kept falling on his ass. Then this older white kid starts running circles around the toddler. Finally a little girl shows up and almost scares dude off. He holds his ground though, kid’s more confident than I’ve ever been. Keeps calling out ‘You Ready?’ to the band.

At that point the crowd melts and they end up on the dancefloor. The bassist is insanely good, and the tabla/percussion player was excellent. My favorite is the cello, and the way it mixes with Swinly on piano. They remind me of Phish, not in that the sound is similar, but that they’re good enough musicians to jam or at least riff-along. BMB was playing from a set-list, but the songs are experimental and diverse enough to make for an ever-interesting live show.

I hate concerts that sound just like the album. In Ohio you’d end up paying to pick the grass out of your beer while you hear the exact same shit as at home. The Grateful Dead were different cause they were confident and experimental enough to make every show different. Then Jerry died and Phish stepped in. I was in Montreal by then. I never went to neither, but my friends would bag up their mushrooms and go to bumblefuck Pennsylvania for day-long concerts. I’d never get on a bus, but at the Jazz-Fest you’d get these hippie bands that had great live shows. I’d still listen to Fischerspooner on my headphones, but those shows were fun. I feel like Brass Monkey is creative enough to fit into that niche, but I don’t think it’s that lucrative in SL. It was certainly a fun show.

Anyways, I’m sleepy and I’ll try to write an actual review tomorrow today.

Posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2005 in Music, Sri Lanka.