Friday night I went out and caught the Black and Cocked n Loaded at Ralph's.

Cocked n Loaded were alot of fun. Real dirty AC/DC like stuff with a hint of the ol' stoner metal. I swear the singer introduced at least 4 songs as "The Fever". Cool to see a real don't give a fuck rock band for a change. There is a difference between not actually giving a fuck and it showing and then not giving a fuck and it being awesome. These guys definitely were the latter. I stayed up front for a few songs and then meandered to the back after deciding that these guys were one of those beer spitting bands. I was correct.

The Black were their usual great selves. They do this one song that has one of the best grooves I have heard. Seriously. It's a punch you in the face groove. It's a groove that causes your beer to get warm because you forget you should even be drinking it. Not sure of the name of the song, but it's pretty damn awesome.

Only problem I had with the night was that the sound was a little shitty. Normally this wouldn't even be something out of the ordinary at Ralph's but the last couple of shows I saw there sounded real good. It didn't really effect Cocked N Loaded too much due to the nature of the music but I did feel I could have had a better experience seeing The Black if the sound was better. When you have a five piece band, especially one with keys you want it to be mixed right.

Saturday night I went down to Providence to see Grand Buffet at the Living Room.

Before I get into the bands can I just talk about how awesome the Living Room is? Before I ever went to any kind of club show when I was a kid I was still really into music. There was a certain picture in my head of what a rock club should be. Kinda seedy, kinda scary, people in dark corners doing things you really don't want anything to do with. A maze of rooms. The Living Room is all those things. Now if they could have just gotten rid of the popping in the sound system any time any kid of low bass note went through it.

The first band on was Shawn Waters and Group Think. Wow were these guys bad. These guys had no business on this bill. SWAG-T, as I will refer to them for the rest of this piece were some sort of unholy matrimony between The Cure, Tom Waits, Sage Francis (which is probably how they got on the bill), and Evanessence and it was friggin awful.
They closed with a cheery number about Wanting to die, and wanting to die and wanting to die some more and wanting to die and stuff. Awful.

Next up was Joe Beats who some of you might know as the DJ/producer half of the hip hop duo Non Prophets. Seriously cool set. After the Swag-T experience was done Joe Beats was already set up right in front of the stage on the floor. They turned out all the lights in the front of the room so it was total darkness and the only sensory experience you had was the sound of the music and his hands illuminated by the lights of the MPC. One of the cooler live music experiences I have had in a while.

Last on was the nights headliner, Pittsburgh's Grand Buffet. If you have never heard or heard of this act let me tell you a little about them. They are goofballs. They are silly as hell. They do songs about cats, satan, candy bars, Ben Franklin, asian slave labor, eating shit, you know, stuff like that. What you also need to know is that this is some of the best damn hip hop out there. Grape A Don is a far above average MC and has one of the better staqe presences I have seen and this is the best part of Grand Buffet. A complaint I hear alot about live hip hop, especially from fans of rock music who always say "rap sucks", is that it is boring live, that it doesn't have the energy of live rock. This is not the case with Grand Buffet. One of my favorite live acts on the planet I left once again completelty satisfied with my live experience.

And finally last night I went to the Hotel Vernon to check out Lusting Kay in the Ship Room. Good set from these guys and girl who improve every time I see them. Guitarist Keith Menard has great guitar tone and he really schouldn't be scared to turn that shit up a bit. Tone however is not the strength of bassist Eli Gillen (however cool rock names are) who did not even have close to enough low end to balance out the sound of this power trio. Louder guitar and fatter bottom end would do wonders for this band. The vocal levels sounded great which was good because with the addition within the last year of Jessica Kern on drums vocals and vocal harmonies have really become this bands strong suit. Is this band ready to headline a weekend at Ralph's on a Saturday night? Probably not, but the cool part about them is that they are almost there and it's fun to see bands improve every time you see them.

Okay, back to work.