Le Tigre (8/6/05)




There are the bands I see because I really like the music, but there are other bands I see because of the crowd they attract, in combination with the venue. I saw Le Tigre because of the latter. I never knew much about them, but I've heard of them quite a bit over the years. When I found out they would be playing at Peabody's (another place "in my hood") I was instantly intrigued. You can see my (brief) previous post about seeing them.

I wasn't sure about going to the show until a couple days before, besides I had nothing else planned. I started doing my typical research to better familiarize myself with them. I was also talking with Brad Walsh about how excited he was about the show, so it was cool to get such a validation on it being worthy.

I got there and had to wait in line to get in. Instantly I knew I was going to be spending a night with the "cool kids," and the audience that night didn't disappoint, they were quite cool. My only previous experiences with Peabody's were for (very) random appearances during some seriously-hard core punk/rock. I always liked those experiences because it was like stepping into a parallel universe, seeing what the hard-core youth of Cleveland was up to.

So I missed the opening act by not getting there until 10:30pm. Once I got in, I was lucky enough to grab a seat at the bar closest to the stage. I knew right away that this crowd was going to exceed my expectations. This was apparent when I sat down at the bar next to a "couple" who were obviously not there for the music. The girl was a young black female and the guy being an older guido-type. Instantly I knew something was up. Turns out she's a 21 yo prostitute who was with this guy who thought she was only 15 or 16. She then proceeded to ask me how long alcohol can be detected in your system. That was an interesting conversation.

Le Tigre came on stage and without knowing much about the band members, and I instantly thought that two of the members of the band were female and one was male. As the night went on, I fluctuated between thinking the gender of the third was male or female. I finally landed on the conclusion that they were male. Regardless, I was having a great time. Le Tigre reminded me of a band along the lines of Devo meets Sleeter-Kinney. When they started singing the song about butch lesbian visibility, I realized that I wish I was closer to the stage.

If I had been closer, I may have realized (as I later found out) that all three members of the band were female. ;)
Check them out yourself. Here is their photo album at Flickr.
Here is a clip from the show:



Posted: Sat - October 15, 2005 at 10:46 PM           |

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