song performed: “Air Traffic Control” from the album Slick Dogs and Ponies
conan’s reaction: “thank you for coming back *shakes james hand*, great to see you again *shakes jason hand* thanks for doing it, excellent *shakes brian hand, combs over his beard* I’m liking it, louis the xiv everybody, we’ll take a break, we’ll be right back, stick around *claps once then shakes violin hands*”
Beards are in dude.
Back in 2001, if you lived in Clairemont, listened to indie rock 92.1 fm - then you were fed bits of a band called Convoy. This was San Diego scene and it had a cool thing going on. Well, Convoy disbanded a short while after and was reborn as a perv-friendly Louis XIV - a glam hungry, desperation seeking, alt stripper friendly band that basically sang about sex (see “Finding Out That True Love is Blind”).
Tonight they are dressed up all fancy with shiny black pants and antique vests. The performance starts off with two guys playing a dissonant chord on their violins. A bit strange, but soon comes in the angry distorted guitar that louis loves. I was confused, in the beginning, as one of the violin guys looks just like their drummer so I was seeing magic tricks (why would you do that? probably just to get me to go back and forth on the DVR - jerks).
drummer mark is bright blonde in similar black shirt as the violinist and plays his skins with his whole arm, very drum corp like. jason and brian share vocals on this one with jason’s vocals much more gritty and theatrical and brian’s vocals sounding a bit teen swoony. However, Brian has probably one of the coolest beard-fedora combos I’ve seen on Conan. There are notes of Hasidism there, but his beard wins, beating out both Conan and bandmate Jason’s beard. I think it helps his voice sound clearer, though there are moments where things are a bit out of tune.
Brian does look a bit jack of all trades, singing, playing guitar, and double stack organ. All he needs is to play hi-hat with his foot and he’s a circus clown (one of those sad ones). The song is short and dramatic, and there are times where noise was registered more than tune, but it’s a nice progression for this band.
playing:
2.4 showbox at the market - seattle
2.5 commodore ballroom - vancouver
2.6 roseland theater - portland
2.8 warfield theatre - s.f.
2.9 the wiltern - l.a.
2.10 h.o.b. - anaheim
