SO MUCH YYT

Another day, another night at YYT. To the much appreciated recommendation from Frank da Tank, I went to see the Maybe Taiwan... live at YYT tonight. The three bands were The Pairs (which have gotten much attention recently), Birdstriking and of course, the headliner--BoyzandGirl.

Described as a punk duo, this band consisting of a guitarist and drummer, have been playing a lot of shows recently. I think this was the third or so time in like 2 weeks. In any case, this band is definitely not something I like. I think they are pretty good trolls to be honest. The drummer plays with just a floor tom, bass drum, hihat, ride(i think), and snare. The guitarist had her sound set to already pretty high gain on the Marshall and her main effect, a Boss DS-1, was pretty much set with all knobs max. In the first song the drummer, who is also the vocalist, was screaming indiscriminately into the mic and sticking it into his mouth at some points WTF. The second song began with him standing on top of the bass drum and he was just screaming random shit again and hitting the floor tom while standing on the bass drum. For their last song, he even brought the floor tom and the hihat into the crowd and let the crowd play along with him. Troll much?

Birdstriking, a band from beijing, was really quite good. This punk rock/noise band has a good bit of ambient feel going on. The guitarist has a lot of pedals, and uses them pretty well. He also used two mics. One with no effect and the other into some kind of echo for a really interesting vocal. This band, unfortunately, wasn't powerful enough. They couldn't do it. Despite this, I would definitely like to hear more of this band. Too bad it seems like most bands here don't sell merchandise after their lives.

BOYZANDGIRL. Man, as I said many times before, I really like post-rock a lot more live and mostly only live. Recordings often times just don't do it. Everything sounded way better live than it did in the recording. When they opened, I pretty much was already into the music. Jumping and headbanging pretty much by myself. By the third song I look back and OMFG THEY DID IT they were TOO POWERFUL. Fucking Sing for China, man. Even birdstriking, who were gonna leave, came back to see why it suddenly got so live-ly. Jumping around pushing each other. THIS IS HOW IT"S SUPPOSED TO BE. At one point a guy hoisted a girl on his shoulder and was in the middle of the mosh like that. And at the beginning of the next song, Another guy had a guy ride his shoulder and there was an on land chicken fight LOL. The show was pretty fucking awesome. Though I do think the vocals could've been more forward. It was barely audible. Everything else had a pretty good balance though. At one point also, I think the girl hurt her fretting hand, but the show went on. A trooper. They came back at the end for an encore, and I got one of the drumsticks the drummer threw into the crowd. :D