April 15, 2009: Howard's Dilemma, et al.

Riverbed & Distort

Dust From 1000 Yrs
Pants
Howard's Dilemma
Strictly Off the Record
Bunny Hoover
April 15, 2009
The Bungalow
Bloomington, IN
Recorded by Chris Couchman
Stream/Download
I made an appearance at this show for a few minutes, with Janice and Atem (then 3 months old). You can hear him crying upstairs right before Company Slogan. I can only form opinions based on the recordings. Dust plays a beautiful set consisting of Naptown/Thanksgiving/Natives-era songs, Chris plays in Pants on this evening, and they are an interesting machine together. The mash of musical connotations is breathtaking. Howard's Dilemma would be an extremely interesting live show; the recording loses much of the visual performance aspect, therefore the recording seems odd and lacking some element. The laughter of the crowd creates the wall which shows the void. I would warn anyone who has extreme reactions to dangling participles: Stay away from track 11. If hearing someone's participles dangle is a comedic thing to you, then by all means put this on repeat. Strictly Off the Record is a rock band. They remind me of being in middle and high school during the latter half and out of the nineties. They are a good band; pretty sweet guitar work and emotional pauses. Then drunken pauses of music...on to Bunny Hoover. As another performance artist, BH is best experienced either live or while reading the comic book...if you have seen it. I am including parts of the soundcheck because they sound great and give a great representation of the evening, meaning that a whole bunch of people showed up to see Strictly Off the Record and didn't give a mole's penis about any other bands. Except maybe Howard's Dilemma, somebody did keep saying "Best Thing Ever" but the crowd that was a respectful portion was small and patient. Check it all out. It's all at least good, most is wonderfully great and amazing.