Saturday was the Nameless Highland's Joy Division/Ian Curtis tribute show. The club was packed from the beginning, and it didn't let up. There were quite a few people that I haven't seen before, which was nice. I only caught a bit of openers Re-Nirvana and Bad FM.
Joyside was, well, Joyside. These guys are all right, and their Stooges inspired drunken punk has some good parts, but I just can't get into them that much. Saturday's show was one of their better ones, though.
After that was an interesting new act, Xanadu (仙都); this four piece mixed live bass, drums, and guitar with samples. Most of the samples were from Twenty-Four Hour Party People keeping the Ian Curtis theme going. It's a shame that they had only limited success - it definitely sounded like their first time out, especially the guitarist and the unfortunately off key warbling of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by the woman working the sampler. I hope they stick with it, though, and find their direction.
新裤子 (New Pants) used to be a pop-punk outfit. There songs were catchy, and their audiences were always full of college girls bopping their heads. But sometime in the last few months they've morphed into a disco band, of all things. Their drummer has been replaced by a Bono-style sunglass-wearing synth/sampler player and hype man. In between bouts of looking detached he'd grab the mic and yell "Let's go!" while throwing his free hand up in the air. The rest of the band didn't seem to know what to do with this new style; they're not going into all out dancepunk or mutant disco mode, and they seem to be half ironic and half sincere. I can only hope that future shows will include less finger pointing into the audience. Or more.
Finishing off the night were my favorites, 重塑雕像的权利 (Rebuilding the Rights of Statues). While the other bands nobly gave Joy Division covers a try, Hua Dong & Co. were the only ones that could even come close. After four impassioned covers, they went into a set of their own songs. And Saturday might have been the only time I've seen a local band with not even an EP to their name get such a response from the crowd that they played an encore song. Good job, guys.
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