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May 22, 2008
If only for today, I am unafraid
First of all, I have no idea how the hell the Pitchfork reviewer concluded that Plants and Animals sounds like a distant cousin of Blitzen Trapper. Totally poor comparison. But that's not what this is about.
Last Sunday night Jeff and I attended one of Plants and Animals' little shows in a wee Cambridge venue called TT The Bears Place. I had been stoked about this Sunday for a week. We had new members class at church after which we hopped right on the Red Line to Harvard Square in order to grab Mexican food and margaritas at Border Cafe. Jeff and I constantly crave greasy Mexican food because there is no good place for it in Boston (Cambridge is not Boston as its snooty alt-residents will tell you), so this meal alone was enough to make me giddy with anticipation. The margaritas are always good and strong and we had two each (the better to drink away the sadness at being unable to get a doggy bag for soggy midnight leftovers) and left feeling full and happy.
Dinner - fantastic. We bounced to Central Square to check out the line up and figure out how much time we should kill before the bands we cared about came on. Rock Plaza Central was playing before Plants and Animals and two bands played before them, so we grabbed some drinks at a nearby bar and learned that the Celtics won game seven. The night was going perfectly. We managed to arrive at the end of the first set (it must have gone way over) and the guy who sang next was fine enough, but one random guy and his guitar gets a little long. Finally Rock Plaza Central played and they were glorious. Sadly, their drummer was not there as well as another guy so the songs were stripped down a bit, but still a lot of fun. They finished with "Excellent Steel Horse," and all 30 of us in the audience went crazy.
When Plants and Animals came on, the mood was a little dampened when (totally hot) singer Warren Spicer revealed that he lost his voice in New York the night before (screw you NY!), but will give us all he's got. What he had was pretty much nothing. The mics on the instruments eventually got so cranked you could hardly hear any vocals, which Jeff and I decided was a deliberate move. As the show went on, it got frustrating rather than mildly disappointing. Don't get me wrong, the instrumentals were incredible, but I wanted vocals, dammit! He shouldn't have been singing. He should have canceled instead of risking his voice like that. How did he shred his voice so badly, anyway? It's not like Parc Avenue is some intense death metal scream fest. In fact Spicer's voice has a pretty soft, sexy thing going on most of the time, so...wha happen? My money's on hard partying. Regardless, Jeff and I had a blast together and it made me all the more excited for our next show.
Anyway, here's "Good Friend" - the second song they played. You can imagine how crapped out his voice got a few more songs in:
| By heidi | 3:35 PM
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