Review: The Black Lips @ The Black Cat

I didn't know anything about the Black Lips past what I read on DCist until I went to the show on Saturday night.

Ian was working the merch table before they went on, when I walked up he immediately introduced himself and started talking about how much he loved the Points and the Selmanaires. Kind of cool that one of the headliners was flacking for the opening acts IMHO.

I also had a chance to rap with Jared before the show. Usually when you see someone rocking those micro OP shorts from 1983 and a John C. Holmes mustache to match, it's some sort of "look at how cool and ironic I am" thing but I didn't get that vibe from Jared at all. I'm not sure what the backstory was, but he played their set with a bass borrowed from the Selmanaires.

Apparently The Points have been having some "Behind the Music" kind of drama over the last couple of weeks, but it didn't show on stage. They played a very tight set, one of their better performances according to Dr. Mayhem. I thought the sound was a little muddy, but that could have been because I was directly in front of the stage or I might just not know what I'm talking about.

I missed most of the Selmanaires set while downstairs eating a falafel, what I heard was interesting but not really my speed.

There were tons of kiddies, I can't remember the last time I saw so many people under 21 at a show. It looked like every one of those kids knew the words to just about every Black Lips song. At one point a particularly enthusiastic youngster with a blond afro was flopping all over one of the monitors at the front of the stage and was in the process of getting ejected by a very skinny bouncer, but Ian intervened and demanded that the kid be allowed to stay.

The Black Lips set was very high energy, but I couldn't really figure out what to make of them for the first half dozen songs. At first it struck me as the same kind of garage/punkabilly played by the Woggles or Thee Crucials, both are great bands that put on a kick ass show, but nothing I hadn't heard before. Then the Black Lips kicked into high gear and made it impossible for me to stand still any longer. Not knowing anything about the band I don't know the name of the song that really got me; it had a kind of Stone Roses feel to it, with like a sitar kind of sounding intro to each verse. Afterwards I turned to Dr. Mayhem and announced, "I'm sold!"

I already burned through my 90 downloads for the month, but the new Black Lips album Good Bad, Not Evil is available on eMusic with an eMusic only bonus track.