Dec 3rd, 2003 - El Rio - San Francisco, CA
VARIETY PACK! #10

If the last Variety Pack gave us any cause for concern due to low attendence, THIS one more than made up for it. What a fun night! We had an all-star cast of bands for this one, and everyone seemed hell-bent on having fun. There was dancing, and laughter, there was drama and diplomacy and a gold star for EVERYONE involved!

Luster kicked it off with their dual female vocal, jagged indie rock. Hard-hittin' drummer, and attitudy guitar got things off to a great start. Snowballing the evening was Atomic Mint with a very hairy Meesha on bass (Rosie and Karen work with him), and this CHICK on guitar who ws AMAZING!!! She had everyone in the place droppin' jaw. They ended their set with her rippin' out a scorching rendition of Baracuda. She could sing like a banshee, play the hell out of the guitar, and even had a stage presence worthy of Joan Jett or Heart or any of them rock-ettes of yesteryear.

Ok, ok, I need to calm down.

How about Tom Byrne as My Uncle the Observational Comic? He managed to make us laugh and make us cry. He was better than cats. And caused a bit of drama with his dicey brand of back room banter. The walls of El Rio have ears, Tom. You nearly got Karen's ass kicked. Damn!!

Ok, on to Hot Mute. The surprise underdogs of the evening giving the night a very serious dose of intelligent indie pop. Beautiful songwriting, great singing, beautiful guitarwork and a hidden keyboardist who was barely visible from the audience, but really raised the music to new heights. Almost giving the songs this ethereal quality without knowing exactly where it was coming from. Pretty damn cool.

Please go see this band. They are part of this sonic front that make me believe that the Bay Area is ripe to be put on the musical map once again. Now that we've shed the hippie stigma (thanks to the dot commers) we're ready. It's gonna happen.

All right...

A fantastic evening and it's not even over yet. The group we all knew would be cool, ROBO SAPIEN, busted out one of the most entertaining sets we've had a VP. Such a freekin' great band to wrap up our last show of the year. It's two chicks in front doing some serious beastie-infused rap, joined by the DJette layin' down the groove on the 1200's. They worked the crowd. They had fun. We had fun, and best of all, they got eveyone DANCING!!!!!! YES, YES, YES!!

As the final encore, they had the girl from Atomic Mint do a reprise of Baracuda with the DJ beats behind her. Everyone on stage, y'all!

Give it up.

Thanks for a fantastic year, eveybody. Thanks to El Rio for letting us do the VARIETY PACK series. And we'll see you in April!