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Thee Parkside February 20, 2004 Review by Jake Thomas Perhaps it’s sad, or just telling of my age, but the idea of seeing Misfits and Devo cover bands gets me more excited than a lot of original bands that are out there. This evening will surely go down as one I will remember forever, and the only time I’ve left a show picking incredible amounts of cookie crumbs out of my hair. I walked into the place just a couple of minutes before Mongoloid started. I’m pretty sure these guys have been around in one form or another for quite some time, and although I love Devo more than some of my family members, I’ve yet to see these guys despite always hearing good things about them (note: the free show Devo played out in front of City Hall a couple of years ago will go down in my top 5 shows of all time, easily). They lived up to the hype, being a perfectly capable and entertaining cover band – they even had the choreographed moves, helmets and glasses to make the experience complete! Their set ended up being pretty short due to one of the members needing to get across town to another gig, and they didn’t play my very favorite song “Freedom of Choice”, but it was still a good time. Hate Breeders played next, and this was what I was the most pumped for. It was their final show, which is a real shame, because there just aren’t enough Misfits cover bands for my tastes. The crowd was raucous and singing along to every single lyric…I know I nearly lost my voice from doing so and dancing around like priest hopped up on goofballs. When they played “Last Caress” I thought I was going to have a full on freak out like I was seeing the real thing. It’s too bad that they’re not going to play out anymore (one of the members is moving away I think?), because I would probably go see these guys at least once a month if Icould just for the catharsis of screaming along with the music and heshing around. Cookie Mongoloid was the headliner, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into with this one. I was told “it’s heavy metal versions of Sesame Street songs”, but they failed to mention the singer dresses like a cross between Cookie Monster and Rob Halford with full body leather and a cookie monster head and hands! It should be noted that this singer was the same guy who sings for Mongoloid, which just goes to prove that when you find a word you like to use for a band name there’s no harm in using it multiple times. The band also incorporates a number of scantily clad ladies who are known as “The Cookies”, and they dance and carry on to the music, throw cookies at the crowd, hold signs, and whatever else you might imagine a dancer for such a band to do. The music was good, but wasn’t even the point – the general mayhem involving cookies being thrown everywhere, the crowd being sufficiently drunk and happy, and a man in a cookie monster costume instructing us in such topics as counting, the directions up and down, and washing ourselves was almost too much for me to handle. I danced pretty much the entire night (note: when I say danced I really mean spazzed out, as I don’t know how to actually dance), for the second time in less than 6 months after not having danced in years and years. If I keep this up expect to see me on Solid Gold any day now. And hopefully it will be me dancing to a song about counting cookies. ©2004 playinginfog.com |