But I wasn’t about to miss Obits. What a kick-ass rock band! It was weird to see them on the huge 930 stage playing in front of a mostly oblivious crowd. On paper (or screen) it seems like Obits would be a great band to open for Ted Leo — both bands play melodic, smart, punky tunes, and in fact while I was watching Obits I was thinking that Ted Leo could easily cover these songs. But something seemed to keep the crowd from fully embracing Obits (and vice versa). I got the impression that the Ted Leo fans liked it, but were also antsy for the main act. This is the fate of every opening act at a place as big as the 930.

Of course I was already a huge fan, and I managed to watch them from almost right in front of the stage while I waited for other friends to show up at the club. They played a couple of new songs that I didn’t recognize, and for the first time they didn’t play “Back and Forth” which is their cheesy/dumb/awesome pop song, but they just slayed on “Milk Cow Blues.” There was a problem with the sound, though, and I thought that the guitars were out of balance — Rick Froberg’s was too loud and Sohrab Habibion’s was too quiet.

I actually chatted to Froberg after the show for a few minutes, he was hanging around outside the 930 Club and I just wanted to tell him how rad it was. He mentioned that he wasn’t super thrilled about playing a “concert” rather than a “show.” Other nights on their tour were “shows” but the show at the 930 was more of a “concert.” I knew what he meant. I agreed. Obits are not a “concert” kind of band but they seem to be better each time I see them. I reckon at least a handful of the Ted Leo fans were won over.

Anyway, speaking of Ted Leo fans…

Well, really what is there to say? I don’t want to be an elitist ass always mumbling to the side, all, “I remember when Ted Leo lived here and was playing solo shows every other day, where did all these annoying young internet-based fans come from, blah blah blah.” But I will just mention how odd it is that Ted Leo is pretty much the only musician who crossed over into the post-millennial indie scene successfully from a certain time and era of indie/hardcore/post-hardcore DC/east coast music. Phew — what a mouthful. It makes sense to me. I mean he is basically the only semi-popular musician with roots in hardcore, I guess. Also he has James Canty back in the Pharmacist fold, which is almost like Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse, or Nels Cline joining Wilco. Though I miss French Toast.

Anyway my point is just that I have weird conflicted feelings about latter-era Ted Leo stuff but I still love his music, admire him greatly as an individual, and keep listening to material from throughout his career. But I listened a fair number of times to the new TL/Rx album, The Brutalist Bricks and it hasn’t done a whole lot for me. It seems more punk-rock than some of his other albums, and seems impassioned, but little of it really grips me except maybe for “Bottled in Cork” which is the latest in a long series of Ted Leo songs about traveling in the world.

Anyhow the show was fun, drawing heavily on the new album and touching on pretty much all the other Ted Leo albums. They didn’t play too much of the good stuff from the mid-era albums but they did a ton of old songs from Tyranny of Distance which was enjoyable. For an encore Ted did a solo cover of the Waterboys and at the very end, as things seemed about to wrap up, I was thinking to myself “it would be cool with all these old songs if they would end on ‘Stove by a Whale’” and that is exactly what they did! Cool — certainly took me back.

I can’t find much in the way of vids or photos from the show but it’s not like the internet needs much more Ted Leo stuff anyway. But here is a photo snagged from essgee on flickr:

I have been a fan since the old days, and the last time I saw Ted was at Operation : Ceasefire, a huge antiwar rally a couple years ago, and I didn’t really enjoy it. That was my first Ted Leo concert in several years, since before I left the country in 2002, and in the meantime he had gained a whole new contingent of fans who were a lot younger. Which is fine. But weird. And it annoyed me at the protest, because there were speakers talking about the war and the teenagers around me were shouting out “Ted Leo!!!!” instead of listening. And there were old folks there, little old ladies and such, who were there for the anti-war rally but the pumped-up Ted Leo fans were like, “who cares about them, it’s a punk show!”. Damn kids today… Anyhow I am sure the vast majority of his high school/MySpace fan club are great people, but I was a little leery of going to see him last week at the 930 because it seemed like he has gotten too popular and it just wouldn’t be the same as the old days when he was gigging at places like Fort Reno and DCCD.

However Ted and the Pharmacists were really awesome. I am surprised there are no youtube videos for the show — it seems like every sold-out concert is guaranteed to be on youtube these days — but you can listen to the whole show at NPR. And I found lots of reviews of the concert, so I don’t have to add my own. Suffice it to say that I liked it a lot.

And, as I was hoping/expecting, they closed with “Rappaport’s Testament”. Perfect.

Great flickr pictures abound, by the likes of:

Leafblower

and the semi-official NPR ones by Joel Didreksen: