CMJ 2005 | Saturday

The afternoon was spent at resfest and both events were somewhat disappointing, especially the shorts by Francois Vogel (he did those amazing HP commercials that use the Kinks' "Picture Book"). After that, I had dinner with some of the current staff of my old college station (WWVU) who are in town for CMJ. We went to Angon on the Sixth, easily my favorite Indian restaurant. Milton, the owner, is a gregarious host who goes out of his way to let you know he remembers you from last time. The guy is a trip. We had the Angon standbys -- achar gohst, shrimp dopeaga, lamb rezala, okra, saag paneer -- though nothing was mindbogglingly great, nothing was bad. The kitchen is not the same without Mina, but Angon is still better than anything else on 6th street.

From there I went to the Hiro ballroom to see Metric. Hiro is just a fabulous looking space -- sorta like the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill -- and the sound is better than you might think for a velvet rope club. It almost makes up for the $10 drinks. Almost. I like Metric just fine and live they know how to put on an entertaining rock show. Emily Haines is well aware how hot she is and totally works it to her advantage on stage. Their set was shorter than Haines' skirt, unfortunately, and they didn't play any of my favorite songs off their new album, Live it Out.

Some friends of mine were at the show and we split a cab afterwards to Ludlow St -- they were going to see Benzos at Pianos, and I was going to see if I could get into Dirty on Purpose's show at Mercury Lounge, which turned out to be not a problem. I've seen DoP numerous times and am friends with their bassist, DJ. I love their EP, Sleep Late for a Better Tomorrow, but they had never seemed to quite pull it off live. The sound was muddy, or the voices too low in the mix, there was always something. But ever since their keyboardist, Erica, quit the band to pursue Au Revoir Simone full-time, something strange happened. It all came together.

Dirty on Purpose were far and away the best I'd ever seen them -- the stars aligned for them and they just rocked it. A new female vocalist was trotted out for a couple songs and she sounded great. But, this may be an unpopular opinion, I don't think they need to replace Erica. Three of the members already sing, and the ones that featured her could be reworked. They certainly don't need keyboards, which I could never hear anyway.

I stayed to watch a few songs by Australia's Youth Group, who were quite nice but by that point I was tired. And I had to work at the video store at noon the next day and go to resfest. Time to go home.

Metric photo courtesy Julseas' Flickr photostream.