Dead to Me could have played longer — and been more alive — at their Moe’s Bar-B-Que set last week. Photo by Joe McCabe.
and played with the smell of smoked pork and baked beans wafting in the air at on Sunday night.
In the back of the bowling alley/bar/barbecue restaurant is a stage and a floor. When described this way, adding /venue onto the list of what the facility already is, sounds like it would be an awkward place for sweaty punk kids clutching PBR cans to take in a concert.
But somehow the entire scene seemed to work well.
San Francisco punk rockers followed local act No Bueno with a frenetic set of music and banter. The lead singer filled time between each song with a rambling monologue. He spent two minutes with bizarre, non-sequitur jokes that were actually quite funny, ending many of them with Mitch Hedberg-esque one liners that confused half of the crowd and made the other half chuckle. And he also spent the downtime between songs railing against war and social injustices.
The set of music was disappointingly short. The band didn’t reach the 10-song mark. I don’t think anybody in the audience, whether it was the kids loudly singing and pumping their fists to every verse or those who had never heard Dead to Me until that night, would have minded if the band had aggressively and passionately strummed through a couple more songs.
As energetic as Dead to Me was, was the opposite. It’s not that the music was bad; Catchy hooks, sing-a-long lyrics, etc … But the stage presence felt a little ho-hum.
Both touring bands mentioned and joked about the show that was going on next door at the Gothic Theatre, involving New Found Glory and others. And every mention of that concert elicited boos and hisses from the crowd.
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Andrew Brand is a Denver-based writer and a regular contributor to Reverb.
Joe McCabe is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb. Check out his .
