Saturday, April 08, 2006

Certain Innuendos Make it So Hard To Be


Thursday night Kelli and I were sitting at a bar in anticipation. Last June, I bought the Abum Stairs and Elevators by the Heartless Bastards thanks to this article by NPR. While Kell was tramping around Europe, I listened to this album whenever I was in my car (which okay isn't that often). When she came back, I got around to sharing the album with her. When I found out that they were performing at Iota last month we were both ready to hear what I think is one of the most unique (and yet its not) rock voices of our generation.

The Heartless Bastards are a trio. Erika is vocals, guitar and writes the music. Mike is bass and Kevin plays drums. Erika has a "rock goddess" voice, a voice that is older than her 27 years, and you marvel how someone so petite (she's maybe 5'3") could have a voice so strong. The name came about when Mike and Erika were playing one of those video trivia games at a bar and an incorrect answer for the question "what is Tom Petty's band name?" was Heartless Bastards.

The Soledad Brothers opened up. Kelli had a crush on the sax player, I had a crush on the lead guitarist's hair. By the time the Bastards started playing, the place was 80% or 90% male. The funniest thing is that there was a huge line for the men's bathroom-no line for the women's bathroom. After halfway through the concert, the look on most of the guys place (the iota is a small, intimate club) was sheer adoration for Erika. As one drunk guy said, "she rocks, she sings, I'm in love." One of the coolest things about the Bastards is they don't look like rock-stars. Moby looks more like a rockstar than these three..their music however is better than almost anything played on DC101.

A couple of Mp3's of the "Bastards":

http://www.theheartlessbastards.com/HTMLobj-176/NewResolution.mp3

http://www.theheartlessbastards.com/HTMLobj-177/Onions.mp3