December 15, 2005 - 4:52 PM

More Music to Shake a Stick At

About an hour into the workday on Tuesday, I realized that I was dressed like a convict on the tv show Prison Break. White, long-sleeve Henley underneath a light-blue button up short sleeve shirt and dark blue jeans. It wasn't a conscious clothing ensemble choice.

Speaking of Prison Break, two movies I've seen recently featured actors from the show. One was Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (5.5 stars) which had Rockmond Dunbar, inmate C-Note on the show, playing the role of a thug. Not too much of a character stretch. The other totally took me by surprise. It was Good Night, and Good Luck, the last place you'd expect to see a deep-fried, dixie-loving southerner with a lisp and a predilection to young boys, but there was good ol' T-Bag...Robert Knepper, being all non-lispy and politically serious and not making lewd sexual jokes to George Clooney.

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Monday night, I went club-hopping, in a manner of speaking. I was at Tangier at 7:45 to catch a set by The Weepies, who are friends with Kyler (her hubby Richard mixed their first album) and Adrianne. Sweet folk-pop, check out their Christmas-y song "All That I Want" off of their webpage. As soon as they wrapped up at 9, I dashed over to the Hotel Cafe to see Gabriel Mann put on one helluva show with his band. Equal parts Maroon 5, Elvis Costello, and Peter Gabriel, Mann has a knack for hooks. Go to the Audio/Visual portion of his website to hear a snippet of the song Undertow which he cowrote with Adrianne, or watch the video for Someone Else for One Day.

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After my concert-hopping Monday night, I went to the gym, and I got to see Jose Canseco in all his greasy bad-hair glory working out.

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Thursday night of last week, Matt and I sat through three sets at the Hotel Cafe. We were there primarily to see the 10 o'clock act, The Animators, who finally have a new album out. My friend Ger convinced me that the 8 oclock show was a buzz-worthy girl from New Jersey named Jenny Owen Youngs, and Matt and I had received samplers of the 9 PM group, Nest, while waiting to not get into an Imogen Heap gig.

J.O.Y. is managed by the same woman as Rachel Yamagata, which is why there is such a buzz about her (Nic Harcourt, host of Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW was in attendance); she sounds like a more indie-cool Erin McKeown, which makes sense since she's a huge Erin fan.

Nest, it turns out, is comprised of at least 3 people who I recognized from Berklee. I had no idea. And Richard mixed their latest EP. Karen Teperberg, the drummer, is insanely talented (apparently, she was also a world-ranked tennis player as a teen before picking up the drums) and super hot.

Nothing much to say on the Animators. After some sound problems to start of the show, they kicked ass the rest of the way.

Because of the 3 hour commitment to the Hotel Cafe, I wasn't able to see Sarah Bettens of K's Choice at the Knitting Factory at 8, or Kate Earl at the Mint at 10, a real bummer.

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Other shows I've been to...hmm...there was Terami Hirsch's cd release show at the Hotel Cafe on the 29th of November, Catherine Feeny the next night, and Libbie Schrader on Thursday. Actually, I skipped out on Libbie because I had no energy, what with not having time to recover from my flight back from Maryland (woke up at 4 AM EST, arrived at work in L.A. at 12:30 PM, went straight to a softball game at 7:30 PM).

Now Listening To : Kate Bush- Aerial
Random Thought : Tonight, it's Kong. With J.

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