This being a pseudo drinking holiday, you’d expect at least a few shows going on tonight. Nada. I guess Omaha started lent a little early this year. The rest of the week is dominated with shows: Voxtrot and Kite Pilot tomorrow; Nada Surf on Thursday (the weekend, on the other hand, is looking a might bit thin).

Those who might be wondering, I did go to the Past Punchy and the Present show Saturday night at The 49’r. My quick exit will be discussed ad nauseum in this week’s column, which will be online either tomorrow or Thursday, depending on the amount of news worth passing on (No feature article this week, drat it). Suffice to say, what little I saw of Past Punchy was revelatory. I missed almost their entire set. Unsure of when the band was supposed to go on, I took a shot in the dark and missed, only catching the last two songs. Thornton Will was seated behind the trap set wearing a New York Yankees stocking cap (apparently it was stocking cap night, as Kyle Harvey and Alex McManus also wore them) while Thornton Bob was right out front in a suit. An apparently exhausted Reagan Roeder played seated on one of the steps. These guys make a big messy noise that is undeniably catchy. In a certain way, the ensemble had the same loose garage-band vibe of Crazy Horse but with punk overtones. I managed to catch the entire final song, an odyssey of dynamics that saw the band rise and fall from verse to verse — loud than quiet than loud — with the audience fooled at least twice into thinking the song was over when it wasn’t. Dynamics and momentum are the lifeblood of this band. Listening to them is like watching them run madly across the surface of a frozen lake only to stop all at once and lean back in their shoes, sliding forward almost to halt before taking off again in an all-out sprint. Something tells me that Bob is the type of guy that likes to gun it then hit the brakes in his car just to see his passengers lurch forward and back in their seats. There was a lot of that going on in the Niner last Saturday night. Here’s hoping they play again in the near future so I can hear their entire set.

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