Heartless Bastards at Southgate House

Saturday night some friends dragged me to to the Southgate house to see the Heartless Bastards. I say dragged in that I wasn't really up for seeing the Bastards again, but Southgate is such a great venue and I knew I'd see tons of friends at the show. Well, I wasn't disappointed, in that everywhere I turned I saw someone I knew. That was pretty cool. But the show...

It's not that I don't like the Bastards, but I guess I never really got into them. Though I seem to be in the minority, and that's what I don't understand. Everyone I know from Cincy seems to be huge fans, and I think I have some theories, but I'm not sure. My first idea is that guys like them because they think that Erika is hot (she doesn't do it for me), and her ballsy vocals project a strong, confident exterior, which is also a reason I think women like her.

Unfortunately that's exactly the reason I don't care for her singing that much. On the first album (and in every show I've seen) Erica seems to be belting out her lyrics with such force that it seems to narrow her range into almost a monotone sound. Many of my friends not familiar with the Bastards have remarked that they thought it was a guy singing when they first heard the album. I just wish she was more dynamic. It almost sounds like she's already tired from a week of singing shows and is at the end of the night, struggling to push out her parts - even on the album.

For these reasons I never bought the first album - got a rip from a friend. I tried really hard to get into them, since EVERYONE I knew was and I kept being dragged to their shows. So then the second album came out and I thought that her vocal range expanded and that she intoned a great deal more. But she never really brought that articulation to any of their stage shows. This Saturday she was a bit more dynamic, but as soon as she got to songs from the first album (which made up all of the end of the show and encore), she slipped right back into her monotone roar.

And my other bitch is that the show was $15. For someone who has seen them for years for free, it's hard to pay that much. It was a decent show, I saw a ton of friends, but I enjoyed Pearline (who opened for them and I hadn't seen in a while) much, much more.

And there was some other group called White Girls in the first opening slot - notice I didn't say band. They sucked so bad, and even though I like punk - which is what I thought they were trying to go for - I couldn't take them for much more than a few songs. I turned around to say that we should go outside for a bit and my friends had already left (about halfway through the first song) and were sitting on the porch.
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Great theatre - for free!

The University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music has announced its 2007-2008 Studio Series, which are free productions theater and opera. CityBeat's A&E Blog picked up on this the other day, I'm just passing it along.

The theater in which these shows are performed is small and intimate and even though the performers are students these kids are some of the best. And this year they're doing TWO Sondheim shows!
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Another place, another TIME

While searching Google for some local arts info I ran across this article, and immediately started reading it without noticing the date it was published. It's a pretty interesting piece on the Cincinnati May Festival, but it's dated 1939. It was weird because before I noticed the date I kept thinking the writing was somehow odd, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

(See a picture of the cover after the jump.)


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New Blog, New Links

A quick shout-out to Cincinnati Now, another new blog in the Cincy blogosphere. Looks like a great start, keep it up!

While looking at his page, I was inspired to re-categorize my CincyLinks and things suddenly got out of hand. So now I've got links to CincyMusic, CincyArts, CincyTheatre, CincyFilm, and even CincyFun. I'm glad I did this, because my CincyResources list was getting a little out of hand - but I didn't mean to waste most of my afternoon doing this! And it fills out my new 3-column layout quite nicely.

So, please, check out my links on either side, and let me know if you think of any I'm missing. ATTENTION: NERD ALERT! While going through my CincyFun links you might find some things that you wouldn't necessarily think of as 'fun,' like the Mercantile Library. Well I'm a big nerd, so they're on my list. Deal wit it!
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Some of the weirdest concert footage ever...

This is Iggy Pop & the Stooges live from 'the stadium' (Riverfront?) in Cincinnati, June 1970, on a program called Midsummer Rock, complete with sportscaster color commentary and a Falstaff beer commercial break.

My favorite part is around 5:36 when Iggy, who's moving through the crowd, completes the refrain:

"I feel alright! I feel alright!"

And some chick in the crowd, apparently close to the mic, asks him, "Are you alright?" in a very concerned, motherly voice. That cracked me up.

The sound is really bad and although I know YouTube's compression didn't do it any favors, I'd have to say the original sound feed to the television guys probably wasn't that great to begin with. The video's pretty crappy too - probably was from the start - but that too has a lot to do with YouTube.

A real treat comes at the end when the second sportscaster makes his way through the crowd talking to random people while Led Zepplin performs in the background. You should see the 'brain trust' that he interviews. They're a real bunch of winners. I can just imagine my parents and their generation watching this and saying, "Look at those stupid hippies. Midge, if that's the future of America, God help us all."
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Nixon in China

Ouch. That was painful. Thank goodness I got the tickets on a discount. We left after the first act. And we weren't the only ones - there was a steady stream of people exiting and going for their cars.

I heard from a friend who stayed for the whole thing and she wished that she had been with someone who wanted to leave because she would have left at the first intermission as well.

Who thought that opera was a good idea?
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Best? of Shadowbox

So last night we saw the "Best of Shadowbox" at the Shadowbox Cabaret. If that's their best, they really need to do some work. I guess I just didn't drink enough to find all their re-re-recycled bits funny.

I know that the show is supposed to be a replay of all their funniest bits, but most of their actually humorous stuff is a re-hash of the same jokes, only slightly updated over the years. Like the perennial favorite, "guy telling a scary story with a flashlight under his face while other guy pantomimes." It was a funny bit the first three times you did it, because you kept changing the stories from show to show, but after a while the whole motif gets old and even your new "A material" sounds worn out.

And the music is done very well, but there's nothing special about it anymore. The fact that these guys have to do the same seven or eight songs every night for the run of the show really comes across - they're totally phoning it in, especially by the end of the night. A few years back I felt the music was one of the strongest points of a Shadowbox show, but now it feels like they're just going through the motions. They really do very little to put their own stamp on the pieces. I know Holiday Inn lounge acts with more passion.

It was nice to see a bunch of new faces in the cast, but most of them were completely under utilized. They better start mixing them in a lot more, since the veteran members are definitely losing their spirit.
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See you in Northside!

If you're wondering what to do to celebrate ID3/4, check out Northside's Rock n' Roll Carnival and the Fourth of July Parade and Festival. If you haven't been, it's probably the best parade in the area. It all kicks of tonight with the Carnival, and tomorrow with the parade. See you tonight!
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Bastards on the street

Really cool little event: Heartless Bastards played a free concert tonight during Final Friday. Apparently it was to celebrate their music video. Weird part was, they never showed the video, at least not on the street. Lightborne - who I guess sponsored the event because they did the video - was having a party, but you had to have a pass to get in. So they might have shown the video inside, but I wouldn't know because I was not one of the ordained hipsters allowed inside. I'm fine with that, as I wanted to spend more time hitting the Pendleton and the other galleries, and I would have been completely sucked in by the free food and beer.
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