This is concert week for me. Fountains of Wayne, who I saw Friday night, put on a very good show at the Double Door.
Getting to the Double Door, however, didn’t work out so well when a certain person who shall remain nameless (but not linkless) borrowed my car, parked it ass-far away, and didn’t tell me where she parked it, so Katy and I had to wander around for half an hour in the cold trying to find the damn thing.
However, we did get there in time to catch the excellent openers, Motion City Soundtrack, who reminded the three of us of early Weezer, with a keyboardist who was apparently on methamphetamines thrown in for good measure.
MCS also had one of the more inventive CD packaging ideas I’ve seen in a while: they cut up old five-and-a-quarter floppy disks, took the data disk out, and then inserted their CD, using the diskette instead of a jewel case.
Environmentally friendly and amusing: Always a good combination.
The crowd was kind of weird (and for some reason, really, really tall…I could barely see most of the show). There was a group of extremely drunk people next to us I was about to slug, though to their credit they knew all the words to the songs, though to their debit, they were really off key.
Then there were the folks directly in front of me whose philosophy was summed up by my nameless friend: “I’m wearing a hat, you’re wearing a hat. Let’s make out!”
However, I ceased caring about such things when Fountains of Wayne went on. Fountains of Wayne, for those unfamilar with them, are composed of the guys who wrote the songs for That Thing You Do! plus a drummer, a 2nd guitarist, and a keyboardist.
They’ve got two really excellent albums, one self-titled and another called Utopia Parkway, and I’ve been utterly obsessed with the band since I got my hands on Utopia Parkway. They do really funny, almost absurdly catchy pop-rock.
Oh, and if you can download their song “Alien For Christmas,” do. It’s my new favorite holiday song.
Anyway, they played an excellent set, which got the drunks jumping and singing, and everybody else just singing merrily along. Their music is so much fun to listen to, you can’t help but smile.
Unfortunately, they were having problems with their monitors (speakers in the front of the stage through which the band hears themselves, for the uninitiated), so they ended up cutting their set a bit short, but the stuff they played off their forthcoming album sounds good.
If only anyone could actually say when the album was coming…
The rest of their tour is listed on their site (linked above), and you should defintiely catch them if they’re coming through. Yay good music!