And on 20th of December of 2005, myself and the Inscrutable Mr. Wang went to see Rogue Wave at the Troubador. It was a good show. It was, as usual, preceded by dinner, which was had at a place called Hamburger Haven just down the street from the Troub. My burger was fairly unremarkable, though they had a Polish sausage thing that looked interesting. Also, they had an old Marvel vs. Capcom machine there, which I played. Unfortunately, I dropped out of the arcade scene prior to that game coming out, and while I beat the first couple characters, I got schooled by Gambit and the Hulk. But I ask you- is it fair to pit Chun Li against the Hulk? I think not.

But back to the matter at hand. We arrived a bit early to the concert as per usual. We hadn't long to wait, thankfully, before the first act came up, Mazarin. They were a'ight. Their's was a very proggy hard rock sound, and as is always the case with prog acts, there was at least one band member with a huge afro. I'm starting to think that listening to too many At The Drive In records (as these guys obviously have) will just cause a fro to magically appear on one's head. In any case, they didn't suck, but I can't say much more than that, because they sounded very muddy. I'm not sure if it was the sound system or what, but I had trouble making out what they were doing.

And next came a group called Irving. They were, ahhh, interesting. Mr. Wang said they felt a bit like an attempt at an indie rock boy band to him. I thought they were somewhat reminiscent of Tralala only, you know, male, and they managed to do some interesting things with their five part vocals. Or so I think. They opened with the longest sound check in the history of modern music, and yet they still couldn't get the sound guy to bring the vocals up high enough. But, after that, they started playing, and sound problems aside, were good. There was some credibly articulate guitar work (done on a Rickenbacker, which I've rarely seen outside of film from the 60's), and both the bassist and keyboardist were quite good. The drummer was fond of making ridiculous faces, as are many other drummers, yet when he did it, looked a bit like a person doing a bad, tacky imitation of a retarded person. Oh! And the keyboardist looked like a great deal like our friend Denys, only with a beard and a vest that was, sadly, a little gay.

And then Rogue Wave came on. I liked 'em. They were a bit more hippie-ish than I expected, which combined with the fact that they're from the Bay Area made me wary. While I like their recorded stuff, I was afraid that live they were going to go on 20-minute long jams and engage in other bits of Phish-like self indulgence, but I need not have worried. They were disciplined, despite the fact that their bassist was the most stoned-looking human being I have ever seen. He seemed to be in constant danger of drooling. Or perhaps vomiting. In any case, he managed to maintain throughout the show, though there were a few occasions when I was quite certain he was dead.

They were good. Like many other bands, they're quite fond of swapping instruments, though they pull it off better than most. And unlike the other bands that night, they had their own sound guy, so their levels weren't drastically off.

I must make mention of the crowd. Among other things, there was an Arabic-looking girl, wearing a floppy hat, cowboy boots, and a sundress. "God bless Los Angeles," I thought to myself. Five days until Christmas and we have girls running around in sun dresses in the middle of the night. And there were a bunch of tiny, tiny girls standing around me, all of whom I was sure were in college yet who barely seemed to break five feet in height. Between sets, one of them sat down in front of me, and her friends started passing a thing of hand lotion back and forth. The sitting girl asked for some, too, and soon her friends were making a game of trying to squirt the hand cream down onto her face, while they all giggled. It was amusing.

And that's pretty much that. That ice cream truck was there after the show, and I grabbed one of those strawberry shortcake pops and the Inscrutable One had a cream sickle. The end.

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