Blogger Night and Gangi

I had fun at the blogger gathering on Wednesday night, Jan. 7. I think everyone did and it was great to meet and greet people without having to shout over all that damned music! Quite a civil bunch of people, when speaking at normal decibels. I felt honored to be included.

Lots of talk about The Henry Clay People joining The Airborne Toxic Event for their national tour. I'm sure this first time tour for them will spread their reputation accordingly. And Swedish singer, Theresa Andersson is the focus of much attention as she embarks on three Hotel Cafe dates (Jan 13, 16 and 20). I'd never heard of her so I'm glad she's playing an in-store at Amoeba next week (Sat., January 17 at 2PM).


Thursday night (January 8, 2009) I headed over to Spaceland to see Gangi play their first set of 2009 and to celebrate Matt Gangi's birthday. Playing on a bill with Daedalus and Blank Blue brought a different crowd to see them. I think they won over some new fans in the process of playing their usual high energy, nicely thought out set.

Matt and Lyle Nesse had cooked up some new arrangements for some familiar songs which I thought was awfully thoughtful of them to do for us regular fans. Unfortunately it sounds like the process almost got them evicted for rehearsing late into the night. With their penchant for recording and sampling, Matt even played us one neighbor's terse message: "Matt! You said 25 minutes, it's been 55 now. STOP PLAYING!!"

They opened with the normal rendition of "Commonplace Feathers" which is also the song that pulls you into their album, A. It's a great song and was followed by new mixes of "Ground" and "Subject Positions" which added a whole new level of interest for me. I often think of architecture when I hear them play, the way they build their song structures from the ground up, so each variation can have an effect on everything that follows.

They played a new song that is a work in progress (that I heard last time at The Echo) called "The Gun Show", a hideously ironic love song that may also be the name of their next album.
I like the song already and they say it's not even finished. With the dynamic "Waiting On the Line" they got a great ovation at the end, and I had to dash out of there and go home so I could go to bed, get up and do it all over again.

Tonight I was supposed to be at Spaceland again seeing one of my very favorites, Xu Xu Fang. A series of mishaps, including the bus I was on clipping a car that swung around to make a right-hand turn in front of it, made the show an impossibility. I ran down to Santa Monica Boulevard to try to catch the 4, but waited 30 minutes with no luck and it was past time for the band to be on stage, so I said, "Fuck it!" I was not happy. So I came home and blogged instead. A poor substitute.

whrabbit