Crap Log

The Faint @ the roxy

Ah tonight i had the pleasure of seeing one of my favorite bands, The Faint. I guess they would fall into the electroclash/no wave genre but they are from omaha, not brooklyn. I also had been familiar with the faint before this whole electroclash thing got big, so in my book they were one of the pioneers of modern electroclash.

this is the 5th or 6th time i have seen them in boston. i think ive seen every show they have played here. which gives me +2 coolness experiance points. i do have to give a qucik run down of the shows though.
First show upstairs Middle east. this is a small club. small. i love it. the filled the room with smoke. and then turned on pink lights from behind them so it was all silouette like and rays of pink light. then when they started playing they had strobe lights facing them so when they flashed you got little bursts of what they looked like. sooo cool. i was close to wetting myself. that show was in support of thier new album at the time Blank-wave Arcade. it was one of the best shows ive ever been to...in my lifetime.

the rest of the shows weren't too memorable. there was the one when they released thier album Danse Macbre. that was a cool show.

there was also a show they did when they were on tour with No Doubt. For every big No Doubt Show they did they would do a local show with them headling a small club. this time it was downstairs at the middle east. i remember it being extremely hot and packed with high school kids. from what i hear, new fans that heard them at the No Doubt show. it had to chill in the back because there were too many little kids crouding my scene and it was fucking hot. actually i am 6'5" i like the back :P. but yeah i think it was like winter/spring and it was one of those crazy warm days so the heat got tunded off that day but the A/C was not turned on. so they played 45min and were just looking exauhsted. it was my least favorite Faint show.

so ill skip ahead to now.
venue: The Roxy
most recent album: Danse Macabre: Remixes - its danse macabre remixed by Astral Werks recording artists.

so the roxy is a considderably larger venue than downstairs. the opening bands were Schneider TM, who were like this acid jezzy kinda shit that bored me so i dont really have a review. and then after them were Les Savy Fav.
i wasnt too familiar with Les Savy Fav but i remembered i had a few albums on mp3. popped the shit in last night and was cool with it. they were a band that i could listen too. So at the show i was interested in seeing what they were like. visually i was very surprised. i thought the album sounded like Radio 4. but they sure as hell didnt look like them. the lead singer was bald on top with a comb over and a big rusty orange beard. he was also wearing what i can only describe as a hippie shirt. the mic or the sound level from the mic was all messed up for the first 3-4 songs. so you couldnt hear anything he was saying. but the band was really amazing. the lead singer was one of those 'crazy guys' that liked to run all over the stage and climb on shit and take his shirt off and pantomime shit. if i were into them i would have loved this shit. but all in all my thoughts after thier set was that i should listen to more of thier stuff.
after that i booked all the way down 2 floors and getting my hand stamped a few more times to get out side to smoke a cigarette. i never thought the smoking ban would be a big deal but leaving this place for 5 min was an ordeal.
so now im waiting for the faint to come on and i am noticed the crowd has about doubled. and again 15year old kids every where. i thought i was the oldest person there. these shows are usually scenster events but these kids were too young to even be in a scene. i didnt care though. this place was big enough for tons of kids with their my-parents-dont-understand-me hair and wardrobe and huge over night in the city back packs that they couldn't get in my way. i wont be too harsh because i was once one of those kids.
i found a nice spot near the front. again i am 6'5" so most spots are good, but the 2 longhairs i was with couldn't see from my original spot so we moved close to the bar. best of both worlds.
so the biggest change was the addition of 2 fucking huge video screens that played some interesting video that sync'd to every song. these videos were song specific, not just back drops of random weird shit. the show went on and was good. maybe im just older or something but it seemed to lack the intensity that every other show had. it could have been the venue or it could be all the popularity the band has now [popularity=money]. they played all thier songs, a few remix versions of some songs from Blank-wave Arcade that you can download from their site and 2 new songs. i wasn't really feeling the new songs. the one i liked the least , Take Me to the Hospital, will be on a Saddle-Creek compilation album called Saddle Creek 50. The other new song, Paranoia, has potential but i wasn't too psyched. its was a great show but it just didn't get my bood pumping as i am accustomed to at thier shows. one thing i did notice that was a bummer was that they seemed to be playing their instarments less and relying on the backing recording more. at previous shows the drummer with the digital drum kit could have fooled people into thinking it was a recording but he along with the keyboardinst and the singer using his own keyboard from time to time made sense that they were really playing. not to mention the shit equipment at those show that would have made any recording obvious. this show however i saw the bass player and guitar player jumping around looking like they were going off on sick riffs and shit but you could see thier hands holding the shit no where near strings. also one song where i loved to see the guitar part being played i saw that the guitar player had his hands in the air clapping along while i could hear the guitars wailing out. i should never be a music reviewer because i use such lame lines as riff and wail. but fuck im not a muscian and i dont know shit. just to further prove my point about the recording is the video screens. they were totally in sync with the music, perfectly in sync. it IS possible to play live and be in sync yes i know, but this was just too much sync-ta-tude. its hard to describe what was on the screen but the videos and music were starting at the same time and all that jazz. they were just jumping around during all the heavy parts looking like they were rocking out.
as i left i felt the need to add to my faint collection of crap. ive gotten a 12"x12" poster every time the come but the one they had this time was just like the last tours but different back ground. so i picked up a really cool 4 color screen print poster that i think some fan or something made. they only had a few hundred and there look very hand done. and its for this particular show, boston roxy, may 11th. in my book thats way better than some crap the record company puts out. REAL orginal art. its kinda big but id like to scan it in. i also had to pic up thier remix cd : Danse Macabre: Remixes, which i am listening to now. its cool, more music from them is what i have been wanting. and to top it off i got yet another faint tshirt. i got a large cuz the merch girl said they were the same company that made last tours shirts and i have a large from last year that i love. my problem with shirts is that larges are not long enough and Xtra large are too big in the body area. this new one has bugs all over it. bugs, i think cockroaches. its the theme for the remix art. so i am happy. the show didnt blow the ass out of me but it was a live music fix. and i couldnt live with myself if i missed a faint show.
so yeah. next show im looking forward to: Ted Leo

i listened to Let the Poison Spill From Your Throat from the album "Danse Macabre Remixes" by The Faint while writing this post