Review: Dredg 4/25/06

#16
tuesday april 25, 2006
dredg
ours
9:30 club

I have to say first that my eye makeup was truly outrageous. I wimped/cashed out and parked in 9:30's paid parking lot. My tolerance for dealing with being screamed at for being white is just not what it used to be, so I didn't park where I usually do in that 'hood.

Anyway, this was probably the least crowded I've seen 9:30 in about 4 years. I did actually want to see the opening opener Ambulette but I missed them while I was considering parking options and buying a ticket for a show next week. Whatever...after listening to their myspace songs, I probably wouldn't have liked them anyway. It sucks that their gear got stolen in Philly. Hope they get some of it back.

Ours....hmmm. Apparently they are quite popular. Sort of Radiohead-esque. I thought it was funny when the singer was doing a long drawn out 'oooo wooo' and some heckler yelled something and made him laugh. It was good but kinda boring. I think it would have been much better if they were Codeseven instead (aw, Codeseven *sniff*).

Speaking of improvement - Dredg has a stage set consisting of...bare dead branches? Well, that was kinda weird but they were in top form. I almost didn't recognize Drew with short hair! One thing I sorta forgot about them - their drummer is freakin amazing. Other than 'Spot the Drummer?' another fun contest would be to video drummers (w/o sound) and see if you could guess which band they're in. The most out-of-context looking playing styles I can think of are Dredg's drummer and the drummer from Amorphous (described in the link). Dredg's Dino hits super hard and plays with all limbs flailing like a hardcore drummer - he tossed out at least 8 broken sticks during the set. Anyway, they played for over an hour - some new songs and some really old songs, though mostly material from 'Catch without Arms.' This was my 6th viewing, which should get me over the strange 5 show hump [it seems like 5 is my limit with a lot of bands, whether viewed intentionally or incidentally]. Did I mention that Gavin's dancing makes me want to yell out "Soul Patrol!" One more thing I forgot about was that at the end of their set, the roadies (Hi Jeff!) come out and take apart Dino's drumkit while he's playing until he's only left with sticks, stool, and the keyboard he also plays. And one other thing about the keyboard was that on one song Dino just plays the keyboard and they use a stupid crappy drum track. Ugh.