Patrick Watson, Les Breastfeeders @ El Rey, 3/19/07
Yes ladies and gentlemen the Canadians took over the El Rey last night. Following Malajube’s final SXSW set I had no choice but to seek out more French-Canadian goodness upon my return home. Enter: M for Montreal @ the El Rey! In brief:
The El Rey
I always love seeing bands here. Nice theatre, centrally located, it’s the perfect sized room. Beers can be had for as low as $5 and although at that price point they are shit beers, damn it that’s two bucks beneath rival Troubadour any way you slice it. Only one person was tending bar Monday and although the crowd was sparse, she was slammed by Canadian music fan boozehounds. Viva El Rey!
Patrick Watson
I think Patrick Watson sort of blew me away. Holy shit, the dude can do the wailing voice loop pedal with the best of them. Buzz words: Buckley, M Ward, etc. Atmospheric as hell. High points included one guy using reverb on a balloon, big drumkit vs tiny drumkit showdown, and an acapella song wherein the band meandered throughout the room; Watson handling vocals sans mic with aplomb, drummer replete with toy kit in tow. Killer.
DJ James DiSalvio
I must admit that I timed everything ludicrously perfectly to arrive mere seconds before Watson took the stage and in the process skipped this guy. Caught him between bands. Not much to say. He’s billed as being from Bran Van 3000. They did that song about ‘Drinking in LA’ that you forgot about. That said DiSalvio spun records, solid tunes, that’s what DJs do. No rocket science here.
Les Breastfeeders
They sounded tight. After Watson’s frankly stunning audial landscape, I didn’t actually have the stomach to stick around for the full set. The lead singer had a haircut straight out of the Monkees but he dressed like Jack White. I enjoyed the songs. Admittedly a bit puzzled by the one guy in a (what the hell is that – mohair!?) vest sans shirt, tight pants and tambourine. He seemed a bit much. PHOTO AFTER THE JUMP!
Plaster
I was too damn tired to stick around for Plaster, although their songs on myspace sounded pretty interesting. Somebody please review this band and tell me what I missed.
And Now For The Photo Of LES BREASTFEEDERS……..
This is Jaime’s Restaurant situated at 7th and Red River, Austin, Texas. Everybody inside the restaurant is breastfeeding right now and if you look closely you might see some rugrat going for the gold. Hell man I didn’t have a camera with me last night what do you expect.
FIN
You love the El Rey? Are you kidding? It’s the worst venue in town. Every time I go there, they’ve dreamt up a new way to interfere with actually seeing and hearing the bands. Last time I went, they filled up the entire section in front of the sound board with chairs. There were as many people standing crammed into the space behind the board (about 1/4 the size) as were sitting in front of it.
The beers might be cheaper at the El Rey (which I’m not sure about), but if you’re going for the music, the Troubadour is far superior – great sight lines and sound system, an upstairs where you will never have to buy dinner to sit down, a comfortable front bar to separate out the people who just want to talk, and on and on.
don’t get me wrong omito, i’m not saying one is better than the other. I just mentioned the beer price. Troub is a smaller venue, roughly half the capacity of el rey, so this is apples to oranges. But for what it’s worth I definitely favor the oldman snack bar @ the troub over any meal options the el rey might propose.
Agreed. You can’t compare the Fake Boobsadour to the El Rey. best comparison to El rey? hmmm…. maybe HOB Sunset Strip? And I would have to say that HOB is a better sounding venue. Also better sightlines.
I briefly looked online and El Rey concert capacity seems to be 900 whereas HOB seems to be 1000.
Jeff, I’d have to agree that the El Rey and HOB compare well to each other . . . in terms of coming up with ways to rip off their customers.
Nowhere else other than HOB have I been forced to pay a *higher* price than the one advertised. I try to avoid paying fees for buying through Ticketmaster, Ticketweb, etc., so when I saw that Richard Thompson was playing HOB and it wasn’t yet sold out, I decided to buy my ticket at the door. The advertised price was $25. When I got to the ticket window, the price was $29!
I was a bit, you know, “surprised”. They told me that the ticket was still $25, but that HOB charges a $4 fee for buying at the window. I re-checked the HOB ad later, just to make sure that there was no notice of a higher price at the door. There wasn’t. I’ll never go back there if I can avoid it.
This is not even to mention the insult to American culture that is the hideous fake juke joint decor. In terms of larger (900-1000) venues, I’d have to go with the Fonda as leaps and bounds better than either the El Rey or HOB.
Agreed once again. The HOB is straight-up theme park. Goofy-ass phony-aged trinkets hanging everywhere. Surprised the servers aren’t dressed up like Yosemite Sam and shit.
And, of course, I’m not down with their hidden fees, but they do have a pretty cool 2-for-Tu special which is an every-Tuesday announcement for 2-for-1 ticket offers. Well….that offer would be a lot better if they actually had some quality gigs.
I might go to the HOB twice a year, but it seems that I’m at the Trouby twice a month. Disregarding crowd capacity, the Trouby has had some killer shows in the last half year–better, imo, than the El Rey, HOB and Fonda combined.
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