More on Portastatic

As promised.

I'm no techi, so I'm not sure why those 2 videos below are outta sync with the audio. So that sucks. A You Tube thing? I know it doesn't look like that pre-You Tube. I dunno.

Anyway, Portastatic was a blast. I hope some of you Chicagoans got out to Schuba's Saturday night. There had to be a better turn out than the Warhol on Friday.

And speaking of that...shame on you Pittsburgh! Maybe 40 people in attendance?? That's brutal. I mean...Frank Black wasn't playing across town this time. No wonder we don't get any good bands to come here. And here's part owner of Merge Records in town, and nobody shows. Great. My hopes of seeing the Essex Green come to the Burgh are crashed.

Instead, we get Nickelback. Fricking Nickelback. That's right, I got a spam e-mail the other day from Ticketbastard advertising for a March, 2007 show for f%&*in NICKELBACK! I mean...it's in March for the luv of God. Didn't Nickelback get, like, banned from Canada, their home country, for being so lame. I know they got nixed from getting tickets for the big Ohio St / Michigan game.

OK...I apologize for the rant. But Nickelback?!?!? Now that I sound like pompous indie rock guy...back to Portastatic...

Mac & crew rocked. Here's the setlist if anyone cares, although I believe Mac always posts the setlist on his blog...so it's not like this is late breaking info. But Jess did get the setlist. Oh...and we now have our own Portastatic 4-piece coaster set. Very neat.

One of the hi-lites was definitely "Drill Me", from 2003's The Summer of the Shark album (see sampling below, rock out). Both "Through with People" and "White Wave" from 2005's Bright Ideas, which is probably my favorite of all of Mac's non-Superchunk material. I highly recommend going over to Merge and picking up a copy.

We just picked up the new one, Be Still Please, so I need to give that a few more spins. From first sounds, it's a little mellower than Bright Ideas, but so far we likeys. "Sour Shores" was a gem live.

My requests for "Tree Killer" during the encore were denied, but we did get a fantastic cover of the Go-Betweens "Bye Bye Pride" (Grant McLennan: RIP). That was cool.

And afterwards, Jim Wilbur, also from Superchunk, was kind enough to snap one off with Jess & I. Very nice. Good work, Nick.

As promised, here's "Drill Me":
(left click to play, right click to download):
Portastatic - Drill Me