I was going to do a review of the Twin Crystals show in Oakland last week but it was such a surreal disaster I’m not even sure if it there’s a point.

What a horribly organized show! I showed up with Legs at ten o’clock to a class room with some confused looking people in it. No instruments, amps, or anything remotely resembling a show in sight. Legs blurts out “Is this a joke” and the people laughed and said maybe. We started talking to one of the confused guys who turned out to be
in Ghost Echoes and he said he didn’t really know what was going on but that he’d read in a blog somewhere that they were playing this show.

Awesome. So we went away for a bit and came back to find the same room packed with young kids devoutly watching some other kids playing some seriously precious Juno-core. Signs on the wall pointed to the members “Guitar 1″ & “Guitar 2″ and another pointing to the amp reading “Magic Box”. Before each song each of them introduce themselves with a different phrase. “I am the sparrow” and “I am the wind”. For a minute I thought maybe I had Alzheimer’s and didn’t realize I was actually at Cafe Grattitude. Some drunk young gay is tossing Tecates around. What? I keep hoping one of the beers will smack somebody in the head and cause some damage at this prosaic rock love in. Don’t these kids know there’s a war on?? “I am Iraq” and “I am a home made road side bomb”. Don’t these kids know there’s an economic crisis? “I am your college fund” and “I am your parents portfolio”.

We step outside because its getting old. But, magically, it kind of got so bad it got good. Most of the people there to see Twin Crystals/Sucks/Ghost Echoes are annoyed and I wish this band was doing this to make people angry. I like bands that are so bad on purpose its hilarious, like the Zip Code Rapists or like California Lightning this one time I saw them when they were really stoned and played a set consisting of them alternating Mustang Sally and Happy Birthday for thirty minutes. But this wasn’t that funny and it went on for a really really long time.

Legs gets severely irritated and asks me to take her home.

I get back at 12:30 (I missed Sucks) but was just in time for Twin Crystals who, if you haven’t listened to our imeem thing, sound a lot like The Units if that band had been made up of mentally unstable teenagers who went off of their meds. Here, listen to this song that kind of captures their need for meds but not really the synth punk part:

Download it! Twin Crystals - Careful

Anyway, they were so rad for the ten minutes they got to play before the cops showed up and shut the thing down. The cop was totally annoying too… he told the Tecate gay he was going to fine him because he could smell marijuana. Huh? I hope that kid wasn’t dumb enough to be intimidated by that.

(edit 10/18/08) THIS SHOW HAS BEEN CANCELED!!!

Ghost Echoes I think might be one of the nicest bands out there because they hung out all night, lent equipment, and didn’t even get to play. The word on the internet and from Twin Crystals is that they are totally loud and totally awesome. They are playing this weekend at The Mansion with Ganglians who the Art for Spastics guy said on some mailing list are the best pop band in Sacramento (and that you should ignore their myspace recordings which sound like the shins or something, ugh!). You should totally go (we are!)

10/18/2008 @ The Mansion
1547 Revere Ave 8PM
Ghost Echoes
Protect Me
Dance Card
Ganglians
World Wide Computer God

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