The Dirty Blondes, Cooleoke, And Dino Bravo At Club Metronome August 21, 2014

Words by Tim Lewis.

I had a great time seeing music last Thursday, challenge as it was. The Dirty Blondes were set to play at Club Metronome at 10, and my radio show goes from 9-11 at Wbkm Dot Org, which is just a couple of doors down Main st. I created the show, checked with the guys at the station, learned how to record my breaks and how to put them into the queue. I got the whole show lined up and went to the live rock show. I arrived just before 10 and chatted with Jeff LaBossiere and S.e. Wardfor a bit. Somewhere after 10:30, the Blondes hit the stage. With two singers, and both of them in good voice, the band kicked out a killer set of their furious rock songs. From the opening notes of Burn, through fun instrumental runs in Jacking Off and Crybaby, to the rising anthems of Hallelujah and Oh Dirty Blondes, and the blistering punk of Scorned Woman and Too Drunk, the played their hearts out. Rebecca Rogers and Diane Sullivan co-commanded the stage, as Jesse ripped out some killer leads and Chris Clark and Ornan McLean drove the rhythm. There’s still some guitar parts missing, but they did a great job rocking the audience hard. Late in the set they pulled out one of my favorites, Ornan’s song, then did the cover of Turn Back Time. They wrapped the night with That New Guy Is Not James Bond.  Moments after the show ended, I zipped back to the the radio station to stop the recording of my show. Everything I lined up had played out and it was back to regular programming. Feeling like I had everything taken care of, I went back to Metronome in time to catch Jason Cooley take the stage. BE AGGRESSIVE were supposed to play, but cancelled, so they got Jason to do his Cooleoke show, where he plays songs on his iPod and sings over them. He sang his heart out on songs like Unchained, Looks That Kill, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, and a few others. I like hearing him sing, and he has lots of energy on stage, but the lack of band interaction held back my full interest.  Time had slipped later and later and it was close to 12:30 when Dino Bravo hit the stage. They played a killer set of heavy rock music. Due to the late hour the audience had dwindled a bit, but those who stayed were rocked hard. They played all of their usual songs, a couple of covers and pulled out an older Dino Bravo VTsong, bottleneck, that Jeff had never played with them. It struck a memory from the first note and I had forgotten how much I liked the song. As the set headed towards its conclusion, they played a killer version of Song About The Ocean. They wrapped the night with a version of Strawberry Blonde that had some killer harmony guitars from Matthew Stephen Perry and Chris Farnsworth, ripping bass from Josh Shedaker and Jeff’s driving drums. I was tired, yet deliriously happy. I headed back to the station, picked up my backpack, and took the short walk home. It was quite a challenging night, but I’m so glad I put in the effort and learned how to do something new. It felt weird not being live on the radio, so I will only ever do that when needed, but it’s nice to have the option.

This post was originally published by Tim Lewis at his personal blog, https://timstriangletribune.wordpress.com.