"Music is a higher revelation than philosophy."
-- composer Ludwig van Beethoven
With an aircraft carrier parked outside, the Presidents of the United States of America played a whole lot of music at the Pensacola Bayfront Auditorium, May 11, 1996. In case you don't know, the Presidents are the three-man, five-string band that made it big with "Lump" (now Weird Al's "Gump").
At first, I thought I had made a mistake and entered the theater for the Muppet Show. The average age must have been around thirteen, and I swear there were some eight-year-olds walking around. Those darn kids! All the old folks (twentysomethings) were hanging around the beer corral, where they quickly ran out of Budweiser. Zima or Bud Lite? Aaaaaaaaa!
'cuz there's a million better bands
with a million better songs
PUSA is from Seattle, and I guess they thought it would be cool to give some other Seattle bands a chance. Their two opening acts were both Seattle bands. They both sucked. One had one decent song, "Beer Money," and the rest was pretty sloppy and uninspired.
The audience was cool most of the time, high-energy of course. Lots of body surfing, three or four people at any given time. The temperature was about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and everyone was jumping and slamming and so forth, so everyone was drenched in sweat.
There were a few annoyances: someone threw a bolt at the guitarist, causing him to stop the show and bitch for a minute, and some dudes who looked more appropriate to a Skynyrd concert started moshing with the primary goal of hurting people. An unusual number of people had to be carted out of the place, one woman apparently falling from the balcony, and several others that looked like they were suffering from heat stroke or something.
PUSA's lead singer has a habit of starting off every song by saying, "This is a song about ...". They played their entire current album except for two songs ("Body" and "Candy"), plus a good wallop of new songs and covers.
They led off with their awesome rendition of "Kick Out The Jams," then jumped into their bug trilogy consisting of "Boll Weevil," "Bug City" ("this is a song about a stay-out-all-night-and-party bug") and "Dune Buggy."
They do some great covers, putting a raw edge on classics like "Video Killed the Radio Star" ("this is a song about how video killed the radio star"). It's obvious that they love music and love playing music. They're also very technically proficient, despite limiting themselves to three-string guitar and two-string bass.
They suprised me and did all their hits in the first portion of their show -- "Lump," "Kitty" and "Peaches" ("this is a song about something you have in your kitchen"). Didn't save anything for the encore, which is kind of cool for a change.
The encore was more like a second set. They must have played another ten songs. PUSA definitely rocks -- if you like the CD, you'll like the concert.
Old man on the back porch
Old man on the back porch
Old man on the back porch and that
Old man is me