Grace Live!

September 8, 2007 | Filed Under Main |

Grace Potter! The Nocturnals! Central Park! Wicked Pissah!!

sorry…

But on Thursday she arrived and it was a MUCH needed respite from the idiocy of my day job. At first, I thought I would miss the show because I (finally) looked at my ticket and it said doors open at 4:30PM! Could it be? Would they start a show at 5 or something? I couldn’t even get out before 5 and I HAD to have a drink before just to get the knots out of my back. So I downed a quick martini in Union Square and headed for the Park – hoping that a) it would be an hour before the bands came on and b) there would be another opening band.

Of course – I was correct.

Now the headliner for this show was a band called Gov’t Mule. I have heard of them but never heard them. But they have an interesting following. Where as at the Warped Tour I was one of the older people there (along with the members of Bad Religion), at THIS show I was really skewing toward the younger end of the scale! Most of the audience were men, age 50 and up. Many bandanas, tattoos and gray hear (hey, I have gray hair…). When I went to get my GP concert t-shirt, I also picked up a pack of Gov’t Mule rolling papers. (Catch my drift?)

But good music was every where. The first band, Earl Greyhound, were a retro power trio trying desperately to channel Cream. Tall, long-haired skinny guy on lead guitar and vocals, large black guy in a dashiki wailing on drums and a gorgeous black woman with a major fro and white go-go boots playing bass. They sounded terrific (however – thought the sounds were good, there was no charisma. No show for all this flash.)

But Grace and the boys – that was heaven! At first I was a bit put off. Grace was dressed up! With makeup and a little black mini-dress and new bangs. Not the Grace I was used to. But when she moved to rhythm guitar and stepped out from behind the keyboards, everything was cool. I sensed a real played show being crammed into 45 minutes of fun. Indeed, some of my favorite songs are ballads and there was no room for ballads if you only have 45 minutes.

But she was a star and so was the band. So if you have the opportunity, you have GOT to check them out. They deserve big things!

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