Goodbye Blue Monday show last night

Quick report on the Goodbye Blue Monday show last night -
I got there a wee bit early, very few folks there when I arrived, but I was treated to an awesome bit of live free-jazz from whoever that house band is... I'm not a big fan of free jazz or jazz in general but these guys were right up my alley, with tasteful guitar feedback and interesting use of sounds and objects in addition to what seemed to my untrained ear to be pretty high class jazz chops, on drums, electric bass, guitar, and trumpet.

Cy and Caito cancelled their set unfortunately - I was looking forward to seeing them but they were both sick.

Huggabroomstick played a classic set, with Dashan and Neil once again at the core of the band, plus a bassist I didn't recognize and Preston on keyboard. One highlight was a final song joined by a bunch of audience members coming up to the stage to join in a big a cappella chorus.

Seth Faergolzia, formely of Dufus and now a solo artist with or without additional instrumentation from any of his "23 Sagez," played a great set with lots of new material, I had just been on tour with him in October so this was material that he wrote in the past month just since then. Two Sagez accompanied him on some of the songs, and sounded great. The style of the new material is much more folky, in the sense of simple, classic chord changes, even sometimes with a blues structure, which I thought was quite a brilliantly surprising and interesting new direction for Seth's often avant garde songwriting. I can't wait to hear these songs again and see how this new direction develops.

Berth Control was a duo, Brent and Kat, though the last time I'd seen them they were a full on 5 or 6 piece rock band. I thought they actually sounded much better as a one-guitar/two-vocal duo, the mix of folk and rap material seemed to gel better without the added confusion of classic-rock electric guitar soloing they had in the full-band arrangements. The more light-weight sound gave the material a more light-hearted context, which brought out some welcome warmth.

With the cancellation of Cy & Caito the slot was filled by surprise guest "Old Table," a solo acoustic guy whom Noah Britton had just been raving to me about. And indeed, i was very impressed, and I'd recommend everybody check out Old Table, best new antifolk act I've seen in quite some time. Intense attitude, confident control of the stage environment, and very smart and interesting songwriting. Aggressive in a way that reminded me somewhat of American Anymen or Barry Bliss, but with an element of that aggression seemingly directed towards himself and/or humanity, which gave it a sort of Kurt Cobain aesthetic.

Doug the Purple Organ closed out the night, with his ever-astounding four-pickup guitar creating melody, harmony, rhythm and crazy electronic sounds all determined by his multi-tasking right-hand smacking/strumming patterns. Oddly, Doug's physical transformation had an effect on the music for me - whereas the Purple Organ used to be a huge, unshaven, dreadlocked hulking weirdo wearing odd rubber costume pieces and blasting out perverted songs, the new athletically-shaped, clean-shaven, short-cropped, Purple Organ looks like a movie star, and the song material has moved tremendously in the direction of straight-up nice love songs. This made it almost incongruous when some of the old material came into the set, like "why is this nice young man in a T-shirt singing about spurting female juices all of a sudden?" Regardless, it was great songs, great sounds. Again there was a set-ending chorus of friends and fans onstage for a great big singalong, a perfect way to end the night's music.

Guest stars in attendance had included Big Jim Flynn, photographer Maurice, Sarah Himmelfarb taking a break from studies, comic book artist Robyn Chapman, former Dufus-show regular Aaron Auslander, former regular performer now Boston professor Noah Britton, and others of note.

Taking the train after was a hassle, with all kinds of weird service crap going on with the JMZ train and certain stairways closed off, etc - it was 4 or 5 trains going in various wrong directions and useless services until finally one arrived to do what I needed it to do. Happily Reverend Jen was on it, so it was nice to ride with her and Old Table and some other folks, though the wait had been cold and annoying.

Hope the Brooklyn Tea Party show was cool too!
Jeff