Catching up; Live Review: Gomez; "Omaha’s booming music scene" in the LJS; Islands tonight…

Category: Blog — @ 12:32 pm May 15, 2006

Amazing how far you can get behind in just a few days. The site is still not fully “there.” Some pages still look askew. This will be fixed shortly. Also, there’s a good chance that this update will disappear if the host service replaces the current version of the site with a backup. Your patience is appreciated.

First, The Lincoln Journal Star published a piece about “Omaha’s booming music scene” late last week that included some quotes from me. You can read it here. My only comment is that I never called Mercy Rule “Mercy Kills” — but you know that already. It’s a long read. I wish the author would have interviewed an Omaha musician for the article (Mike Fratt is in a band, but he’s representing Homer’s in this story and his role in Goodbye Sunday wasn’t explained). The central theme of the story was supposed to be “Is Omaha the next Seattle?” I was asked the question along with everyone else, and my answer was “no.” There is no band from Omaha that has made a national impact in the way Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden did. Omaha is what it is, which is all it needs to be.

Saturday night’s Gomez concert was a nice surprise. I’m not a big fan of the band’s middle-of-the-road made-for-VH1 style music, but I have to admit they sounded rather huge on stage, and the crowd (of about 250?) was going crazy for them. If you went to the front, you got the feeling that you were at an arena show except for the line of beer bottles that littered the edge of the stage. Plus, they played for almost two hours, just like a real rock concert. There was only one time during their set that I felt I was listening to a British band — when they ripped into a throbbing, psychedelic number that had shades of ’90s Manchester showing through the usual plastic exterior. I wanted more of that, but didn’t get it.

Tonight, the wonky keyboard-driven spectacle that is Islands. Their music is fun-pop indie sunshine as light as a feather. Opening is Busdriver and Cadence Weapon (what, no local band?). 9 p.m., $8.

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