Monday, March 07, 2005
Ambulance, Ltd./VHS or Beta 3/5/05 Black Cat Washington, DC
Disco + The Cure = VHS or Beta. If that sounds good to you, then they were great. If not, then you would have hated them. The singer is far beyond "sounding a bit like Robert Smith." His voice is a dead ringer for Smith's. The ear-splitting keyboard soundcheck and 10+ minutes of "check check....check 1 ...check 2 ..." were quite annoying. Possibly the first time I've ever put in my earplugs before a band actually started playing. The first few songs were actually very good, but after a while, they all started to sound the same - except for that voice modulator thing, which was annoying in it's own right. I just felt like I was listening to an hour of Cure remixes. They did that very well, but it's not my thing.
Ambulance were great. They did most of the album plus a new song and (I think) a really old one. They have a bit of a harder edge live, which is always a good thing. Still, they were very smoooooth. I love that whole "lounge music meets The Velvet Underground" thing they do so well.
I took the boyfriend to this show as part of his birthday celebration. The celebration continued on Sunday with drinks at JRs followed by dinner at Annie's, complete with singing waiters. His birthday is actually tomorrow. I'm afraid the celebration is going to end with a "thud", because I'm sick now. Stuffed-up, achy, sneezy, coughy - all around blech. I'll see what I can do to suck it up and make tomorrow a good day for him though.
Meanwhile - back to bed and chugging Nyquil.
