By: Stacy Schwartz
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| Antonia Sellbach of Love of Diagrams - Photo by Stacy Schwartz (click for set) |
When I first started listening to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, his tour swept through the Cities with nary a blip on my increasing radar screen. Then it took him a while to come back and I was getting impatient, so this time my sensors were honed for his impending appearance. I made sure that I would follow him like a heat-seeking missile—a date with destiny in the First Avenue mainroom.
The opener, Love of Diagrams, was from Australia, and as such their accents made it hard to understand their lyrics. That, coupled with the overabundance of fuzzy guitar, made it hard to hear much at all. At times there were enjoyable bouts of surf-punk a la Reverend Horton Heat, and other times it was all just noise. I would be interested to hear their CD, as I’m betting it’s a little cleaner and easier to get into. The lead singers/guitarists Luke Horton and Antonia Sellbach worked together to create a bit of back-and-forth singsong, which helped to stabilize the music. I still found myself bobbing my head in time to the beat, thanks to drummer Monika Fikerle’s awesome talent. They’re not a bad band; but they’re just not what I’m looking for right now.
Of course the main event was yet to come… And boy was I unprepared. Leo bounded (and no, that’s not a figure of speech) onto the stage, grabbed his guitar and went off like that figurative missile I mentioned earlier. The long curly cord that stretched across the width of the stage from his amp to his guitar did nothing to slow him down. He slammed into my favorite song, “Me & Mia,” for his third tune and the crowd’s energy was already explosive. It had been two years since Leo was in the Cities, and you could tell that people had been waiting for his return.
Leo interacted with the crowd throughout the night, making the whole event more intimate and making Leo all the more lovable to me. I wanted a hug. One kid from the crowd yelled, “I love you man!” which caused Leo to wax philosophical by saying, “You don’t know me, so you can’t love me. You can’t love me if you don’t respect me. That’s not philosophy man, that’s funk!” Leo broke into an impromptu song with the same lyrics, then stopped, apologizing for his froggy voice and saying "it’s caveat emptor tonight, and we’ll see how the next tune goes."
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| Ted Leo - Photo by Stacy Schwartz |
There are few bands I’ve seen whose live show can be written about 10 times over, but never be fully captured for a reader. After attending a show by such a band, there’s almost inevitably a moment of “Eureka!”—that final moment of understanding where all the blathering and slobbering writing you’ve read makes a hell of a lot of sense. The written word can only be a catalyst for the writer’s experience, and Leo is one of those artists whom you must get off your butt and go see to really understand all the adoration. Leo’s strong point is the way that the guitar riffs interact with his poppy backbeat—couple that with the way the Pharmacists bounce around the stage and you have the makings of a band you’ll hunt down and see any way you can.
Although the next song, “Counting Down the Hours,” is one of my ultimate favorite Ted Leo & the Pharmacists songs, my favorite part of the night was when people were screaming out various songs for Leo to play. At about two-thirds of the way through the show and a male voice calls out “Me & Mia!” Leo stopped mid-sentence and said, “Are you serious? We played that like the third song.” I laughed, and then felt shame at doing so because that’s one fear I have whenever I call out a song title at a concert. But still, it was pretty freakin’ funny.
Leo screamed at the crowd, “You want it now? Now!?” Another kid yelled back, “Yeah! Now!” and Leo gave into our desires by singing Queen’s “You Want it Now,” then pausing to lament on how truly crappy that song is. “What I’m saying is, I’d take the Highlander soundtrack over that song” (cut to “Who Wants to Live Forever” a la Ted Leo), “… but not I want it all, I want it all. That’s a terrible song, man.” At this point Leo was sick of talking and broke into “The Unwanted Things” off his newest album, Living with the Living. The crowd bopped along appreciatively.
Throughout the night Leo apologized profusely as his midi malfunctioned, guitars broke and his voice fried. “I’m sorry this is such a fucking disaster, but we’ll be back. Shit happens. Oh well.” This led to an encore including “Walking to Do,” one of my favorites.
The night ended with Leo spouting the lyrics to "Rappaport's Testament: I Never Gave Up": "If you survive me, tell them this/I never gave up, I crawled in the mud, but I never gave up."
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: Love of Diagrams, Ted Leo
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