Friday, December 08, 2006

Junior Boys at Studio B

So I'll be up front about this: I did not stay for Morgan Geist. I'm sorry. I know you were all dying to hear about the DJ stylins of Geist, but I had to leave. Really for two reasons:

1.) Studio B, a club that manages an amalgamation of a roller rink and a Gwen Stefani video (not to mention above average costs for drinks), attracts the most beautiful Hipsters this side of Manhattan. For most people this would be A+, for me its a nerve racking, cornering C minus minus minus.

2.) That article that I so recently wrote for Brooklynradio.com was due at 12:00 last night and The Junior Boys didn't go on until 11. Pain in the ass. but the good pain, you know? Like anal sex.

Thats out of the way. Now onto the show.

Honestly it was a bit of a let down. When I walked into Studio B I felt the humming of thousands of libidos rather than the buzzing of thousands of music fans. Granted, libidos should go hand in hand with those sexy boys. Don't get me wrong, plenty of ladies were cooing along to the sultrier songs, but less ladies, hell people in general, than I was expecting. What I mean is this: the audience seemed less interested in the music and more interested in the booze and the disco lights. I had a difficult time determining who was there for the band and who was there because Studio B is just their scene.

I've never been to a show where looking obnoxiously hot is more important than enjoying the band. Granted there is always that element, we're all guilty of too cool for schooling it, but I should at least be able to play "who's the fan? who's the friend?" without thinking too hard. (dancing in the fan is inversely proportional to the amount of song-is-over dancing in the friend)

I had heard that they played with a drum kit, but I didn't really believe it until I saw them get up on stage. Jeremy Greenspan (drink of choice Vodka Tonic) and Matt Didemus (Budweiser) who were standing next to me during the entire opening DJ (all I could muster were furtive glances and maybe a kissy face or two when they turned their backs) played bass and laptop/keyboards respectively. Then some other dude, who must have had six arms that I didn't see, played the drums. Not that impressive until you see him playing Birthday: his patience and punctuality must be extraordinary to play that song.

They opened with "The Equalizer" which was nice enough, but around the second song, "Like A Child", the qwerty calisthenics going up and down kept cutting out. I don't think Studio B cared much because it took them a while to realize that the song didn't just suck but had a-whole-nother part that was lost in some wire somewhere along the way. They only played three tracks from the old album, "Birthday", "Teach Me How to Fight", and ... "Under the Sun" as an encore? Thats the most repetetive, boring track on the album. I was a little perturbed.

Obvious omissions were "High come Down","Last Exit" and "Double Shadow". I'll give them the first two because the drummer would have had a seizure, but Double Shadow seems like a gimme for a dance floor. They did, however, play So This Is Goodbye, which pleased Guthrie.

Overall I'd give the show a B+ for effort (even though the Junior Boys looked as bored with the audience as the audience was pretending to look with them) and a D to Studio B.

Six bucks for a stella? Fechh.

Junior Boys myspace

P.S. Junior Boys are sponsoring a make our music video contest at here dot com. Here's a cool one below:


1 comment:

Melody Nelson said...

Dude, that video is un-fucking-watchable.