Ground Zero hosted its bi-monthly mini-concert in the Nugent Hall basement last Saturday, with three bands from the Albany area in attendance—all of them different and great in their own way.
The first band consisted of a guy switching between a ukulele and a guitar. Drewkulele started off with a comedic song on his ukulele about the tragedy of the androgynously named Henry Anne, the serial tickler. Drewkulele followed with a movie cover, and then a falsetto song which he knew would sound odd, but did it anyway, followed by another funny song, the theme of which I can’t talk about here. He continued with a cover of the Talking Head’s “Heaven,” and the audience sang along to that classic tune. Drewkulele ended anticlimactically with a half-song that hadn’t been practiced in a few weeks to the supportive cheers of the crowd; he was very humorous, and the music was good.
The second band was Beware! The Other Head of Science. Basically, three guys in pink jumpsuits rocked out to synthesized beats with guitars and techno gadgets with the audience dancing up and down in front of them. The melodies and instrumentals were all catchy; there was a mini drum set for one awesome passage of pure rock. The energetic main vocalist would scream his vocals for the band’s self-proclaimed “tear-jerker” song about the death of Forrest Gump’s friend from the movie of the same name. It included screaming “You got shot, Bubba!” followed by loud sarcastic screams from the whole band. My favorite song was “Riot Gear,” which included the best of everything they had shown previously with a great backing chorus and a catchy keyboard beat. I personally didn’t enjoy the rap style sections, although I love it when a band plays with sound, introducing something new to the general done-and-done styles, but I still can’t tell if rapping in pink jumpsuits ended up a successful experiment or not. The upbeat portions were aided by the singer’s energetic vocals, and all in all I liked this band the most out of those that performed, just for the variety of its songs and instrumentals.
The third band of the night was The Scientific Maps, which was an indie-pop-rock band that had a guitar-wielding vocalist, a bassist, a drummer, and a keyboardist. The members were good at what they did, and the classic “rock talk” that bands normally give was pretty funny. All of the band’s songs featured catchy instrumentals, and the accompanying dancing crowd was well-deserved; the last song—which would not have been played if not for overwhelming crowd demand—featured most of the spectators dancing right there with them in between the band members. The Scientific Maps performed a cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Cats,” which was true to the original. An original sad song (with appropriate lighting) was played well in the middle. “The Octopus is Going” was my favorite of the songs—the introduction with the keyboard reminded me of a less energetic (which is a good thing; it was apt and well-done) catchy B-52’s introduction, and then the song went off to the main part with odd lyrics and dynamic volume, giving way to vocals only for a moment before getting more backing for the chorus.
Both The Scientific Maps and Beware! The Other Head of Science have their respective MySpace pages available if you want to sample their music, but nothing quite beats having them perform live with people dancing everywhere.
It was a great mini-concert. I’m unsure about giving such shows any more attention because I don’t know how many people can fit in the basement of Nugent Hall.
