In case you've never been, the Bottom Lounge is a pretty small venue, but very cool nonetheless. I'd guess there were about 150-200 people in the audience. It has a small warehouse feel to it, and the opening barroom that one enters the main bar through (the concert was in back behind that in a separate room) is pretty open with a few tables and booths scattered throughout. Basically it has the open feeling of a loft/warehouse place and when you mix that with the fun of a bar/concert venue it equals a great time.
But oh where to begin explaining this weird and awesome night...
First off, Rob Crow, one of the 2 main band members (singer/song writer/multi-instrumentalist), IS Zach Galifinakis' character Alan Garner from The Hangover. It was scary and insane and awesome. It was scarinsome, if you will. Not only does he look EXACTLY like him, but he even has the same mannerisms! More on that later. For now, you be the judge:
The pure weirdosity (yep, that's a word) and blawshomeness (so is that) of this concert kicked off from the get-go, as we walked in the door at 8:15 PM. Were we greeted with the sweet Bob Dylanish melodies (ok, maybe a stretch...) from the opening act of Joe Jack Talcum? No.
Up on stage singing karaoke in front of about 40 concert-goers was a jovial, mildly frenetic, Newcastle-drinking, bearded man with a beer belly who bore a strange resemblence to Zach Galifinakis. I'm just going to let that sink in for a minute. Karaoke. Delaware.
How weird is that?!?!
So this guy (who we later find out is Rob Crow of Pinback), finishes his song (some 70's or 80's chick song...so fitting) and asks the audience who's next. As you can imagine, people were not chomping at the bit to rush up on stage and sing karaoke when they thought they were going to be listening to professionals. I'm not going to lie, topping my list of recent regrets is the fact that I didn't get up there and belt something out with the lead singer of a friggin' rock band, especially with how bad the people who did were (A kid actually managed to completely butcher Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," which I didn't think was possible).
Karaoke struggles on without the help of Rob Crow's sick voice for the next hour til Joe Jack Talcum comes out and sings for an hour.
Meanwhile, while Talcum is singing, we intermittently see Rob Crow walking around carrying around....
Finally, at about 10:15, Pinback came out and got ready to play. Rob Crow walked onto the stage carrying a bunch of Newcastles, and they started rocking out. Throughout the course of the night, Crow was throwing down Newcastles like it was nobody's biznass. It was truly something to be admired. In between songs and if there was an instrumental that he wasn't involved in, he would take a huge swig or chug, and then bounce right back into the action without missing a beat.
His vocals were really cool too with a crazy range and a really interesting, unique sound, which was most definitely enhanced by the free-flowing Newcastle. We also noticed that the three guys who sang all had very diverse voices, but the way they blended together was perfect. They played a few of their more well-known songs like "Penelope," "Good to Sea," "Loro," and "Fortress" at a faster tempo than we had heard before, which kind of made it seem like they were rushing through them.
They played until a little after midnight, performing all the songs I love by them (except for "Crutch"), and a bunch of others that I hadn't heard that were pretty sweet.
Here are a couple of my favorites:
And also, if you have the means, I highly recommend checking out "Grey Machine." Rock on!
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