Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Black Lips @ Bowery Ballroom - Sep 18, 2007

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I was prepared to have the kind of show where you stare at the band and barely move your head to their tunes. Damn Black Lips didn't let me do it... they played a set that made me jump and dance around and sweat the gin and tonics I had been having all night.

Black Lips music is all about having fun. The garage rock influences, the screaming, the funny lyrics and contagious sound, like if you were in the middle of a fair, will embrace you, will make you hug your friends and will become the soundtrack to a pretty fun night. I mean, I haven't had this much fun in rock shows in a long time! What does have the Bowery ballroom that makes me feel I am seeing the next best thing most of the times I see a band there?


My favorites in the band have always been Cole and Jared. They happen to be the founders of the band (with Ben Eberbaugh, who died a couple of years after forming the band) and the ones that seem to be the wildest and craziest when it comes to having the show. Jared was missing his old school Ray-ban glasses I am used to see on him and Cole, well, I love that kid, he was wearing quite a hat and just looking at him, man, you just wanna invite him a drink.


The band itself is very particular, or they pretend to be. Ian, one of the guitarists, looked pretty fucked up in a good way. He might have played his guitar well but what he did better tonight along the set was to send us some funny storms from the stage like if he was a protoss blizzard attacking us, poor terrans. Did you ever play StarCraft? You know what I'm talking about then.


I only own their Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo and their new album Good Bad Not Evil, but that was pretty much what they played tonight, plus a cover and a new or very old song I hadn't heard before. I tried to keep track of the set list... I tried. I sort of took notes, but sweating and dancing didn't really help... this is what I got: They started with I Saw A Ghost (Lean) and their awesome O Katrina! just like in their new album to continue with Boomerang, and Hippie, Hippie, Hoorah. How Do You Tell A Chil That Someone Has Died was next and let us have some rest while still encouraging us to move drunkly from side to side. Then it came Dirty Hands, Cold Hands, Buried Alive and a new/old song I don't know. One of my favorite songs on Good Bad Not Evil is Lock and Key and one of my favorite ones from their live album is Not A Problem (which is sang by the drummer!), and both were played one after the other one... I couldn't stop myself of going to the front to be part of the pog. Damn Black Lips, I f*cking like you quite a lot now. After that I pretty much forgot I was taking notes and let myself enjoy the show even more than I had. I remember hearing Bad Kids, M.I.A. and Fairy Stories among that fantastical noise the Black Lips are. Unfortunately they gave us no encore and the lights went on...


The past couple of weeks I had been having an affair with the Black Lips music, but after tonight, this has become a serious relationship. [photos of the show]

♫♫♫♫♫

Were you at the show? How did you like it?


Black Lips' Links: Stream Good Bad Not Evil & Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, Youtube (Recommended), Black Lips' Middle East Summer Vacation Part 1 and Part 2, MySpace, Vice Records, Wikipedia, Blog

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