The Wily Filipino

Stung / For The Masses / This Charming Band, Slim's, SF, 9/22/06.

An old blog post that never saw the light of day until now:

So two things happened earlier this evening that may never happen again: 1. I saw J-Lu dance. 2. J-Lu saw me dance. In recent years I've expressed my distaste for the activity, and almost got into a useless argument with Smoothie and Big G. Al about the whole thing. J-Lu has asserted many times that she doesn't dance; clearly she was lying, and so was I. (But see an affirmation of my dislike here.)

The occasion was, of all things, a trio of tribute bands at Slim's. I had never dipped my toe into the entire tribute-band experience; there seemed something rather cheesy about the whole thing. Which may indeed be the whole point -- but I was proven wrong because I ate all the cheese up anyway.

First up was the very good This Charming Band, obviously a Smiths tribute band. The lead singer looked nothing like Morrissey, and didn't sound exactly like him, but had great stage presence regardless. (Their secret weapon was the guitarist, who simply nailed Johnny Marr's parts down.) For the Masses was up next -- a Depeche Mode tribute band -- and was even better: that cold '80s synth, and a vocalist who not only sounded like Dave Gahan, but whose lack of shame fortunately made him copy Gahan's moves as well (apparently pretty accurately).

So anyhow, I look to my left during "Just Can't Get Enough" and sure enough, J-Lu was dancing. (And not just doing the indie rawk shuffle either, which requires no use of the hips.) And she was singing, too, which she apparently doesn't do either. (Though I wasn't exactly dancing -- just flailing my arms and jumping up and down and spilling my beer on J-Lu.)

Stung was the best band of all -- a set that wasn't just Every Breath You Take: The Singles, but one that dipped into the tracks that lesser fans fast-forwarded through back in the day. And no, they didn't exactly look like the Police, and neither did the vocalist really sound like Sting (I blame Slim's acoustics, because he sounds fantastic here, including the break in Sting's voice after "I loved ya since I knew ya"), but they played incredibly well.

One side effect of all of this was that it made feel rather old -- well, okay, I am old: Stung started its set with an excellent "Walking in Your Footsteps," which reminded me that I was all of 12 when the song came out. But the point was that there I was, with a huge grin on my face, in a small club, surrounded by people yelling out the lyrics to "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around" -- a song I would otherwise never see or hear performed in such circumstances -- and the point of the tribute band became happily, cheesily clear.

Posted by the wily filipino at January 22, 2007 08:31 PM