POSTS
The Catheters
The Catheters rock. Nedra pointed out their album at a listening booth at Tower Records when I was getting my stereo replaced after some jerk broke into my car and stole pretty much the whole center console, along with the air bags. I only listened for a couple minutes before deciding to buy the album, as it rocked really hard. They have a bit of that rock-n-roll rhythm blended with some searing punk-rock vocals. I call the variety of music punk rock-n-roll for lack of a better term, and alternative ain’t it, DJ spunky.
The album is very melodic with quite a few nice hooks in the tunes. The show was less melodic, and more explosive, high intensity spit flying around singer writhing on the floor. Sadly, the portland audience was pretty passive, and only a few of us were even close to rockin not gawkin. The set was too short, I think that some of the pussycats were just beginning to turn around when the show ended. Like “oh! let’s rock!” and then the dudes left the stage and that was the end. They weren’t the headliners, so that was part of the problem there.
More later…I gotta go play ball!
Alright, played ball, got some new kitchen gadgets, went into work, had a coupla beers, and screwed around on the internet. Now have a few more things to say about The Catheters and their show. Yeah, the Portland crowd was slightly more energetic than the crew at The Viper Room when I went to see Wurkt (update your site if yer still together guys!) there. That was a dead crowd…I had five feet between the stage and the nodding crowd in which to rock out like some LA freakshow. I had a good time, and the beer wasn’t as overpriced as one might expect for a classy place like The Viper Room.
And back to The Catheters. They are sweet. The show was raw, the singer has charisma, but they played around and put on a show for us too. Twice the singer (Brian Standeford) slithered into the crowd…pretty cool, he came up right next to me both times…probably because most of the energy was there, and I was on just the other side of the groupie chicks, so if he didn’t stop where I was he’d have to just keep on going.
So it was a rockin good time, pretty entertaining when Brian tackled the dude up front, I ended up with dude’s hat, but gave it back cuz I didn’t much care for it. The crowd was a bit dull, but it’s portland, and there were small women riddled throughout the standard moshing area like cheese on popcorn, which makes it tough to get rockin, especially with a short set like they had. The sound was quite good, tight or loose when when necessary, contrasting their fabulous tight melodic thrash on Static Delusions and Stone-Still Days.
Catch their show if they come to your town again. In the meantime, I’ll wait for them to get a headline gig. They will. Rock off.