The Blood Brothers, …Trail of Dead | Irving Plaza, NYC | 11.11.2006

posted by bill on November 13th, 2006 in ...Trail Of Dead, Live

On either Saturday or Sunday, all of us were lucky enough to check out the big BLOOD BROTHERS / …AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD tour. I went on Saturday and it was pretty awesome.

My roommate and I started by getting into the city a bit early to hunt for a pinball machine. For some reason we had an urge to play and somehow there isn’t a machine to be found anywhere in the Downtown Jersey City area. Archaic, I know. After walking around without any real plan or aim for the better part of an hour, we ended up at Hi-Fi and played the Elvis machine. It was OK. The paddles were a bit short. I did OK.

After a quick veggie burger at a diner by the venue we got through the unnecessarily complicated four-station system to actually watch the show. The stations laid out like so: 1) Pat Down/”Don’t use that camera to take any videos,” 2) Will Call, 3) Ticket Scanned and, finally, 4) ID Check. You then also had to answer three riddles before a ferryman would bring you across a river to the stairs that led up to the stage.

By the time we wen through all of this (gaining 273 EXP Points along the way) we got into the center of the room to watch The Blood Brothers. The sound could have been a bit better but otherwise, they were awesome. Johnny had some crazy, feathered Johnny Rotten hair going but he pulled it off and did a great job of playing the front man, rock star angle alongside Jordan.

The crowd was definitely into the set and showed it. Some a bit mroe agro than others even though the band stopped at one point to ask them to chill out. Sometimes you just gotta get in the pit and love someone, I guess.

During the band’s set I remember thinking to myself, “Man, it would be rad if they played “Shame” but there’s no way they’re bringing that into the set. Of course, that led to them ending the set with it, which was awesome.

Trail of Dead also overcame some poor sound levels to put on an awesome show. They played all the hits, a few songs off the new record (which you can stream in its entirety here) and even threw in a jab at their record company. The two sides aren’t exactly playing nice right now. For the last song before the encore, Mark from The Blood Brothers came out and joined in on banging the hell out of a couple drums to create a Boredoms-esque vibe. Very cool. I would have loved to have heard TOD’s cover of Gold Heart Mountaintop Queen Directory from the new record but totally understand how that might now fit with the rest of their set.