Hotel Utah August 26, 2004 Review by Jake Thomas So I’ve had a few friends, folks whose opinions are usually worthwhile, tell me how awesome The Four Eyes are, so I thought I’d head down to the Hotel Utah and verify this information for myself. All I have to say is what is in the water in Sacramento? Obviously I have a bit of a Bay Area-centrist view, as I live here and all, but between these guys and The Bananas I have no issue in stating two of the best bands in all of Northern California reside somewhere in that enormous sprawl known as our state’s capital. Sure, the music was sloppy, but it was catchy and fun, which is all I ask for anyways. They bill themselves as both “Sacramento’s nerdiest band” and “smartest band in the world”, and I’m not willing to say anything against either of those assertions as they’re both probably right. Their songs are funny as hell and cover a whole slew of dorky topics, like Dungeons & Dragons, computers, video games, space aliens, and awesome movies. Seriously, all you had to do was tell me they wrote a song about “Deathrace 2000” and I would have pronounced my love then and there. But the best part of it all, and what left me leaving the club seriously hurting, was the between song banter between the members… my jaw and sides were seriously hurting by the time they finished I had been laughing so much. It somehow never measures up out of context, but there’s something about conversations on high school football, burger king, and yard sales that tickles my fancy. If you enjoy a good time, make sure you see this band the next time they come through town. You can tide yourself over until then by downloading some of the copious amount of mp3s they have available on their website. Harold Ray: Live in Concert were the headliners of the show. In case you have never seen them and don’t know anything about them, they spend their time playing covers of classic and mostly-obscure cuts from the golden age of soul and garage music (you know, the 1960’s and all that). From what I understand from the little reading I’ve done on the group, they figure covers are the way to go with this genre – it’s pretty damn impossible to improve upon what’s already been done, so why bother? Give the people what they want – a good song from a talented band with great stage presence. For me personally, I have to be in the right frame of mind to really enjoy this sort of scene; luckily for me, that’s exactly the state I was in for this show, and they were great. You can’t beat their stage presence – I especially enjoy the organ player’s antics of bending all around like gumby with the keyboard as he plays it. There may not have been many folks there, but everyone seemed to really be enjoying it. The highlight of the evening though, was during the final song, when the singer was sitting on top of a table out in the crowd singing “25 Miles”, and this bum appears – wearing a hard hat, a ton of pine tree-shaped air fresheners around his neck, and a bottle of Lysol or god knows what other kind of air freshener that he proceeded to expel the entire contents of out into the audience. It stunk to high heavens, but somehow it ended up being very entertaining. --- ©2004 playinginfog.com |