By CHRIS PACKHAM
Irony-core rock combo The Dandy Warhols, named for beloved and influential mid-20th century pop artist Grandma Moses, played at Lawrence's magnificent and terrifying Liberty Hall Friday night until the stroke of curfew. After the jump, a review of that concert. Click here or on precious national treasure Grandma Moses:
The Dandy Warhols were discovered in Portland, Oregon in the early 1990s, back when all the record label A&R departments relocated to the Pacific Northwest and promoted grunge acts while snorting coke all up inside their disgusting noses. Then they realized that pre-adolescent boy bands were willing to take their shirts off in the privacy of record label offices in exchange for recording contracts. Those people were never captured and MAY BE LIVING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD, STRANGER DANGER, YOU GUYS. Meanwhile, the Dandy Warhols are still performing and recording and being generally awesome, having just issued their first independent release, Earth to the Dandy Warhols. Here they are:
I think that's Courtney Taylor on the right. Due to some unfortunate circumstances during a failed weekend attempt at underwater photography, I no longer have a digital camera, a Klieg light or a trained helper monkey. Fortunately, master lensman Scott Spychalski took this series of photos for The Pitch. Instead, I produced this rendering of the band from memory the morning after the show:
Pictured: Zia McCabe, Brent De Boer, Courtney Taylor, Peter Holmström.
And here is an accurate rendering of the fat girl who stood behind me FUCKING SCREAMING CONTINUOUSLY for the duration of the entire show:
I've added the adult diaper and the wavy stink-lines coming from her butt as an artistic liberty which, while fictive, I think really convey an essential truth about this girl. Oh, real quick: I don't take notes WHILE I'M ROCKING, so at first, I was going to say that if you're the kind of pedant who demands the set list for the entire show, I've got just the Website for you, my friend. But after reconsidering, I decided that the interests of journalistic scrupulousness might not best be served by my hip, freewheeling Christian youth minister style, so for true Dandies completists who want to assemble a DANDY LAWRENCE 2008 iTunes playlist, here is Friday's Dandy Warhols set list.
HAHAHA! Sucker. Okay, seriously, if you want to know exactly which songs they played, in exact order, you can read that list right here.
HAHAHA! SRSLY, did you know that the word "gullible" is totally not listed at Dictionary.com? Anyway, early in their set — which included a number of songs in a particular order — the band played fave track "We Used to be Friends," from Welcome to the Monkeyhouse, perhaps better-known among pre-adolescent CW viewers as the theme to canceled teen detective drama Veronica Mars, starring Kristin Bell. Here are the opening credits from Season 1:
Unloading the song so early in the evening was an unusual choice given Taylor's expressed contempt for people that like his band's music, about which more later, because right now, I want to address his qualifications for the important position of dynamic front-man: Courtney Taylor is a very, very qualified dynamic front-man, practically demanding audience attention, funny and charismatic onstage. Whichever high school vocational guidance counselor suggested Taylor would make a good rock star was similarly awesome at his job, seriously, way to go with that. Also, Taylor is very handsome in the face. Looking at it will make you feel bad about your face, and rightly so. So there's that, too.
Over the course of the evening, Taylor expounded on the theme of audience expectations, making fun of the crowd at Liberty Hall for actually liking Dandy Warhols songs. So, great. Now I'm the dick for liking "Smoke It" and "Bohemian Like You" and "Minnesoter." Even though I'm admittedly completely "in the tank" for the Dandy Warhols and wish them nothing but the fanciest restaurants and maid turn-down service life has to offer, that is just nothing but a bunch of lame Sting-ass bullshit. Elderly lute-playing cocksucker Sting bitches a lot in interviews about having to play "Roxanne" in concert. Specifically, he bitches about audiences who have the temerity to be familiar with his dreadful recording catalog and asking to hear specific songs from that catalog. Similarly, throughout the Dandy Warhols show, people kept shouting out various favored song titles. Here is a picture, drawn from memory, of the monstrous parasitic twin growing out of the abdomen of the fat girl who stood screaming behind me for the entire show, asking to hear "Godless" from Odditorium Thirteen Tales, heh:
Here is Courtney Taylor responding to the hideous Belial-like parasitic twin:
Compared to my soul-sucking job — I manage the evening staff at a payday loan outlet — playing "Godless" in front of an audience looks pretty fucking awesome and fun. I realize maybe Taylor feels like a monkey dancing for quarters whenever he has to play the songs the crowd loves most, but goddamn, if you put up a poster of a dancing monkey and then charge me admission to see it, that monkey had better dance for my amusement, LADIES, AM I RIGHT?
But the band did, indeed, play "Minnesoter" and "Godless" and "Horse Pills" and just about every other song I wanted to hear, closing out what Taylor described as a "tidy two hours" without an encore, owing to the train-schedule-in-Nazi-Germany-grade efficiency of the management at Liberty Hall, and their imperative to empty the venue ten minutes before Lawrence's curfew. Although before exiting the stage, awesome keyboardist Zia McCabe, on whom my special lady developed a "girl crush" over the course of the show, sang a very, very charming a capella lullaby on the theme of the flower tattoo on a toe on her left foot. Final score: ONE HUNDRED MAGNIFICENT POPCORN BAGS.
Chris Packham is the co-founder of the National Heritage Eagle Free Trade Enterprise Policy Research and Analysis Institute, a contributing fellow to the Global Capital Markets Economic Quarterly and planner of erotic lingerie parties. He writes Daily Briefs on the Pitch group blog.
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I really liked the humor in your review.. Those were great pictures.. though I do hope people realise that the Dandys are not at all mean to their fans and some of the kindest people in music..
why did i not go to lawrence to see this? le sigh. great review. having seen the dandys multiple times over the years, sounds like a great set
I always pushed for including artist renderings in my show reviews 'cause I can't take pictures for shit and you made me dreamz reality. Thank you for the music, CP.
What a total dick you are.
I don't know, my overall impression from reading this was you liked the music, liked the band, and highly recommend we all check them out. Which I am planning to do.
Loved the drawings -- especially the Courtney one.
I honestly thought Courtney was being sarcastic at the show and then I blew it up into a big exaggerated caricature, like a total dick, obvs.
Ha, ha. That is a really funny review.
There was for sure a misunderstanding.....
We all love to play Godless and we like playing requests.
The only time we don't is if we don't know it or we run out of time.
But I won't hold it against you because your so funny and I love your drawings.
rock on, Zia
Ha, ha. That is a really funny review.
There was for sure a misunderstanding.....
We all love to play Godless and we like playing requests.
The only time we don't is if we don't know it or we run out of time.
But I won't hold it against you because your so funny and I love your drawings.
rock on, Zia
Your drawings look a lot better than my photos...low lighting. That girl was behind me to the left screaming...great review.
1)Courtney has never had a negative word about people liking our music.
2)We have about 120 songs now and we can't play them all in a 2 hour show.
3)Godless is on "thirteen tales".
I really like the drawing of the four of us. Nice work man.
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