Forgive the lateness of this post as I’m suffering from a lingering head cold. Not good. Don’t catch it.

Moving on…

This past March I went to a show down at Sokol Underground featuring Capgun Coup, Baby Walrus and Whatever Happened to the Dinosaurs? Easily the best band that evening was Baby Walrus (ex-Le Beat). The worst was Capgun Coup (Whatever Happened… bordered on being a Bright Eyes tribute band). My comments from that show: “Finally there was Capgun Coup, who I really came to see. I was told by someone who has heard them before that it wasn’t their finest moment. The set was sloppy and out of sync, and I have to wonder if it wasn’t just an off night. That said, the crowd of around 80 didn’t seem to mind. In fact, the whole evening had a house party feel to it and you could tell that the crowd consisted mostly of friends having a good time.“

Fact was, they were terrible. This was just a few weeks after Conor Oberst had name-checked the band during an interview I conducted with him, focused on Cassadaga. Oberst had said he loved Capgun. After this show, I went back and reread my notes. Surely he couldn’t have been talking about this band. But there it was. Oberst name-checked the band again a few weeks later in a Rolling Stone interview. For better or worse, Capgun was on its way.

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much last Friday night when I headed down to Slowdown to check out their new “small” stage. I got there late — they don’t mess around at Slowdown — shows start at 8 p.m. sharp. Owner Robb Nansel even told me that evening that nary a note will be heard from a band in Slowdown past midnight. That’s a harsh timeframe for those of us used to heading to shows after seeing a 7 o’clock screening. By the time I rolled in around 10:30, The Family Radio had long finished their set and David Vandervelde had just left the stage. Last up that evening — Capgun Coup.

First, an update on Slowdown’s service. Remember that blog item where I said it took 24 minutes to get a beer (here)? For whatever reason, it got a lot of attention, judging by the number of people who have come up to me to also complain about Slowdown’s service. Misery loves company, I suppose. Well, bar captain Ryan Palmer seems to have gotten things under control by throwing sheer numbers at the problem. There were at least five people hustling drinks Friday night at what I was told was a capacity show for the “small bar setting” (i.e., when they have the divider in place, blocking off the big stage). I was able to get my Rolling Rock ($3) in less than five minutes. Not bad. I even had a bartender ask me “how ya doing” all night from my roost at the far end of the bar. The real test will be next Wednesday’s Built to Spill show (which, alas, I won’t be in town for).

The small-bar stage located just inside the door is overhung by a set of amps that provide pretty good sound without overpowering the room. Capgun was a good test of this — they sounded frenetic (and loud), but I was still able to talk/yell at people standing next to me. In retrospect, I don’t think the band had “an off night” down at Sokol in March as much as they didn’t know what they were doing on that huge stage. They’ve gotten a helluva lot better, thanks to playing all the time. Their show Friday night certainly came closer to the sound heard on their CD, and Sam Martin’s yelp (at its most ragged) even brought back memories of a young Pat Buchanan. Capgun sounds nothing like Mousetrap though, and though their energy is similar to Desaparecidos, they don’t sound like those guys, either. I guess you’d have to call their sound house-party-punk. The style is ragged and out of control, what you’d expect from a band weaned on uninhibited house shows. Now Capgun is trying to translate the party to a bigger stage, and for the most part, is succeeding, at least in their hometown. Ah, but how will it translate when they hit the road and get away from their hordes of followers?

Rumors of their Nebraskafish debut being reissued on Team Love are true. I’m told promos of the Capgun Coup reissue were available from a T-L rep who was in the house Friday night (I didn’t grab one). That same rep told me that Flowers Forever also will see their debut released on Oberst’s label. Will Capgun and Flowers tour together? Time will tell, but the combination seems like a natural (actually, Capgun would be better suited touring with Tilly and the Wall, a band that shares the same youthful exuberance).

Capgun is part of the “Next Wave” of Omaha bands, a wave that includes The Family Radio, Bear Country, Baby Walrus, Coyote Bones, Sleep Said the Monster, Flowers Forever, Art in Manila, Hyannis, and Drakes Hotel (though Drakes no longer is with us here in Omaha). The bands all seem to be drawn together, either through their style or their social network. Most play the same house parties, and when they perform together on a regular stage, they tend to turn the room into a house party.

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A couple Conor items to pass along from the Interweb… Seems the folks at Shepherds Bush Empire (in bonny ol’ UK. Tut-tut! Cheerio!) got a glimpse of the old Conor during their July 3 show. According to a report in Uncut (here): “Technical hitches at the end of the show, which had been elaborate with live projections of swans, candles and jigsaws in the background, saw front man Oberst snap, with the singer picking up and throwing a stage amplifier half-way across the stage. He also flung fellow Bright Eyes band member Mike Mogis’ guitar in a pique of anger.” I have this vision of Mogis looking down at his hands where he had just held his guitar. Upon reading this, I wondered if the reporter was just misinterpreting the usual end-of-show fracas that takes place nightly during “Road to Joy”?

In other Conor news, Polydor has commissioned five directors to create videos for Cassadaga, according to Digital Arts (here). Each director and video is described in the story, which also includes a link to the videos online. One would think that the videos cost Polydor a shitload of money, and that Saddle Creek will get all the benefit in the U.S.

This week, look for an interview with Doug Martsch of Built to Spill (probably Wednesday morning), and a piece on Drakes Hotel leaving us just after being discovered…

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Thanksgiving Eve. Christmas Eve. July 3rd. And so on. These are all perfect nights for shows, since almost everyone can sleep in the following morning. And yet, historically there are very few shows on the eve of holidays in Omaha. I guess that’s to the venues’ advantage, since they’re all going to be packed tonight with or without bands performing on their stages.

That said, Slowdown is taking advantage of this holiday eve to christen their new “small stage,” located along the north side of the bar. The space is designed to host less-popular bands that would have a hard time filling the venue’s “big room.” Doing the honors is Flowers Forever (Derek Presnall of Tilly and the Wall) and Fourth of July (Adrianne Verhoeven of Art in Manila). The 8 p.m. show will run you $5, with all of it going to charity. With a capacity of around 100, I bet this one will be packed.

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The iPhone odyssey will be recapped in Wednesday’s column. I will say this: I got one… eventually. More later.

After my late-afternoon iPhone fiasco, we headed to Memorial Park for KC and the Sunshine band. It was the usual crowd of fun-loving suburban white folks, mostly families, lots of kids. Almost no black people whatsoever. The crowd seemed larger than last year’s 4th of July celebration-in-the-park (certainly larger than the Bright Eyes concert). KC and his entourage came on at around 9:15, and though I thought the whole thing was disappointing, I don’t know what I was expecting — some sort of hip disco show that highlighted the grooves of the band’s best songs? Dumb on my part. Instead it was your typical Vegas/Branson-style medley/revue performance. Bombastic. Lots of bad dance routines. A handful of covers from the disco era that should have been left out. KC could easily have played 45 minutes of nothing but his own material. Instead, we got disco’s greatest hits and even a couple obscure KC numbers along with ones we all know and love. The band was good, but the sound was particularly bad for an outdoor show — shrill, with too much high end. No bass at all. The Sunshine Band, specifically the brass, was first rate, and KC’s voice was good enough to pull it off despite having to run around stage like an elderly aerobics instructor. Most people around us weren’t watching, anyway. They were too busy making sure their kids weren’t lighting things on fire or spilling Kool-Aid on their blankets. A small handful of women in their 40s did some good-time rump shaking, hiding their Busch Lights beneath foam coozies. KC finished at around 10, and the fireworks followed. Funny how these fireworks shows always use the same music. Get ready for Lee Greenwood, Neil Diamond and the requisite Louis Armstrong “It’s a Wonderful World.” Teresa wondered what it would be like to see a fireworks display backed by indie rock songs — Spoon, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes. The crowd would hate it. Actually, I’d probably hate it, too. It seemed like the shortest fireworks display I’ve seen at Memorial Park since the ’90s. People around us actually booed. I guess they didn’t get their money’s worth.

Saturday night was Dan Deacon at The Waiting Room. A friendly Lazy-i reader saw the show listed on my blog and pointed it out as something I shouldn’t miss. I’m glad she made the effort. She said Deacon is part of a Baltimore art / theater / music collective called Wham City. I knew he was a one-man band sort of thing, but other than that, didn’t know what to expect. His shtick is similar to The Show Is the Rainbow‘s — Deacon sets up on the floor instead of the stage, surrounded by samplers and lighting gear and a big green skull on a stick that lights up during the high points. Before he started, a couple guys taped white bedding sheets from the beam that divides the stage room from the rest of the bar, effectively creating a barrier, forcing people to come inside the stage area and surround Deacon and his gear. Smart move. It made the room more intimate and enclosed. Deacon’s music is almost entirely prerecorded tracks played on an iPod Shuffle, augmented by keyboards and his vocal effects. Hyperactive, frenetic, big-bass dance songs sung by squirrels playing Casio keyboards, melodies reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange and The Faint and TSITR and video game soundtracks.

The biggest difference between Deacon and TSITR is how Deacon forces crowd participation. Sure, Darren Keen gets out in the audience and gets them involved, but Deacon makes almost every song a sing-a-long, includes a pseudo dance contest, even passes out lyric sheets and stinky plastic robes for a few unfortunate fans to wear during his final song (a rapacious version of “Wham City”). With the crowd of 50 or 60 packed so tightly around the front of the stage, with the red, green and white floor lights, Deacon’s show felt more like a weird religious event rather than a rock concert — a psionic cult happening, a throbbing dance ritual where you halfway expect grooving onlookers to begin floating in the air, trying their hardest to “renew” Logan’s Run-style. Instead, Darren Keen picked up one hearty soul and lifted him over his head and passed him around the crowd before he was set down in front of high priest Deacon. A religious experience indeed.

One last music note from the weekend: Went to see the film Once at The Dundee Theater Saturday night. I thought it — and its music — were terrific. Glen Hansard, the leading man, sounds like an Irish version of Cat Stevens, with music that at times is nearly as good. Hansard also is in the Irish band The Frames, who have released a handful of albums, including a couple on Anti Records. The Frames are opening for Bob Dylan in New Zealand and Australia in August. Once is a simple film filled with so much music and performances that it borders on being a musical (maybe technically it is). It isn’t a love story as much as a fable about a singer-songwriter making the record of his life. Check it out before it leaves.

Tonight at The Waiting Room it’s Suicide Squeeze artist Page France with Bear Country and Scissors for Lefty. France plays twee acoustic indie-folk songs that are always pretty, sung in frontman Michael Nau’s charming nasal croon. All Music said the press compares them to Bright Eyes or Jeff Tweedy. I don’t hear that at all, but you be the judge. Scissors for Lefty are the brothers Garza (three of them) and the brothers Krimmel (just two), singing upbeat indie rock songs in a style similar to Eagle*Seagull — vocalist Bryan Garza even sports an affected rasp similar to Eli Mardock’s (at least on the tracks I heard online). The show starts at 9 p.m. and costs $8.

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