Author Archives: tim

Rogue Wave
Landlocked Records
Bloomington, Indiana, 24 June 2006

Just a day before their stop at the Desdemona Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio, Rogue Wave treated a sizeable, and diverse audience in Bloomington to an intimate and enjoyable acoustic performance.

The band invited the audience to sit and relax, creating a mellow, story-time atmosphere that lent itself tremendously to the band’s sound – which rests somewhere between Simon and Garfunkel, The Shins, Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens. Ranging in age from six and 3/7 (the band asked) to around 40, the audience called out their favorites from Out Of The Shadows, Descend Like Vultures, and laughed at the band’s humorous banter.
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This year marked my sixth (though not sixth consecutive) trip to Kevin Lyman’s Warped Tour. In its twelfth year, I expected the day to closely follow the format of past outings – kids with funny haircuts, piercing and tattoos getting dehydrated and sunburned while taking in all manner of musical act and extreme athlete. That is exactly what I saw.

Hellogoodbye, a favorite of last season’s MTV Real World cast, goofed their way through a very theatrical, though not tremendously musical performance. Bassist Marcus Cole and keyboardist Jesse Kurvink, who were dressed as mustard and Pinocchio respectively (I think), blasted their young and enthusiastic crowd with silly string repeatedly though they barely touched their instruments for minutes at a time. Singer Forrest Kline, who was dressed like a senior citizen sang, “What is love/Baby don’t hurt me/Don’t hurt me, no more,” through a “talk box” along with the pre-programmed beats. I might have been more impressed had I never seen or heard Reggie And The Full Effect, and perhaps many of the younger attendees in their audience hadn’t. While their performance was affable, it wasn’t one of the day’s best.
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