Snagged a SAUCY!!!
WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
So tonight began inauspiciously enough. Having missed the Crocodiles' previous area appearance (at Mercury Lounge on Wednesday) due to my mom leaving a giant pile of needles on the floor and me stepping on said pile, thereby tearing a huge gash in my foot, I had low expectations for the evening. A buddy of mine was supposed to come over and rock out to some Melvins bullshit as-per-uje while drinking beers and smoking bowls, but that didn't happen. So I had little choice but to venture into the cruel, cold world and go to this bullshit show.
Before I left my apartment, I drank a forty of Colt 45 and a couple Coors tallbastardz, which had me in a miserable "FML" style mood. Got to Glasslands during setbreak between the first band and the second band, and realized my pre-show worries were unfounded. Said worries consisted of the following: "oh shit, one of those AnCo fudgepackers is DJing this show, so it's probably gonna be packed." No, it wasn't.
Missed the first band entirely and the second band took for-fucking-ever to set up. OK. This is where this review becomes "hesitant." Last time I saw a band anywhere near as bad as this band (and blog'd about it), it was the Beets. And those crafty bastards got a MySpace quote out of that shit. Seriously, check their MySpace on the left side of the page, under "sounds like." I wrote that bad boy/yikes.
Not sure how else to put this... they were just <puking noise>. To this point in my life, and I've seen literally hundreds upon hundreds of bands, I've always used Danielson as my measuring stick as far as "the worst band I've ever seen live," but FUCK THAT at least Danielson knew their parts. This band encapsulated the absolute WORST of Brooklyn. As much good as Todd P has spread, he really has to pay the motherfucking piper when it comes to encouraging terrible, faggoty, talentless, useless bands to take the stage before they even know how to tune their fucking instruments. Bad art is, well, bad.
Anyway, this band had the typical Williamsburg bullshit going on. They 1.) had no songs; 2.) had a stage filled with instruments that they had no idea how to play; 3.) said instruments included a bunch of homemade percussion bullshit and stupid cutesy ukelele nonsense presumably in order to make themselves seem "adorable," 4.) had a laptop computer pumping in backing tracks, without which they were totally lost; 5.) sucked ass big time (as if you couldn't tell that by my previous comments); 6.) took FOR FUCKING EVER between songs to retune their shitty sub-amateurish bullshit. Anyway, as anyone who reads this blog (I'm lookin' at you, Bricer and Beafi) knows, I try my best to not talk too much shit about local shitty bands. What's the point? Nobody (ok, 3 people) reads this blog anyway, so it's not like I'm on some "cutting edge" of music reviewership. But, in this instance (and I've thought this over for the last several hours), it would be simply irresponsible of me to not be this harsh.
As such, I was pretty fucking bitter. I'm not pretending that I stuck around for their entire set. Went outside to (dejectedly) smoke a butt. A couple of mediocre hipster chicks were standing next to me, and I was ogling them something shameless, to the point where I was pretty close to warbling some half-assed bullshit in their general direction, but (while looking in my general direction) one of said hipster chicks said to the other, "you want to go sit across the street?" The answer was a decided "yes," so it looks like I won't be hosting private after hours at my place tonight hahhhahahhahah.
Stumbled back into Glasslands for what had to be my thousandth pissbreak. I had read that since the last time I'd seen Crocodiles they'd gained a full backing band (last time I saw them in June '09 at Union Pool it was just the singer and guitarist jamming to a backing tape), so needless to say they took their sweet time setting up. Whatever. Drank a bunch more $4 Rolling Rock tall-boys and taxed some Jaeger during the interim.
Anyway, what to say about the Crocodiles set??? I love everything about this fucking band and I'm not afraid to say it. According to iTunes, "I Wanna Kill" is my 4th most listened-to song ever [erm, since October 5th, 2008 when my computer crashed, rather], and that seems about right. LOVE that song. I've said this before and I'll say it again: if you don't get a fucking boner from that chorus, you can go fuck yourself.
OK. About the Crocs' set. I was pleased to see that singer Brandon Welchez still weighs about 80 pounds, because, face it, there's no fatties in hipsterville. [*SOB*] Plus newfound respect because I recently discovered that he's married to Kristin Gundred from Dum Dum Girls, who is both talented and super hot. YOU GO, LO-FI GARAGE-POP SUPER COUPLE!!! SMOOCHERS!!!!
OK. This is the third straight paragraph I've started with some variation of "so now I'm going to talk about the Crocs' set" and I'm finally determined to finally follow through here [third time's the charm]. But first, I have to describe their aesthetic: when I was trying to entice a buddy to see them earlier in the day, I described them as "Raveonettes without the hot chick," and, although that's an egregious oversimplification, due to Crocs/Raves mutual influences I'm okay with that description. They started with a couple of OK-but-not-great ones from their new record before busting into some type of awesome segue (I think it was "Summer of Hate">"Hearts of Love," but I could be wrong). They played several off the new album, including the fucking great "All My Hate and My Hexes Are For You" and "Mirrors," and closed the set with a triumphant "I Wanna Kill." Fucking POIFECT.
Left the show with a big fucking smile on. Still smiling at the time of this writing. And that's what counts. Tuddd out.
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