:: rock the tropics ::

WANT A PAIR OF RAINER MARIA TICKETS? E-mail me sometime before the show tomorrow (details below) and they're yours. Or if you want some company, offer to pick me up and take me, and we both get in for free. Whatever rocks your casbah. Courtesy of Spy-Fi Records, Sleepyhead's radio show, and the fact that I really, desperately need a car.

:: Unknown 7:43 PM [+] ::
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• Remember Rainer Maria :: This Saturday, September 29 at Churchill's. Doors open at 9 p.m., cost is a mere $8, supporting bands are The Rocking Horse Winner and The Remedy Session.

• Get prepped for the Hey Mercedes show on October 28: read their -- yep, the band's own -- blog! Are you wearing a wire?

• Scroll down to the bottom of the Gray Area (I think it deserves some caps at this point) and check out RtT's newest addition: the Indieblogs ring.

:: Unknown 1:23 AM [+] ::
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Hot dog! More good news:

The Anniversary
Friday, October 26
Freeze
909 East Cypress Creek Road
Fort Lauderdale
7:00 p.m.
$10

:: Unknown 7:13 PM [+] ::
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• Latest --and very exciting, in my humble opinion-- news! Thanks to Spy-Fi for the tipoff:

Hey Mercedes
with New End Original
Sunday, October 28
Respectable Street Café

Ex-members of Braid (call it Braid reincarnate) descend upon the peninsula, along with Jade Tree newbies New End Original. We are buckling our figurative seatbelts over a month in advance.

• The Faint :: Friday, September 21 :: Respectable Street Café

What to expect, live, from a band that, recorded, sounds like Alphaville unleashed from behind their synthesizers and 80s robo-garb? The crowd inside Respectable Street should've tipped me off: a far cry from the divey-punk bar I remembered, the space looked like an indie-glam fashion runway slash greasy martini bar, if you can picture that. Lots of sculpted hair, skinny pants, rolling eyes. We missed the opening bands (Now It's Overhead and Mind Like Water), but were just in time to grab an overpriced beer and crowd ourselves into the back of the floor area, pressed between the bar and the soundboard. We were probably the first people to realize that the sudden cutoff mid-first song wasn't actually planned, as the cheering crowd seemed to think, but a technical problem of some sort. A blown fuse, in fact. The band took a break, very graciously, without complaining or diva antics, and the crowd milled or thoughtlessly steered back towards the bar.

A repeated song and another blown fuse later, The Faint were back. They played a relatively short (less than 45 minutes), relatively unenthusiastic set. I still can't decide whether the lack of energy was the band's fault, the blown fuses' fault, or the crowd's fault, but I suspect it was mainly a combination of the latter two. Maybe the gobs of hair gel were bogging the kids down, who knows. Or maybe the technical problems zapped the band's energy as well as the power. A mystery. Still, the combination made for an oddly innocuous performance. A couple of sparks exploded (not literally, thank goodness) with "Worked Up So Sexual," a crowd favorite, but that's about it. And there wasn't even a chance for an encore: the band announced the last song, played it, and scuttled off the stage; a few seconds later, the lights brightened and the show was over. Still, in those critical seconds between the end and the lights, not a peep from the audience. No wonder. I would've made a run for the scotch, too.

Bottom line: A performance worthy of an 80s-era, robo-garbed, somewhat more sexual Alphaville. Driven behind their synthesizers by a nonchalant crowd, which no amount of sex could've possibly worked up. And nobody sassy enough to scream for an encore of "Sex Dwarf" to close off the night on an up note. Sigh. Wake up, South Florida!

•Sidenote: Har Mar Superstar, featuring the cousin of my current indie crush / superhero, Sean Na Na (that is, Sean Tillmann), played a couple of dates in Northern Florida just a day or two ago. Did you go? Tell me! Inquiring, crushing minds want to know. Write me a review and I'll post it here on the site. (In fact, write me a review of just about anything and I'll post it on the site.) Or just tell me, "off the record," how it went.

• Last thing: Make me happy: Sign up for Rock the Tropics updates. Write down your e-mail address and click "join" (on the left, in the gray area -- gotta love the gray area).

:: Unknown 4:10 PM [+] ::
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