The Uptown August 19, 2005 Review by Jake Thomas The Uptown is a new venue in Oakland (or at least new to me) that is now booking rock shows much to my delight. If this show is a sign of the booking to come, then color me very, very excited. I got there during the last couple of minutes of Moggs final song, much to my tardy chagrin. They always rule and I missed it, curses to my poor time management! But this early downturn of the evening was quickly remedied when Replicator fired up their engines. I always enjoy a good set by them; this one included a lot of new songs that will be featured on an album to be released in the near future, or so I’ve been told. They have been harangued with the Shellac comparisons for years, but at this point I’ve heard so much of these guys it’s as much a “Replicator” sound as anything else. Much of their new material seems much more straight-forward rocking in a Jesus-Lizard-minus-the-naked-singer way. Anyways, good outing by the local boys, no technical issues as are often the foil to this crew’s master plans…a rockin’ good time fer sure. As the kids would say, Big Business “done brung it” with this show. Not that I’ve ever seen a bad outing by them, but they are so goddamn impressive that every time I see them perform live I spend the better part of the set with my jaw agape, not able to fully comprehend what is going occurring on the stage. Most of the time I’m staring at Coady drum, as he is easily one of the most impressive robotic drumming creations ever assembled (I refuse to believe it us humanly possible to be as good as he is, hence my robot assumption). Oh course Jared was awesome as well, through his huge stack of Sunn amps and white boy fro he belted and bassed every song as if it were his last time performing them. They were also joined by a third member for the first time in all my viewings of the band, a guitarist whose name escapes me but who wrecked things proper, as it were. Apparently he has been the “extra guitarist” in a number of outfits, most notably Unwound (this according to Conan from Replicator). All told, a very, very, very good performance; and according to the reaction of the crowd, I wasn’t alone in this feeling. |