Thighs Wide Shut

Chromeo
Webster Hall
May 20

The Lordz of Funk reigned supreme last night at Webster Hall (which reopened recently, but looked no different), by making everyone’s footwork get mad fancy.  If anyone can bring peace to the Middle East it would be Chromeo, a Montreal duo consisting of a Jew and a Lebanese guy.  Lay down your guns and your hate and freak the funk out, yo!

Setlist – Chromeo Intro / Fancy Footwork / Juice / Hot Mess / Come Alive / Bonafied Lovin’ / Bad Decision / Night by Night / My Girl Is Calling Me (a Liar) / Needy Girl / Old 45’s / Must’ve Been / Slumming It / Don’t Turn the Lights On / Over Your Shoulder / Don’t Sleep / Count Me Out / Jealous (I Ain’t With It)

Encore – Momma’s Boy / One Track Mind / 100%

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxtaJ44hLwZ/

Travis
Webster Hall
September 23rd

Travis is the best.  Me don’t be needing to tell you how one of their concerts would goesz, considering I saw two of the dudes without the other two dudes and it ended up being third greatestest concert I had ever seen.  They have a new album out. It’s Travis-y lite.  Less rocking, but still solid stuff

here’s the…

Setlist – Mother / Sing / Selfish Jean / Pipe Dreams / Moving / Love Will Come Through / Driftwood / Warning Sign / Re-Offender / Where You Stand / My Eyes / Reminder / Side / Writing To Reach You / Closer / Slide Show / Blue Flashing Light / Turn 

Encore - Good Feeling  / Flowers in the Window (Acoustic) / All I Want To Do Is Rock / Why Does It Always Rain On Me? / Mother (played again for a music video recording) 

anywho, there be two things I really want to make note of…

1) bassist Dougie Payne is married to Kelly Macdonald, who is on Boardwalk Empire.  guess who was at the show supporting Mr Macdonald?  None other than castmates Steve Buscemi and Jack Huston (who makes rubber face man still look pretty).  I’d do all of these people.  so would you

and

2) speaking of Dougie Payne, apparently he’s gone with a more mature hairdo these days, going up with his locks instead of down, and now he looks exactly like a younger, happier version of one of my MOIST flavorite non-speaking 1 second characters to ever appear on The Office – the Michael Scott mnemonically nicknamed ‘Lazy Eye’ fella in the ‘Lecture Circuit‘ episode (couldn’t find the name of the actual actor, so if you are this actor and you are reading this, hello, I love you, now won’t you tell me your name)

 

 

 

The Polyphonic Spree
Webster Hall
May 24th

Has it really been 10 years since The Polyphonic Spree released their blessed debut The Beginning Stages of…????  And has it really been 10 wasted years for us, since we’ve never seen the 90 piece band (not literally that #, but not so far off, sorta) in concert?  Well, after finally submitting ourselves (in concert) to the cult that is the Spree, it won’t be 10 mo years before we make it time #2!!  We’re considering quitting our jobs and following Tim DeLaughter & co to the ends of the earth (them or the Nationals).  Pass the Kool-Aid, cause we’re drinking it.  (GO NATS!)

Btw, if you don’t know who the Spree are, you’ve definitely heard their music before, if you’ve ever seen an ad on TV.  And if you’ve heard that song, you can imagine how heavenly it might sound live, and guess what, it’s almost more than heaven! IT MADE US WEAR OUR LOVE LIKE HEAVEN!!!   And every song they played was heaven sent!!  They also threw some Who love, with brilliant renditions of ‘See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You’ + ‘Pinball Wizard’.  Never thought of them as a band that would cover someone else’s music (why support other cults than their own??), but after going bat shit crazy hearing those two Who-ers, we’re now wet dreaming of one day hearing them play Pink Floyd’s The Wall or really anything!  Even Nazi anthems written by George Clooney!

You’ve probably heard us complain endlessly about American concert audiences before.  They never get that super into shows, well, at least not as much as we do.  WE TOTALLY DO!!!  Clapping during a show (not just after the song, but during!) should be the standard, but apparently we’re in the minority on that one.  Well, The Spree didn’t even have to provoke the audience to do so, cause there was nuttin but euphoric applause from everyone in the audience during the encore set.  This gave us renewed faith in music, concerts, audiences, Jim Jones, David Koresh and even Nazi anthems written by George Clooney!

Lily Allen
Webster Hall
February 10th

What’s sweet, sassy, more brassy than Shirley Bassey, in a classy all her own, and a bit too gassy to stifle her Shepherd’s Pie burps? If you guessed Abigail Breslin or Abigail Adams then you seriously have more issues than a 11-year subscription to Highlights Magazine. And if you didn’t guess then you obviously knew that the the answer was none other than unclassifiable British wunderkind Lily Allen.

Despite the jitters and understandable stiffness that she displayed at her 1st show on American soil, I was still thoroughly impressed with her 30-minute showcase last October at the Hiro Ballroom, while others were mos certainly not. Well, by the end of her triumphant one hour show on Saturday at Webster Hall, which featured edward james almost every song on her US release, 3 brilliant covers (some might call her Not So Weird Alice Yankovic), and the darlin’ underheard ‘Absolutely Nothing’, everyone was in agreement that she’s the bees knees more than Rick Dees‘ nuts.

Lily rules and I’m not juss spraying that cause she came to Thighland for a lengthy chat, or winked at me when I saw her live on Friday’s TRL, or cause she smokes more fags than Ted Haggard did in the ’06, but cause she really does. She’s the mos entertaining solo female artist going. She’s so fantabulous that MTV and myself both agree on something of greatness for the first time since they picked The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Tonight, Tonight’ as the video of the year for 1996. And oh, if you didn’t know how yumstoppable Lily truly is then be sure to czech her out in the upcommin’ She-Hulk movie!

LDN / Nan, You’re a Window Shopper / Knock ‘Em Out / Shame For You / Littlest Things / Cheryl Tweedy / Everybody’s Changing (Keane cover) / Naive (Kooks cover) / Not Big / Absolutely Nothing / Everything’s Just Wonderful / Friend of Mine / Friday Night / Smile /ENCORE/ Blank Expression (Specials cover) / Alfie

The When: Thighsday Nite

The Where: El City, Webster Hall, home to many bridge and tunnel folk

The What: Franz Ferdinand knocking the balls to the wall!

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Yep, I’m afraid to admit it, but Franz Ferdie is the real deal, unlike Buster Douglas’ Knockout Boxing on Sega Genesis. They is mos def the greatest thing to be exported from Scotland since Trainspotting. Peace out Strokes, cause yo days are numbered. Hope you didn’t spend the money that your daddy saved up for you.

Long story short: me missed the boat on FF tickets so me was forced into the world of Craig’s List and eBay price gouging. Me was too busy at work to deal with this crap so me girl Megbot stepped up to the plate like she was Cecil “F-in” Fielder and scored some reasonably price gouged tickets. Too bad she must have eaten turkey burgers, cause el Megbot got food poisoning and couldn’t even go to the show!! (insert unhappy face) Enter the Thinker. His a$$ is about to be exported to the land mass known as Europe and what a killer way to send em off, eh? Ich heisse Su-per-fan-tas-tisch!

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Yesterdaze just so happened to be the very beginning of monsoon season in El City and I didn’t wear me rubbers or carry me trusty umbrella. So I got completely drenched on my way to pick up the tickey-ick-ets. To make (family) matters worse, when el Thinker and myself arrived at the venue, we realized that this wasn’t yer daddy’s Franz Fizzlnand concert. The place was packed to the gills with hipsters of all shapes and sizes. Most of them fell under these stereotypes listed on this handy Hipster Bingo board. We had to elbow our way to the bar where we set up shop for the next hour… I mean, FF only has one album of material, so wees weren’t eggspected a 3-hour Phish crap-a-thon. Now I can deal with $7+ beers, but I guess me needs some tips from Mandy Moore if I want to learn how to deal without A/C. El Paso, Tejas needs to be stripped of its newly bestowed title, Swamp-Ass Capital of the US, cause without A/C, my grundle area won that title in about 4 seconds. But hey, this is FF and if they can make all the jaded hipsters dance, then I’m going to shake my a$$ too, like I was in that “Rump Shaker” video by Wreckx-n-Effects.

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The highlights of their energetic, pitch-perfect, hour long set included: the “Hava Neglia” guitar riff in “The Dark of the Matinee”, playing my FFFT (favorite Franz Ferdinand tune) “Tell Her Tonight”, me coming and dancing to their heteroflexible ditty, “Michael” (Editor’s note: ‘Michael’ is such an awful first name, right?), and of course, amassing more swamp a$$ per minute than I did during Coachella Part I, II, or III! Long live frozen chocolate covered bananas!!!