Black Cat wasn’t as nice as I imagined it would be, but this didn’t particularly bother me as I only paid $15 to see 3 bands. The venue reminded me of Lavino field house at the Lawrenceville School where I first saw moe. play. The only difference was that this time I was surrounded by a bunch of indie kids and not a bunch of hippy kids.
The of-age girls there were pretty hot, but a different kind of hot than your conventional hot D.C. girl hot. There were no $150 jeans and none of those pointy shoes that every girl wears these days, but there were lots of studded leather belts, dark mascara, short skirts and Ugs….basically, a lot of chicks that dress like Alex from the O.C.
I love hot girls with indie street cred.
While walking around the floor I noticed a vaguely familiar face, a girlfriend of a friend of a friend. We made eye contact so I knew that I had to acknowledge her at some point in the night. Luckily for me, Robbers on High Street started playing. I thought that these guys had the best set of the night. They combined Strokes-like guitar with Beach-Boys harmony for an edgy sound that was softened by a pop sensibility.
After Robbers finished their set I decided to suck it up and go say hi to that girl. I walked up to Lauren and the following conversation ensued:
Me: hey Lauren, what’s up? It’s me, Sam
Her: I’m not Lauren
Me: Yeah you are
Her: No, I’m not. My name is Julie.
Me: uh, sorry?
Her: But that’s a good pick-up line
Me: Thanks
Her: I always wanted to be a Lauren
Me: you could definitely pull it off
When I realized that she wasn’t who I thought she was and thus didn’t have a boyfriend that I was aware of, I decided to do what any hetero-sexual male would do: chat her up and make as much incidental contact as possible. Actually, I didn’t really hit on her because she was with a dude, and I would have felt like a dick hitting on another dude’s girl right in front of him. I actually didn’t know for sure if they were together, but I just apologized a few more times and left to surreptitiously ogle other girls from the concert floor.
Up next was VHS or Beta. They took like 30 minutes to set up and that made me think they were a bunch of prima-donnas. There was probably a legitimate technical reason for them taking so long to set up, but I wasn’t in a particularly understanding mood at the time. The band had a DJ, which was interesting, but it also meant that they were a few missteps from sounding like Orgy. They managed to avoid this pitfall however and actually put on a good show. I’d say these guys sounded like what the Cure would sound like if they were formed within the last few years – the fact that the lead singer of VHS stole Robert Smith’s voice has a lot to do with my assertion. The performance pretty much erased all of the bitterness I directed towards them because of the prolonged set up time.
Ambulance finally took the stage a little after midnight and played 6 songs, of which 5 were from their EP. They sounded good and all, but I expected a little more material from these guys since they were the headliners. I wasn’t deeply offended by their only playing 6 songs, but I came away feeling a little empty. They show a lot of promise on the EP and I was hoping that they could follow through on this promise via a live performance. I guess I’ll have to pick up their LP and really dig it before I can mention them in the same breath as their NYC contemporaries, Interpol and the Strokes. Not that Ambulance sounds anything like those two bands.