At Home He's a Tourist

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So Dina and I went out to Brooklyn Saturday night to see the release party show for Justin's Meatloaf-Paradise by the Dashboard Light 7 inch EP. The EP is amazing. There are four bands ( Schwervon!, The Leader, Elastic No-No Band , and Huggabroomstik). Playing the classic "mini-opera" written by Meatloaf. Did you know that if you go to the Billboard website you can click to a page that shows the top 25 selling artists of all time? Of course, or surprisingly, The Beatles are number one. Of course because everyone from Barack Obama to Charles Manson loves and buys Beatles records. Surprisingly because their ten records are great but now seem pedestrian and often poorly written compared to a lot of current 60's revivalists who now make more deep challenging music using themes, sounds, and lyrics first developed by The Beatles. Like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Greta Garbo were the first and developed the modern movie but not many movie goers even know who they are, but everyone still knows the Beatles. So Meatloaf is in the top twenty five in Billboard sales. He's barely 17, slightly ahead of the 18th top seller. I have never owned or even listened to an actual Meatloaf recored so I was shocked. I've heard his stuff on the radio and a few years ago I saw a show on VH1 about a comeback he was making. He was hopeful but he seemed tired and sad at the same time so I felt bad for him and thought he was a broke famous person trying to fight his way back. Maybe it was just an act or I was just feeling sympathetic because according to Billboard he must be a billionaire. So on the A train Dina I bought drinks called Nutcrackers. A man was selling them out of a suitcase. He was a traveling salesman. It tasted like a Long Island Ice Tea before the bartender puts in the ingredients that make it delicious. We got off the train and we went to Goodbye Blue Monday. We went in and it was all Egypt. Elastic No-No Band was playing Walk Like an Egyptian and Tony handed me a communist press release about the uprising in Egypt, are they trying to start a new dance craze of something? Elastic No-No Band was fantastic, Justin is a great, charismatic lead singer and the band lays down a mighty racket down behind him and they really rock out. Schwervon! played next and they blistered through a post tour set in their post tour set Los Angeles/De Stijl style. Needless to say it was incredible. I hijacked the front table for Dina and myself then surrendered. The set was amazing. Huggabroomstik followed as a trio, Neil, Dashan, and Preston, I never thought I'd say this about Huggabroomstik, but maybe they were too mellow and pared down. But then again I was already asleep, I was only still there because Dina wanted to stay (where does she get the energy?) and she thought they were great. The 7 inch is great, I picked it up from Olive Juice Central so Matt and Nan wouldn't have to pay postage for my mail order, and I was there anyway. It is a great split that combines indie-fi rock music with some indie-fi dance music. It reminds me of two other great split singles, the Cass split Dirtbombs/Adult. and the Decoy Industry split Schwervon!/Woog Riots. They are all great splits and they are great examples of the indie-fi rock/dance split genre.