In A Cave

Stupid broken computer.

I rolled to the French Toast show alone on Friday ‘cause the G was girling it up and comparing diamond clarity and I wanted to shoot myself. Luckily, I recognized a guy or two so I could pretend that I wasn’t totally there by myself. Only partially there by myself and if anyone asked they were in the bathroom or getting drinks. And it’s always fun to pretend you’re hanging out with the cool kids as you spot various members of the DC rock n roll scene and pretend that after the show you’re all going to go hang out at the Dischord House.

The French Toast get better each time I see them.



They’ve added a third member who handles whatever instruments are being unused when the original guys move around between guitar, drums and bass. I always cringe a little when I see a band do this, especially because I think James Canty is a great drummer. But so is Jerry, so I guess it’s not fair to make one guy sit behind the skins for a whole set. I don’t know if the new guy (Ben, maybe?) will have any influence when it comes to any new recordings but there is a difference between what I gathered were their newer songs and the stuff from their last album. They were less complex musically but more rock and roll. And if I have one fault, it’s that I don’t like complexity and love rock and roll. Robert Fripp can bite it.

The second band, (Th’ Sounds of) Kaleidoscope gets a thumbs down from me, nothing personal. As one person complained, “they’re too high-endy,” as if the guy working the board had the treble pot turned to Xtra-brassy. Not really my scene. But apparently it was this girl’s scene.



I’m not sure how she got tricked into going to the show because she wasn’t rocking out, sported a belligerent thong and was a drinking an aggressively red drink. I didn’t even think you could get something that color at the Black Cat. Maybe her date (a largish gentleman who never met a lat pulldown machine he didn’t like) knew someone in the Kaleidoscopes.

Turns out I was in the minority in not loving these guys cuz they packed the house and when they finished their set, the place cleared out. Just as the headliners went on! Yeah Lily’s! Except the Lily’s weren’t that good either. And Dimes Make Dollars is such a great song. I actually wasn’t even sure I had the right band, fearing that maybe there was another group called the Lily’s who’d I seen back in college. But it turns out they just suffer from the Cracker Effect: one lead singer, several raggedy assed back up musicians. Evident in this wince-worthy live version of my favorite song. Guh.

And a last thing. The poster used to advertise the show features an image of a boy moments away from smashing a piano with a large rock. I was going to scold the artist of ripping off Guster’s Lost and Gone Forever album cover but figured I should research the image before making any accusations.



But I can’t find shit about the picture anywhere. So who knows? The image could be in the public domain. It’s probably just as famous as that film of the old man absorbing a canon ball to the stomach and I've just never seen it anywhere. I’m going to make a guess and say that it’s from the 70’s and Ireland. It’s got an Angela’s Ashes murmur to it. Or Graham Greene's The Destructors. If you know anything about it, leave a comment. Or if you have the liner notes from the Guster album and it says who has a copyright to it. I’m interested to know who this kid is.



Only because the look on his face is the same as I imagine everyone at my funeral will be, when they lower my piano sized body into the ground, using cranes donated by the Baltimore Aquarium.