Rave On.

Tonight Ben and I joined a few friends to see Red Letter Agent with the Raveonettes. The Red Letter boys did fantastically, as usual, but seemed to have landed themselves another strange gig. I ran their merch table a couple of months ago at Compound, a 'hot' new club on the west side of town. That one was a swim party for the 'beautiful people,' fake boobs and men who spend more time lifting weights to get girls than actually getting girls. You know, the type of place where every person is watching to see who is watching. The type of place where rock music is less important than giggling in the pool over the attention of wannabee A&F coverboys. I think there were maybe ten people within thirty feet of the stage.

The show tonight at Eleven-Fifty Club had a similar feel, but a little different. It was part of Camel's Roaring 2000's Speakeasy Tour, which included a burlesque show cerca whenever it was before burlesque shows became really sketchy. The Raveonettes' retro vibe was a good effort to reach back to the twenties but not quite far enough. They seemed to be as out of place as we felt amongst the yuppie club-goers, many of which were dressed in flapper dresses, zoot suits, and boas, if not sporting the usual high street late night attire. We looked at our worn out Chuck's, faded jeans, and t-shirts. Then we looked at the Raveonettes on stage and thought both us and them comprised the total number of normal people in the room. Normal for a good rock show anyway, and I don't mean Nickleback or Three Doors Down.

After a couple of songs the burlesque dancer girls came out again, apparently lacking freestyle skills, and proving to be completely extraneous to the performance. I'm almost certain Sharin Foo, vocalist and bassist, was smirking for an entire song while they danced. She even looked down at the stage at one point, seemingly to avoid guffawing into the microphone. That made me feel like she was a kindred spirit up there and that, if she had the chance, she and the band would go out and get a pint with us.

posted by Cameron Lawrence at 01:05