The 24 hours preceding the Honorary Title concert at the Electric Factory had gone just about as well as any 24-hour period in my life, and it was gonna be pretty difficult for anything to kill my happy buzz Friday evening. Well, the Electric Factory tried its damnedest.

We went to the Factory straight from happy hour, so we had our work messenger bag with us. No biggie, right? All we had in it were a magazine, a couple notepads, our iPod, and a few pens. Nothing to worry about, especially because we've got press passes and the bag has a law firm logo on it. If someone was going to start some trouble at this show, it certainly wasn't going to be us.

So Mr. Security Guard goes through our bag and everything seems cool. Then he sees the two pens in the outside pocket of the bag, one of which was a pen with our firm's logo on it that they'd given to us on the first day of work. "No pens," the guard says as he pulls the pens out of the bag and throws them against the wall. The exchange that followed went something like this:

Phillyist: Are you shitting me?
Mr. Security Guard: Nope, house rule.
Phillyist: Why?
Mr. Security Guard: It's just the rule.
Phillyist: Why?
Mr. Security Guard: It's the rule.
Phillyist: Does it matter that we're press reviewing the show might need to take notes?
Mr. Security Guard: No.
Phillyist: That's the biggest [expletive] piece of [expletive] pointless [expletive] rule I've ever heard. Do you really think we're going to stab someone in the throat with our pen, except maybe you?

Alright, so we didn't say that last part, but we thought it. But seeing as talking to the imbecile at the door wasn't getting us anywhere, we gave up and went inside. After all, we had a show to review.

Follow the jump to read about the rest of our evening at the Honorary Title concert and the exciting conclusion of Pengate.

When we got inside, we couldn't let go of the whole pen incident. So when our waitress took our drink order (naturally, Phillyist had camped out in the bar area upstairs at the Factory so as to avoid any and all teenagers in attendance), we had to ask, "What the hell is up with the 'no pens' rule?" Apparently, at a recent Roots show, a bunch of morons tagged up the bathrooms and backstage area. Seriously, people are idiots. We then explained that we were press and the pen had some sentimental value and yadda yadda yadda. So she went and got one of the security managers. When we explained what happened, the manager told us the guy who searched our bag was new and doing everything by the book. Clearly, "by the book" is synonymous with "by abandoning all common sense." But shortly thereafter, the waitress (who understood our frustration and was really good-natured about the whole thing) brought back our pen, with a friendly, tongue-in-cheek word of caution: "Don't tag anything."

So now we could concentrate on the music. Frankly, we wished Pengate had taken a few minutes longer, because once we got the pen back, we had to listen to Weatherbox. We won't say anything more about them, except that their frontman may have been the worst vocalist we've ever heard. He's certainly up there.

Finally, The Honorary Title took the stage. Within about three minutes, two things became very obvious: (1) The Honorary Title was too good to be on this bill, and (2) the Electric Factory remains the worst music venue in the city. Seriously, it's at the point now where we're shocked when the sound quality isn't complete crap. But the important thing is the band, and the Honorary Title is good. Really good. They kept us bobbing our heads during the up-tempo songs and quietly listening during the couple slow songs of their set. Unfortunately, the audience at the Factory clearly didn't appreciate how good they are, which is why we say the band was too good for the bill. The audience was almost entirely 13-to-18-year-olds (at least that's how it appeared when we looked down at the people standing on the floor, and the bar area was emptier than most other shows we've been to at the Factory) who were there to see Cartel, and they had neither the inclination nor, we suspect, the taste level, to wrap themselves around The Honorary Title's sound. Plus, the thoughtful emotion of The Honorary Title's more mellow songs got completely swallowed up in the vertical space of the Factory.

Over the course of the band's set, Editor Jill and this Phillyist were passing a notepad back and forth with our thoughts. (We had to make it look like we threw a fit over our pen for more than just principle.) Among the sentiments about the Honorary Title were two thoughts that sum up our feelings on them. First, they're probably about one album away from putting out a real indie-to-mainstream breakthrough, something on the order of Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism. And second, we can't wait to see them again... at someplace not called the Electric Factory.

Image via Flickr user Superconnector.