We went to see Rasputina at Slim's yesterday. Both rzr_grl and I dragged our moms along, which I'm pretty sure is the first time I've ever done that. Anyway, Rasputina was great, definitely go see them if you have the chance. If you haven't heard of them, they are two girls with cellos and a drummer, doing rock music: like, making the cellos sound like heavy metal guitar, while singing with a fake Cockney accent. They're awesome.

Cudos to the band for:

• doing a cover of Baby Got Back;
• the way she pronounced "sprrrrrrung" with way too many Rs;
• realizing that they only needed to do about 15 seconds of the song before we got the joke, and speedily moving along.

The first opener, Star Nova, were not completely terrible, but not interesting, either. It was two girls singing kind of jazzy showtunes songs; their stage presence really said "we spent a whole lot of time doing musical theatre in school", you know the style, when someone stamps their feet and thrusts a shoulder forward just too precisely, like they've done it way too many times while someone was shouting a count at them. They struck me as the kind of group who might end up with a PBS special: they had that fuddy-duddy NPR feel like Manhattan Transfer or something.

The second band, Faun Fables, were firmly in the category of "I would gladly pay $20 to leave any room you happen to be performing in." It was a guy and a girl with a guitar and, oh, something doing some intolerable art-rock thing where they tried to be Primus meets Velvet Underground, while doing Ween/TMBG covers. Which is just about my personal definition of hell. (Their poster said "songtelling" on it!) Half of the guy's act was impersonating the Moviefone guy, and it only got worse from there. I tried to drown the pain with alcohol, but that was ineffective, since the drinks at Slim's suck. Someone said the Moviefone guy used to be in Idiot Flesh / Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, which kind of makes sense: Idiot Flesh was a lot of fun live, because they had that whole circus schtick going on, but musically and thematically, they were really stuck in that whole, talk.bizarre, "I know all the words to every Monty Python song", "I never use contractions because everything I say is a Pronouncement" hateful geek D&D scene.

And there's not much more painful than a D&D geek showing off his music theory classes.

Anyway, Rasputina was really good.

Why is it so much easier to write about bands who sucked than about bands you enjoyed?