Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Melkweg, 19 February

Last night was Show Two of our Insane Pile of Concerts - Spring 2006, the first being Caesar about a week before in the Patronaat in Haarlem, which was good, though the crowd was a bit sparse and we kept being bugged by a drunken group that wanted to stand front and center and then lean over the stage to stare up at the guitarists or just talk away with each other. Hello, the band can see and hear you, you know. Anyway. So, yes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are a big hype from last year and this show sold out quite a few weeks ago. I was interested to see what they'd be like live, or to find out what the band even looked like. But first, the opener...

The opener was a band called Dr. Dog, which didn't sound too promising, but we listened to some mp3's during the afternoon and they seemed weird enough to be interesting. And they luckily were. There was a high level of facial hair and crappy sunglasses and funky stage moves and silly backup vocals. I think they gained the crowd's favour.

Oh yes, this was my first concert where I was wearing earplugs. I am officially an Old Fart. But it must be done. The Caesar show was quite loud and my ears were buzzing quite a lot by the end of the opener's set. By the time Caesar were done, my ears had a white-noise hiss going on that lasted a couple of days. Not good. So I got earplugs. It is nice to not have all this ringing or buzzing in your ear when you stick your ear against your pillow and are trying to sleep after a show. But wearing earplugs is certainly not the same as not having them. You hear yourself when you talk, so you never know if you are talking at the right volume to someone, which means you might be shouting during some quieter lull. You also hear yourself hum. Not that I hum much to songs live, but I do sometimes, and usually it's just lost in all the noise, but with earplugs you hear yourself as much as the band. I want to look into other earplug types, surely there must be ones specifically made for rock shows (Steven, if you have info on this, let me know).

Another thing: standing about two people in front of me was the Dutch Adam Brody, but this guy was even more emo geek with ubiquitous square black glasses. I don't mind Adam Brody, so this guy in the crowd was someone to look at every once in awhile, or more, while waiting for Clap Your Hands...

So yes, the main band... They were quite fun, though they seemed to only really enjoy it in the encore. Maybe it was because all but one of them didn't smile much, so they didn't seem to be enjoying themselves much. The one who did smile a lot, a guitar/keyboard player, was almost overexuberant. He was bouncing around, smiling, all the time, all "I'm in a band! And we're playing in AmsterDAM! Whoooo!" But it was rather sweet. I slowly realized that the other guitarist/keyboard player and the bassist are twin brothers. I dunno, it took me awhile to notice. O hadn't noticed either, then I pointed it out and I see him glancing back and forth across the stage and thinking "Ahhh... They are..." Bassist Twin Brother was more keen though to break a smile than the other twin, plus he said we were terrific, so we like Bassist Twin more. The lead singer looked way different than I imagined, and the band had a lot less beards than I thought they would have, but I dunno why I thought they had beards.

They played most of their first album, plus a few new songs, including a song with the chorus of "Satan, Satan, Satan..." which O has a live mp3 of. They ended their encore with what I feel must have been a cover, and members of Dr. Dog came back on stage to sing and play a few things. It was a great show. Photos are beginning to appear on O's page.

Next up: Two Gallants on the 28th.