We made it to the third gig in four days of our
mini-marathon. Congratulations.
So, I chose Good Jive over Raybans, going for an honest gig with risk-taking music, organised by people I respect, over shallow promotion and hipster appeal.
And walked into a giant video set/photo shoot for Dell/Intel and their Noisey project. And I paid for the privilege and it was not declared on the flyer or anywhere else. Seriously WTF! To top it off, it seems that Dell X Vice = assholes. Their multiple camera vid set up and stills photographer took the front row, and all the energy, for the entire headliner set. And yes, the stills camera had a powerful flash and shot continuously from start to finish mostly front center and often back into our faces. No respect for the community, the paying fans or the general culture of the scene and venue. It was really like being on an ad set and stuff like, oh I don't know, being able to see the singer past the held-up cam and continuous flash, was apparently of no concern to these dicks.
So the show basically existed to give Dell some soft ad material. Nice.
The bands were:
X is Y have a member on holiday right now and they gamely stepped in at the last minute as a duo. Credit to them, they took creative advantage of this and did something different with the songs. It worked and was a good opener for the show. They also played tracks with female lead vocals, which is new for them and also worked.
Next Year's Love played their fullest set yet, in their short career. The sound was really good in YYT and we could hear the guitar better than usual. The song Xiao Ge Ge went off particularly well and there was some good energy in the songs. Their retro synth riffs and experimental edge were a good fit for a Good Jive show too.
8 Eye Spy were awesome despite the continuous distractions, which also prevented the crowd from properly letting loose. They really came across like a weekend headliner. Loud, experienced and assured on stage, they crashed through a great set that mixed the no-wave sound and the Chinese scene post-punk sound. I was surprised at how many songs had up tempo regular rock beats in them too. Great band.