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Archive for February, 2009

Mike Doughty and the City Winery

Saturday, February 14th, 2009

Getting Back to the Music
Right around New Years, I discovered and began to use LastFM pretty heavily. I was formerly a Pandora user, but lately, interrupt ads have been really pissing me off, so I made the switch.

Now, the two web radio giants certainly each have their strengths, but one of the coolest things I’ve been enjoying on LastFM is the tour tracker. When a group/artist in your library is on tour, you can see where they’re going, which may actually lead to me seeing some live performances for a change.

The first instance of this was a show that I found when adding a song from Mike Doughty to my library. The on-tour tag showed up next to his name, and I thought, “huh, I wonder if he’s coming to NYC soon?” Turns out he’d be in the West Village in just 2 days at the City Winery. Huzzah! I decided I was going, and rounded up one of my more musically inclined friends to accompany me.

The City Winery
The city Winery is, to me, a very strange venue. The places is clearly meant to give the impression of a reasonably high-end wine bar, as evidenced by the drink prices and the seating arrangements, but there is something a little off about this cavernous locale. In any case, it turned out that the only tickets that were affordable at $20 were for barstools along the back of the room, and the drinks started somewhere around $10 bucks. So my friend and I took our seats, ordered nothing and chatted for a while before the show came on.

Mike Doughty and…a Cello!
After an opening act which I frankly didn’t pay that much attention to, Mike Doughty came on, but rather than have some kind of backup band, or playing solo, he chose to bring a cellist with him. It made for some very interesting takes on the old familiar music, especially “Circles” which was a big hit from Doughty’s days as the front man for Soul Coughing.

Doughty and his Cellist put on a good show, but the didn’t even go on until about 10:30, and this is NOT adrenaline pumping club music. Actually, it’s more akin to lullabies, and that combined with the relatively late hour and all the drinking I’d done earlier meant that I was all but asleep by the end.

The Bottom Line
Skip the City Winery. I just plain didn’t like it. It was too crowded and open to be intimate, but too expensive and atmospheric to feel comfortably casual. And there are myriad beams and supports that block your view of the stage if you’re there for a show. The multiple plasmas just can’t make up for that.

As for Doughty, it was just a bad combination of timing and location. Had he gone on 2 hours earlier, and in a venue that’s not quite so…well lame, I’m sure the evening would have rocked exponentially harder.

Posted in Live Performance, Bars and Clubs | Comments Off

Archive for February, 2009

Mike Doughty and the City Winery

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