I’m on Toad’s Place mailing list for their upcoming shows. I’m on a lot of mailing lists, come to think of it, for upcoming shows here in Connecticut and NYC (my new favorite being ohmyrockness.com because it features bands that I would actually go to, unlike Ticketmaster who informed me the other day that Tommy Lee’s new band was coming to CT or that the Wiggles were coming to Bridgeport’s Harbor Yard Arena. High School Musical, anyone?) So, last week I get an e-mail with the latest additions to their line-up (They Might Be Giants in October, and of course the Blonde Redhead show I will be missing in September) AND in the same e-mail notification that they were giving me four free tickets to see the Strangers, which is a Billy Joel cover band. Great, right? (Uhhhhhhh….) Immediately, I thought of my sister because she likes Billy Joel (and I kinda detest him, not only his music, but he doesn’t really seem like such a “stand-up” guy. I dunno, could just be me?) but as I read on I found out that there would be an “open bar” from 7:30 - 9:30. Now “open bar” was actually in quotations, so that probably meant that there would be some restrictions, but I was willing to go and see what this “open bar” was and have a few drinks and get out of there before the cover band even started.
I called, they put me on the guest list, and I was all set. My sister and her boyfriend came along with me. I’m not sure what his feelings about Billy Joel are, because I didn’t really talk about it with him, but I knew my sister would like the music because she (along with a number of other people) has subjected me to listening to Billy Joel in the car WHERE THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!!! (or at work WHERE THERE IS NO/LIMITED AMOUNT OF ESCAPE!!!!) We got there just in time to catch the tail end of the open bar, and even when we had to pay for drinks after, the prices weren’t that horrible. (But no Jameson!)
We were, however, the youngest people there. This is odd for me, because at 28 years old, I usually fall somewhere in the middle at the shows I go to. (Okay, upper-middle) I joked that there were old people there and that everyone had to hire a babysitter to attend the show tonight and that some old lady was gonna get drunk and flash her titties to the guy “paying tribute to Billy Joel” and realize and regret later that that actually WASN’T Billy Joel. I also mentioned a lot that they should play Uptown Girl or I would leave disappointed.
So, I ended up paying more attention to the people in the audience than the actual performer and thought a lot about musical taste and whatnot. I decided that I understood why people liked Billy Joel, although I didn’t care for him myself. (Most of the time I’m trying to figure out why people like a certain band/artist and end up with no answers) I also didn’t understand all the slow dancing/making out that was going on with the old and younger people. I don’t find Billy Joel’s music really romantic. Well, romantic, maybe, but the lyrics are actually pretty much fucking depressing if you really listen to them and certainly not something that I would chose to slow dance to to let my partner know that OMG THIS IS A SLOW SONG WE ARE SO IN LOVE LET’S SHOW EACH OTHER THAT WE ARE ROMANTIC even though this song really isn’t about positive love. Huff.
Also, all that exposure to his songs left me knowing pretty much all the songs that were played (they did NOT play Uptown Girl despite the fact that after my sister got drunk she would scream it between every song). In addition to all the songs I like (that are not by Billy Joel) I have, somewhere in the storage of my brain, all the memorized parts of songs that I do not like and I have to try to get rid of those to make room for more songs that I DO like. I feel like one day I will run out of room. Although, my brain has proved to be a mega-storage place for an infinite amount of useless info.
I also think that the song “Pressure” should be performed by a heavy metal band. Billy Joel is metal and doesn’t even know it.
I also got drunk, but didn’t scream out “Uptown Girl!” like my sister was.
So, enough about that. I have to talk about the fact that my biggest disappointment this week was that I didn’t go see Juiced Elfers and Bang Lime at the Mercury Lounge because I really really wanted to go (I was so tired, though, and I have so many shows coming up that it’s ridiculous) AND I was informed that Juiced Elfers (Nicolas Thorburn and Jamie Thompson) played “With A Girl Like You” by the Troggs. I LOVE that song for so many reasons 1) so catchy! and 2) they play it in my most favorite move EVAR, Flirting. So, now I am listening to the cover and the original mulitple times and singing it while I’m doing the dishes.
So, movies I’ve watched? Well, when I was drunk last night and couldn’t fall asleep easily, I put on The Crucible and caught maybe 5 minutes of it and then passed out. I have been watching season 3 of Arrested Development, though, because I never watched it when it was aired (I just figured I’d get the DVD like the last two seasons).
Still reading Perfect From Now On.
Listening to “With A Girl Like You” like, a million times. Some Unicorns right now. But seriously, you can just look at my last.fm page and see the ridiculous results.