You're A Bigger Jerk Than Me

This was easily the most low-key, relaxed show I've been to all year: everyone who showed up was mostly cool by me, no terrible music was played over the PA between bands (instead it was stuff like Buzzcocks and The Embarrassment), nobody tried to jump on my head with their sneakers. It was a Sunday afternoon at a record store, though, which probably explains most of that. Plus this was the first time I'd been to Willimantic Records and I ended up buying a ton of shit, walking out to the car with my hands full about 4 times throughout the afternoon because I kept finding cool stuff to buy: four bucks for a better copy of "Hammeroid!" than the one I already have, a Hollow Heyday 12" that I'd never seen before for 99 cents, a copy of The Embarrassment "Retrospective" tape on Fresh Sounds for six bucks... Willimantic's got some cool shit going on right now, if you're looking for the next scene to hop onto. There's a couple of neat venues for bands to play, a great record store, and some pretty cool bands/labels of mostly outsider-leaning stuff (i.e. not jock shit) that I can get with.

Merchandise ruled, too -- I know some people have been saying "how come everyone's falling for this Morrissey shit now", but Merchandise has some really inventive melodies that I like (whereas I can't listen to five minutes of The Smiths), plus Carson's voice actually sorta reminds me of Gerry Rafferty, which no one else is gonna get but I think it's a funny thing to say. I guess on this tour they played some shows with real drums, but I liked the drum machine version better, since it allowed the guitar lines to really stand out on songs like "Time", which ended up sounding pretty heavy as a result.


Merchandise -

"Time"
(record label mp3)

"I Locked The Door"
(vinyl rip)

"Underground"
(rough demo)