Friday, September 28th
Night 2 of PJ's Lager House tentapalooza. This night's lineup didn't have any out-of-town acts, and didn't draw the same numbers as the night before. The picture above was taken between performances, and isn't exactly representative of what it was like during the sets, but the crowd was never suffocating like it was the night before.
The first band I saw that night was Tyvek. The first time I ever saw them they were opening for The Dirtbombs at a 2006/7 New Year's Eve show at the Magic Stick. Tyvek's performance that night was the worst audio experience of my life. It was as if diarrhea was being funneled directly into my ear canal. All I could make out was slurred bass notes drowning everything else, even the drums. Seeing their friends congratulate them afterwards just seemed cruel. Some charitable soul needed to spare them from future embarrassment. A few years later they opened for some other band I wanted to see, and I found them bearable then. I would have to also put Friday night's performance in the bearable category.
Melvin Davis and the United Sound was up next. By now you've probably heard of him. He first had success in the 60's, was always considered a Northern Soul staple in the U.K., and has come out of retirement in recent years to play again. Maybe the act should be called Melvin Davis And The Six Young White Guys Who Were All Born Well After Melvin's First Record Deal. Seeing Melvin up there on stage, he seems ecstatic to be performing again.
The Detroit Cobras had been listed in the first version of the flier for Hamtramck's Labor Day Festival, and they were soon taken off. Rumor had it that Joe Mazzola, lead guitarist who's been with the band for years, had quit, and couldn't be replaced in time. Had they played at a free festival less than a month before, it would have been difficult to ask people to pay $15 to see them again so soon. Not-Joe seemed to be a little uncomfortable on stage, and was often kind of hiding behind the speaker stack.
Lead singer Rachel Nagy always complains about something during her performance. Sometimes it's the lighting, other times it's sound quality issues that no one in the crowd is picking up on. This time it was the band's performance. While one song early in the set had to be stopped and restarted when the band seemed to get lost, Rachel stopped another song because it didn't sound right to her. Most of the crowd didn't notice anything wrong. Even with these hiccups, the crowd wanted an encore. That couldn't happen, due to the previous bands being at least 45 minutes past the sound guy's schedule it was already 2 A.M.. I'm not sure who was responsible for the backup, but karma owes them some flaming bags of dogshit.
Night 2 might not have had the turnout or enthusiasm of Night 1, but I think tentapalooza was successful enough that PJ will do it again in the future.
This post by:
I'm a dork, I live in the Detroit area, and sometimes I take blurry photos on an outdated camera
