Bitches. They just got back from Europe, according to a guy from one of the opening bands, and the singer's voice was acting up.

The two openers played anyway, though, for half price ($5!) which was cool. IMO:

Mt. Pleasent: meh. 2 piece with some nice hints of velvet underground and early modest mouse, but sans any energy whatsoever. Guitar player did not so much as switch the toggle knob on his guitar the entire show. Drum player, however, found a use for a different pair/style of sticks for every song -- propable, but not enough to carry the show.

Band of Horses: Very much blown away by these guys. Kind of seattle-spawned country spiced with flaming lips sauce. Frontman played a few songs on pedal steel with incredible sound (while sporting the GA dawgs hat, no less). Recently signed to subpop, album comes out in a month.

I wish there were more $5 shows in these parts. Reminds me of sweet lady Athens.

Once I went to see Mansun and when I got to the venue I found out it had been cancelled because "they got asked to play on Top of the Pops" and they had immediately flown down to London.

It's Okkervil River, not Okkerville River. Just sayin'.

they suck either way

This was funnier when Old KY called them "urge overkill river" on Colinswood.

A friend of mine and I drove to San Francisco to see XTC a long time ago, only to see CONCERT CANCELLED signs on the door.

That's about 4 hours of my life, gone.

Did I have an out-of-body experience? Was I hovering over your head, watching every second with a slack jaw? I recall being a little out of it that night, but I figured it was the beer.

Yeah, I went to the LA show on Saturday, and his voice was definitely acting up. Great fuckin' show, though. I'm sorry you had to miss out.

Best part is the venue had a disco dance party afterwards, so they had to be off the stage right after their set. Will came back onstage and explained that they wanted to play more songs but couldn't "due to the disco dance party." The crowd started chanting "One more song!" so the band went back onstage. At that point the venue cut their PA. Everyone kept chanting for one more song, but Will told us to quiet down and proceeded to play one last song totally acoustic without benefit of the place's sound. It was "Happy Hearts" and everyone sang along. A great capper to a really outstanding show.

Band of Horses was very impressive, too.

U-N-C-O-N-D-I-T-I-O-N-A-L L-O-V-E

that's pretty cool

Watermelon, did you sit thru mt. egypt (or mt. pleasent, whoever they were)? What really sucked about them was that i had finally conviced a less indie buddy of mine to come out to a show. This guy explicitly stated he wasn't interested in seeing just some "shitty indie bands." I assured him that it was going to be a good show.

When Okkervil cancelled and mt. egypt took the stage and started sucking it up, i thought it was setting the tone for the evening. I almost apologized to my buddy and left. thank god BoH picked up the slack.

I shoulda went to this show instead of Nada Surf on Saturday. There were too many shows on the same night.

I got there late and missed Mt. Egypt. Sounds like I didn't miss much, though.

Okkervil almost cancelled their LA show, too, because of his strep throat. And his voice was really gravelly and hoarse throughout the entire set. At a couple points I didn't think he was gonna make it.