Last night the Dubs played the Knitting Factory (it used to be the Big Easy) Concert House. Let me share some observations about their “renovation.” The chairs and tables are as rickety as they were about 4 years ago, the last time I was there. It’s not a big venue. The balcony was closed, but they kept letting people up there until it was full.
But enough of that. Let’s talk about Pedestrian, the opening band. Merriam-Webster defines pedestrian as follows:
1: commonplace, unimaginative
2 a: going or performed on foot b: of, relating to, or designed for walking
I’d like to add the following:
3: A band that opened for the Young Dubliners. For more information, see (1)
It makes you wonder whether they even knew of the other-than-walking definition of pedestrian. The sound engineer running the show had to be about 15 years old—he had no idea what he was doing, and just kept turning the volume up despite the awful warbling distortion that it caused.
Several times the band would break out into a 1970s five-minute guitar solo. I started to chuckle to myself at first, but after a short while it just made me sad. When his acoustic electric guitar stopped working he tossed it down on the stage. During the final jam session they called a song the keyboard got knocked over. Which reminds me, the keyboardist spent a lot of the concert on his hands and knees crawling around the stage mashing buttons with his hands to play background music tracks. But don’t take my word for it. You can download free music from their site, just be warned that you get what you pay for.
The Young Dubliners played a much quieter show, but it sounded great. They also had Eric Rigler along with them, who was brilliant. Several songs were played from their new album, several from old albums, and even a couple of yet-to-be-released songs from their next album (due out in Spring 2009).
All in all, the opening band was way too loud, the venue was surely nothing fancy, but the Dubs put on a good show despite their lead singer obviously having a cold or sore throat. He was a trooper and still did a good job. The fiddler was amazing, and Eric Rigler was a star.