...the third and FINAL Texas is the Reason reunion show! (This was one of my most favorite bands back in the mid-90s). The show was incredible. So good to finally hear those songs live 10 years later!
Fiasco was followed by one of the worst bands I've ever seen. Normally, I wouldn't have remembered their name, but since they're drummer broke one of the cardinal rules of rock and wore his own band's t-shirt on stage, I can now happily inform you that the worst band I've ever seen play a show in NYC was called Monument.
The singer was like the poor man's Scott Stapp (from Creed). And considering that fact that the real Scott Stapp is already the poor man's version of Scott Stapp, that's saying a lot.
The concept of the video was great. It was sort of a Bradbury-esque sci-fi story about a groupie who's so in love with the Brandon (the lead singer) that she orders a robotic clone of him (er, or something).
We ended up stumbling into some bar called Carney's. There was an awesome cover band called
The Union playing. After playing a few more songs, the band took a break and I went up and asked their female singer if they'd let me sing a song with them. She was like "Sure, what song?" When I asked if they knew "Don't Stop Believing" she was like "Yup, we know it. If you can hit all the notes, it's all you." (And by the way, this was years before this song was used in the Sopranos finale! Fuck all you Johnny-come-lately Journey fans!)
Doubling up for the big outro. This was probably one of my most favorite accidental karaoke moments. (In fact, it's probably only eclipsed by the time that Seth and I ended up accidentally karaoking with Tracey Morgan back in 2003!)
When the band got back on stage, they called me up to sing! "Don't Stop" is pretty much one of the best karaoke songs of all time and one of the few times that I actually don't mind that fact that I was pretty much born with a woman's voice. Check out the singer all like "Holy shit, this guy's a eunuch!"
...so Grant walked around the room and then headed back towards the table and I took a picture of him while also managing to get a better of Captain Longbeard. (What's that you ask? Why did we play this whole stupid game instead of just walking right up to Longbeard and taking a photo? Well that's because...er, wait. Nevermind).
A band from New Jersey was setting their gear up on the stage, so we decided to stick around and check out their first song (because they had a bunch of cute girls standing around waiting to see them...so how bad could they be, right?).
...gone. (Can you see the sunset from the Southside?) Afterwards, I watch Matt's band for the first time, but it was pitch dark by then and all the pics I took on my tiny camera didn't come out very goood).
Back in their original hey-day, Lifetime was (in)famous for playing sets that were only 15-minutes long. This time around, they had a whole new record of material and played for almost a half-hour!
