Sorry it took me awhile to get down to posting this after promising this morning, but I had to get some stuff done before heading off to the dentist for the afternoon (suffice to say, no fun and big $$). Now I'm just waiting for the novocaine to go away, so what better pastime than recounting last night's show for y'all?
First off, if you're not sure who the Minus 5 are, they have sort of become an REM side project, consisting of Peter Buck and REM sidemen Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin, as well as Seattle mainstay John Ramberg (ex-Model Rockets). However, McOi is definitely the leader of this merry band, as it started more as a Young Fresh Fellow side project and just evolved into their REM affiliation since Buck moved to Seattle in the 90s.
There are also a constantly rotating cast of guest musicians that pitch in as well, including Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer from the Posies, John Wesley Harding, Robyn Hitchcock, various members of Wilco and the Decemberists, and just about anyone else who happens to be hanging around.
So down to last night's gig: as much as the night before had stuck to the standard opening band repertoire (mostly stuff from the new album, a few older things, and a cover or two), last night's show deviated from that. They did do a few newer songs but a good chunk of the set was either older songs from their catalog or covers primarily pulled from the 60s and 70s. To wit:
The set opened with Eat At Home, from McCartney's Ram album. Talk about your songs you NEVER expected to hear anyone cover. A couple of songs later, Johnny Cash's I Still Miss Someone made an appearance. A few songs after that, a letter-perfect version of the Fab Four's You Can't Do That. At this point my memory of the proper sequence gets fuzzy, but throughout the course of the set we heard the Soft Boys' Give It To the Soft Boys (dedicated to R. Hitchcock, who was nowhere to be seen), The Ballad of John and Yoko, the Undertones' Teenage Kicks (intro'd as John Peel's favorite song), the Standells' Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White, and two Flamin' Groovies tunes featuring ex-Groovie Roy Loney on lead vox--one was Teenage Head, the other I wasn't able to place. I'm pretty sure there were one or two other covers to be heard, but I was kind of getting into my cups by that point and so have to plead faulty memory (not like any of you would have any trouble believing that from yours truly). At any rate, the evening was well worth sacrificing the sleep I didn't get, although my head this morning would have argued to the contrary.
ETA: Almost forgot, they also did the Sonics' Strychnine. Yeah, it was "all
Nuggets, all the time" down at Thee Olde Parkside last night.
If anyone cares, here's a friend's take on last night's proceedings:
http://haggis_buffet.blogspot.com/2006/03/music-geek-night-out.html
