- LYDIA WASHBURN
“Okay! We’re gonna smash through these songs to make up for lost time and then we’ll talk!”
After fifteen minutes of mic testing, circuit splitting and generally trying to remain as unelectrocuted as possible due to tech problems, Ted Leo and Pharmacists finally cranked it on, zooming through six tracks—including favorites “Me and Mia” and “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone—to a mish mash crowd that did the pogo in one corner, bobbysox dancers in another and a two-man mosh pit smattered in between all the general head-bobbing.
Ted Leo, tipping the hat to Little Rock in his Econochrist shirt, springs, shimmies and crouches like no other. He moves (and looks, for that matter) like every neighborhood’s wily 12-year old kid that sprays havoc all over the place, Eddie Haskell style.
Oh, he sung, too. I think. The sound last night was rough at best and inaudible at worst, keeping Leo’s note-perfect choir/punk tenor out of the speakers and definitely out of the crowd’s ears.
Gracious dude he is, he lauded The Moving Front, applauded The Reds for hanging up their hat with class, praised Kevin Seconds for influencing him so much and even gave shout outs to two of the guys at Guitar Center (full disclosure: two of my best friends) for selling him $200 of strings and shooting the shit about Paul Weller with him that afternoon.
Soon enough, it was 11:30, I couldn’t hear and was exhausted, so I traded in the backroom for my bedroom because I’m old, lame and had an early meeting this morning.
Did anything of note happen during the last half?
Oh, and thoughts on the openers are under the jump.