The Night I Saw the Worst Live Band Ever

Really? A F’n techno group at Penuchies in Concord? Sorry, not techno, the term techno sounds dated. Electronica is the new word for this garbage. This booking is the biggest mistake. Seriously. Do patrons of Penuchies want to hear boom boom tish dubba bubba sirn. No they don’t. This was proven when I went to see the band “Blue Boy Productions” a few Thursday’s ago. And the term ‘band’ is a little strong for this crap.

The Blue Boys “live” show, that is if you can call it a live show, consisted of a guy sitting at his laptop. He didn’t even smile. Or move. Or breath. I think he might have been dead. It certainly was dead inside Penuchies. He seriously looked like he was bored cruising the web on a laptop. Most of the crowd was me. I mean, when bar tenders outnumber the people there to see the band, you know there is an issue.

Now, I showed up at 9, bands start at 9 at Penuchies. BUT NOT THIS BAND. They were outside smoking butts at 9:30(Although the butts they were smoking smelled a little funky if you know what I mean). I had to wonder, is the band ever playing. Around 10:15 they come down to “play”... or more accurately, hit play. The guy turns on a laptop and some music starts play and he walks away. I assume this is some sort of intro or something. No. This is the show. What? Really? Is he going back outside now?

I can appreciate the fact that the music did take some talent. The guy did need to create these tracks in his home studio, create the beats, write a few melodies, and comb his hair. Was the music good? Sure, maybe, hard to tell. I might like a CD of it to play at a party as a joke. It just was not a live show that should be playing a bar.

After about an hour of listening to this guy hit play on his laptop media player, there was a change. YES, a drummer joined him on stage. I was so excited to see this. The drums were electronic and I figured he was going to do some cool fills or something to accent the boring 1,2,3,4 of the beat. Nope. Disappointment. This guy played the same beat that was already being played via the computer. It seemed like he was purposely trying to match the computer beat exactly without adding anything. I couldn’t even tell if he was really making any noise or if it was just a gimmick. Some bands like like Lotus and Sound Tribe Sector 9 have made the blend of electronic and jam band exciting. This is what I was expecting when I saw the drums, amps and guitars paired with the laptop. All the Blue Boys did was trick you into thinking there was a band with all the band equip set up. I felt deceived and was pissed that they felt hitting play was enough of a show. They had a few stage lights to increase the “show” but these lights would have been better served if they were turned off so I didn’t have to see this crap.