Wednesday, June 07, 2006

LIVE: Cold War Kids and Tapes n' Tapes



I can't believe I forgot to blog on this already! I have to say upfront - I bought the tickets initially because of the buzz around Tapes n' Tapes but as the day approached, my love for Cold War Kids grew and GREW AND GREW to the point that I nearly forgot who TnT was. That said, Cold War Kids rocked the house and left TnT trying to catch up. Even Bombardier Kaesgen who joined me for the mission, who was new to both bands, was impressed by CWK. The concert was at the Grog Shop, the smallest venue I have been to in Cleveland, so pretty tiny and a closeup venue to see a band.

The opening band, The Very Knees I could not get into but they had a old film projector showing some home made movies/videos by the band that were mostly funny.

Cold War Kids rocked a lot, more then I expected and I was thrilled by their performance. The guys have SO much energy that they were throwing chest bumps, back bumps, hand smacks, everything they had at each other like a pro sports player getting his team hyped for the big game. Arguably, Saint John is the best track they performed and just lit it up. All the extra sounds and effects you hear are replicated - be it smacking a beer bottle, loose cymbals, tamborines on top of the drum kit, whatever - these guys brought everything and the kitchen sink to the performance and threw it all out there.


By the time Tapes 'n Tapes rolled around, I had lost my space up front due to more money in the meter and I lost my buzz for wanting to see them. They have this one guy in their band that, to me, seemed like they plucked a random person out of the crowd to play any instrument he wanted. He started off in some African tribal dance, banging a drumstick and tamborine, moved onto tinkling the keys, then onto smashing a tamborine into a cymbal and last I saw, blowing into a mini-tuba. Weird and off key but the kids seemed to thrash to the band like they were Metallica.

Overall, a good night with a decent crowd. I also had to deal with the venue paparazzi – there were maybe 5 other people taking pictures besides me and they seemed to feel because they had a camera, they had a license to go in front of you and they get really annoyed if you tried to take a picture the same time as them or your flash interferred. Annoying. Let's all mellow out and just enjoy the music.There was also one annoying girl who looked like Horatio Sanz’s character ‘Carol’ from SNL who was standing up front but just talked through the entire set(s).

Download mp3s and buy what CDs Cold War Kids have to offer here.

mp3 - Cold War Kid - Saint John
mp3 - Cold War Kid - We Used To Vacation
mp3 - Cold War Kid - Hospital Beds

It seems I am not the only one who agrees that CWK trounced TnT on the stage. In my effort to locate a link for TnT mp3's, I found this which is basically all the blogs reviews from the live shows along with some TnT mp3s.

1 Comments:

Blogger JONATHAN said...

Seriously - buy both EPs for $12 bucks at their site! A total deal until they can put something proper out.

8:30 PM  

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