DP started off the evening with lead vox JC Penny promising “we’re gonna play some ACDC for ya!” to a cheering desperate-for-something-unpretentiously-entertaining Drake crowd. It was a lie. ‘Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild Wild Women’ (TaDa! 2007) began with lead guitar Lovely Louis’ fingers beginning to blur and they were off.
The band just gets better and better. This is not a huge compliment. They’ve been playing for years and while ‘tight’ isn’t the first word you think sitting with a cocktail 30 feet away and 5 minutes into a DP show – ‘sound’ is. They’ve got sound. And that sound is…
(It’s wrong to say a band has a sound and then compare them to another band. Remember that, music slaves.)
DP’s sound is like a garbage truck moving across a neighborhood: slow power, you can’t stop it and you don’t want to. You’ll lose.
DP served a hard rock course with no towelettes for 30 minutes. JC Penny, full of autism and suave, provided the usual David Byrne marginal monkey visuals. One wonders about this man’s brain. It is either not there or too much so. Bassist “Sugar Bear” did his trademark pogo sticking on the songs where you could tell he likes his parts best. Lovely Louis lead user of the guitar as just a tool for sound was in a surgical mood, providing contrast to JC Penny’s quasi-wrong singing style. Was Louis operating on JC on purpose? We like to think so. But prolly not. People who play rock are moody.
Nobody left the room. Everybody stared at the rock spectacle frozen, in fear perhaps that the unpredictable zero self-conscious lead singer’s attention is drawn.
Ex-drummer Sarah “The Glue” Quinn was invited up to sub for ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’. Good to hear her simple, rock steady sticks again. Current drummer Candy is so full of tricks it’s a completely different Penny.
“I hate ACDC. Why the fuck did you say that?” started Louis on JC outside the Drake post-show. “Cuz it’s the Drake and I’m mister contrast. I could have said Boston or Foreigner…” (the 2 bandsmen obviously falling into a comfortable R2D2/3P0-esque nagging) “…would you have preferred Boston or Foreigner?”
LL – “No, I would have preferred an introduction to the first song of our set to a crowd of people, many of whom have never seen us before, several of which will now never see us again because ACDC sucks.”
JC – “ACDC doesn’t fucking suck. You’re ACDC.”
LL – “Don’t ever say that to me. I stopped calling you Peter Gabriel when you asked me.”
JC – “I sound nothing like Peter Gabriel.”
LL – “You sound a little like Peter Gabriel, except without the hitting the right notes part.”
JC – “Peter Gabriel sucks.”
LL – “You suck.”
JC – “You suck me.”
…
LL – “I would have preferred Foreigner.”
JC – “Do you even like rock?”
LL – “I like good rock.”
JC – “You like gay rock.”
LL – “Bauhaus isn’t gay rock.”
JC – “It’s as gay as they come.’
LL – “I pity you.”
JC – “You’re mustache is crooked.”
LL – “Thanks for not pulling down your pants this show.”
JC – “I left my sexy underwear at your mom’s.”
LL – “Oh! Who-da-man! Who-da-MAN!”
JC – “You da man.”
The 2 “friends” disappeared back into the Drake for more beer presumably.
On a final note, Elvis Mondays still rocks after a million years going as a place for live indie music on any Monday night. The sound, space, and bands are all the right size and taste. This reporter feels he has rediscovered Elvis Mondays and has already entered “BORED? Elvis Monday” as a recurring weekly 9pm alert in his blackberry.