By: David de Young
 The Dandy Warhols at First Avenue - Photo by Anna Lee |
Members: Courtney Taylor-Taylor – guitar/vocals Official website: http://www.dandywarhols.com |
The Dandy Warhols' First Avenue appearance Thursday night started so early that many people came straight from the office, still in their work clothes. With no supporting act in toe on their current tour, this meant nearly 3 solid hours of Dandy Warhols and Dandy Warhols alone. Translate this as clearly no place for the casual fan who's only heard “Bohemian Like You” in a TV commercial and wants to check out their live act.
Dan Harvey, writing for Leeds Music Scene, wrote earlier this year that the Dandy Warhols are "a band notoriously erratic live tending to veer from sounding like they look to sounding like four people after a high dose of horse tranquillizers trying to sound like something from your Dad's record collection played at the wrong speed." Mr. Harvey's description strikes me as entirely accurate, though not necessarily a bad thing, if, that is, you know what you're in for.
The Dandys took the stage about 10 minutes after the scheduled 7 p.m. start time Thursday night, opening with an ambient, space-rock song that may have been "Orange" from 1997's "The Dandy Warhols Come Down." In a gimmick borrowed from originators the Velvet Underground (and many bands since) a video projector from the balcony lit the band with various films throughout most of the set.
Almost immediately I pegged the Dandy’s stage show as more animated than Spiritualized, but less exciting than Ride, two shoe-gazer bands the Dandys unabashedly share sonic qualities with. Many people in the packed house stared, clearly absorbed, through the first half of the set as the band oozed through 7-plus-minute-song after 7-plus-minute-song.
I didn’t expect much banter from the band, and we got very little. Guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor spoke the first words of the night after about 20 minutes, asking the audience if he was the only one who hadn’t seen Purple Rain. "Let's smoke pot after the show and watch it," he joked. "Or better yet let's snort a whole bunch of coke and watch the Prince movie."
Maybe it was me, but this crowd seemed guy-heavy, and heavy in the late 20's to mid 30's set. I didn't recognize as many people as I thought I would, but most seemed to be deep cut fans that seemed to dig all the songs and not just the hits. In fact, if it was hits you came for, you wouldn't have been disappointed, but you might have grown weary during the in between times waiting for them. The single, "We Used to Be Friends,"came early on, but it was 20 or more songs into the set before the band broke out the new UK Single "The Last High," or the bouncy "Get Off" and the best known "Bohemian Like You," both from 2000's "13 Tales from Urban Bohemia."
The set—necessarily diverse by nature of its length--also included oldies like "White Gold" and "Nothin' to Do," from the Dandys' debut album, 1995's "Dandys Rule OK?" According to McCabe, this was the first and only time so far this tour these songs were played. Distribution of songs seemed about equal from each of the Dandys four major release albums to date, and any fan who owned only a single Dandy Warhols album, including their latest release, 2003's "Welcome To the Monkey House," would have spent most of the evening just plain lost.
There wasn’t a formal set break or real intermission. After "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth" (Heroin is so passé) the band began an extended jam with a bass line borrowed from Deep Purple’s "Smoke on the Water." Taylor-Taylor moved to keyboards, and an off the air TV signal became the projected movie. Towards the end of the song, Courtney removed his cap, dried his hair with a towel and simply sat for a few minutes on the drum riser sipping on bottled water. The beat and some sampled keyboards continued as the band relaxed, temporarily freed up from instrument duties. Zia McCabe, who seemed to have her own contingent of male fans in the corner of the club where I was stationed was asked to pour beer from a 16 ounce Corona bottle into one male fan's mouth stage right, and with a little shrug, she complied. Most of the beer seemed to go all over his face and shirt, but hell, different strokes for different folks. Maybe it's something he can write home to Mom about.
While McCabe left the stage, purportedly to pee, Taylor-Taylor played "Every Day Should Be A Holiday" by himself. The remainder of the set featured the aforementioned songs and local favorite, "Minnesoter." Taylor-Taylor joked about whether or not the band had remembered to put Bob Dylan +1 on the guest list. (I didn’t see his name on there, nor were their any signs of the Tambourine Man in the house.)
As the 30 song set ended, McCabe sung the A Capella "Daisy on my Toe" song (author unknown.) An ode to a foot tattoo that's unrecorded by the Dandys as far as I know is a live staple.
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: The Dandy Warhols
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