Joining the Club

The Cobbs are local boys, so they already had our vote. But they also consist of five guys, one on drums, and the other four on guitars, and that's our kind of line-up. Go, gang of guitars! Of course, one of those four guitar guys mostly just played tambourine and keyboard, but still, they managed to create quite an impressive wall of sound. Their music is fun, too, but it has a slightly different tone than that of Dead Combo. The songs were slower, longer, less energetic, and concentrated more on harmonies and pop sounds.

After The Cobbs finished their approximately 30-minute set, we had a 40-minute wait while the stage was set for the headliners. During this time, they had the smoke machine running pretty much constantly, so by the time the guys finally did come on, it looked as if a fog bank had rolled in on the Fillmore at the TLA. The lights dimmed, and an almost gospel-like intro played on the venue sound system while the boys took their places. Then they launched right into what would be a tiring, varied, impressive hour and 45 minute-long set.

And when we say varied, we mean varied. The sound moved from classic rock, to piano rock, to pop with harmonies, to foot-stomping Country Western-inflected blues rock, to singer-songwriter folk, to a harder sound verging on metal. Most of the time BRMC (MySpace) consisted on stage of three full-time members Peter Hayes (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Robert Levon Been (vocals, guitar, piano), and Nick Jago (drums), but occasionally a fourth guy, whom Robert referred to as Spike, joined them on stage to provide additional guitar, to take over from Robert on guitar while he played piano, or to back them up on the keyboard. Actually, Spike pretty much just wandered in and out, once even in the middle of a song.

As far as stage effects go, besides all the fog, there was also a lot of fun and fancy lighting work, including some seizure-inducing strobes. But it's the music that's the most important part, of course, and BRMC did a fine job as far as that's concerned. They played a lot of great songs, including all of this Phillyist's favorites from their latest album, Baby 81. We didn't manage to put together a complete set list, but here's a partial one, in no particular order:

666 Conducer
All You Do Is Talk
American X
Berlin
It's Not What You Wanted
Weapon of Choice
Need Some Air
Whatever Happened to My Rock 'N Roll?
Shuffle Your Feet

The numbers they really knocked out of the park were "666 Conducer," "Berlin," and "Whatever Happened to My Rock 'N Roll?" It's impossible not to jump around during "WHtMRNR." What a brilliant song. There was also a fantastic, epic guitar solo in the midst of one of these tracks - we're pretty sure it was "American X." Some members of the audience accompanied the band at certain points on air guitar, which was a thing to behold. A guy a few people ahead of us was really thrashing it out, and he had the long hair to do it well, too.

A bit past the middle of the set, most of the band left the stage and Pete did a song on his own - it was just him, a guitar, and a harmonica. Robert followed him up doing nearly the same thing, though without the harmonica, and with some backup guitar and vocal support from Pete. These little solo performances, we're sad to say, didn't work so well for us. The band is strongest when it works together to really kick out the jams. Their quiet slow pieces are just not as fun. But after the slow solo bits, the whole band came back on stage and banged out a few more together before they walked off and the house lights went up. We nearly left ourselves then, thinking that might be it (we were just at a show recently where there were no encores), but then BRMC came back and played a handful of songs, all by audience request, with the house lights up the whole time. A group of guys standing next to us requested the final song by picking up one of their number and putting his bare feet up in the air. Robert was impressed by this display and felt the band had no choice but to perform "Shuffle Your Feet" for them, which they did, closing out their set.

Good times! To see more of our photos from the concert, check out our Flickr set. And if you'd like to follow BRMC on their voyage across the nation, remember to keep your eyes peeled to Metro Distortion, where we expect the review of tonight's show should be showing up some time tomorrow.

Banner image via Filter, photo by author