Secret Wars

I went to the Empty Bottle Saturday for the Oneida show. Besides Oneida, there were three other bands playing first, none of whose music I had listened to before, I don't think. The first band was Chicago's Plastic Crimewave Sound. I was especially interested in seeing them since they have some releases off Eclipse Records. Their brand of psych-punk didn't floor me, although I did enjoy their set. One thing I didn't like was that the singer's voice reminded me of Billy Corgan, at least that's how it sounded to me live. But the vocals were mostly drowned out by the instruments, thank god. Also, their Asian female guitarist has the coolest stage presence ever. She just stood there wearing shades, a hoodie, and a dress just strumming her guitar but looking very cool while doing so. During Plastic Crimewave Sound's set, there was this dude dancing like a retarded jackass, combining his dance moves with muscle stretches. He was showing off, but he looked like an idiot. Others agreed with me.

The second band was this dance-punk trio from New York called Breaker! Breaker!. They sucked. I left the room to play Tetris on my cellphone.

The third band was a band I heard only one of my friends likes while everybody else hates them. They were obnoxious on stage, and their music was pretentiously sucky. They reminded me of retarded people trying to play Captain Beefheart. And the jackass I mentioned earlier that dance-stretched to Plastic Crimewave Sound was in the band. Oh yeah, their name is No Doctors. They sucked.

Oneida came on last and played a set that pleased most, if not all, the Oneida fans in the audience. They came out and stated, "We're Oneida, and tonight we're from Chicago!" which obviously pleased the audience. One thing I didn't like about the set (and it's a huge pet peeve of mine for some rock shows) was that the vocals were too low. For 90% of the set, you could barely hear any vocals. Although I enjoyed Oneida's set, I doubt the performance would've won over many new fans who had never listened to them before, mostly because you couldn't hear any vocals. Their encore was the best part of the evening since they played my favorite song from them, "Sheets of Easter."

This week...the Million Tongues Festival. I love Chicago.