Michael Jackson. Well. There seems to be two camps on this, if my Facebook is anything to go by. People dragging up all the jokes and people who are sad about it. I'm not a pop fan and don't have much to say.
Walked into YYT ... playing MJ's music. Realised that I find a large part of it intolerable. It's tough when you peak at age 11 though and the rest of your career is based on gimmicky videos and concepts ... to be fair.
So. Tonight was newish band Monroe Stahr's CD release gig. And supporting them was Dragon Pizza. Dragon Pizza got on the stage promptly and ripped into their usual manic set of metalcore. They are excellent performers and great musicians. The music goes even beyond the usual metalcore mix. You have melodic punk choruses, thrashy screamed breakdowns, ska sections and even punchy slap-bass with chanting and disco rock beats. All in the breadth of one song. They were good here but the sound wasn't quite up to the last show I saw.
Then up came Monroe Stahr with their catchy blend of rock and acoustic folk. The band have played a lot of shows recently and the first thing I noticed was that their act has developed a lot in that time. The first half went through the best tracks on the CD with the regular line up. Then singer Nicky Almasy dropped his guitar and they played some different tracks that got the audience dancing in a different way. Bassist Andres took off his shirt to reveal We Love You Michael written on his chest and the band played, among other things, a new reggae version of one of their songs with balls-out ragga vocal from guitarist Nathan Denny.
People who turned up for this show had a great time. Yuyintang have also made some changes in the past week. There is now a large central aircon unit in the middle of the ceiling in the main room. This came in response to complaints from last weekend's Joyside show. There are some new wall fans for ventilation too. It all works.
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