Concert Review: Dear and the Headlights

This is gonna be a two part post since both of the things I'm going to write about are fairly short.

On Friday I was able to catch Track Nine's discovery of the year for 2007, Dear and the Headlights, live at a show here. This was the second time I've seen them now, as some of you might recall Kyle and I caught them in Pittsburgh back in August. These guys are still a very young band, and they've come a long ways in 6 months. Back in August I thought their live performance lacked confidence and cohesion, basically they looked like a band that hadn't played much together.

That wasn't the case Friday, as they gave an energetic and tight performance in front of a hometown crowd, and overall really just put on a good show. They also played quite a few new songs which will be appearing on their next album which I believe they've already started recording. The new songs sounded good on first listen, nothing too surprising, although it sounded like their next album will be a little more experimental.

They're hitting the road with Jimmy Eat World soon for what should be a good tour. Check the dates at their myspace page.

The show itself was a local showcase so most of the other acts were pretty unknown. We missed the first 3 acts, but still managed to catch 4 (why anyone would put 7 bands on a bill I have no idea, but that's besides the point) of them. Of those the only band that I saw some potential in was an indie group Yellow Minute. Their performance was a mix of indie, electronica, and pop stylings with a little acoustic flair thrown in, and I thought they played pretty well. The only 2 songs on their myspace page are acoustic ones so that doesn't give you a real good idea of their performance, but I believe they're working on an EP right now, and I think there's some potential down the road for these guys.

Ok the other thing I am going to post about was from Sunday when I went to see the movie Semi Pro starring Will Ferrell. It was your basic Will Ferrell movie in which they script the whole movie around some goofy character they invent for him, and all in all it was pretty bad, but I had low expectations so I didn't mind. But there was a bright side, in that it featured a great soundtrack full of soul/funk tunes. Since I didn't have any songs to post from the earlier part, I'll just share a few of my favorite tracks from the movie.

Tower of Power - So Very Hard To Go

In all honesty not one of my favorite Tower songs, but still a good one. I've been getting into these guys a lot lately, and hopefully I can dedicate a full post to them sometime in the near future.

Curtis Mayfield - Move On Up

This is a classic, and even if you don't recognize the original, you'll most likely recognize it as the sample from Kanye West's song "Touch the Sky".

Sly & The Family Stone - Que Sera, Sera (Whatever will be)

I know everyone knows the song, but I had never heard this funky version from Sly and friends. One listen to their soulful rendition of the chorus had me hooked.