Get Up Get Down – Kelly’s Olympian – Oct. 19th, 2009
Monday at Kelly’s…somewhat of a Portland new band tradition at this point. I’ve done it, you’ve probably done it, too. I expected it would be the regular 3 band line-up so I showed late…only to find out that it looked like only 1 band was playing. When there’s only 1 band booked for the Monday show I don’t think it’s unusual for there to be more people on stage than are in the “audience”. That’s not a reflection of anything except that the band is new and they’re either from out of town or have played enough that their friends can’t be pestered to go out to a show on a Monday night anymore… I was the only person in the audience when I walked in. The band was nice enough to say hi , then proceeded to rock. (For the record, they had no idea that I was going to expose them to MILLIONS on the internet…my anonymity was secure).
With a name like “Get Up Get Down” I was expecting some sort of funk explosion…I was wrong. They are a rock trio whose music gives a substantial nod to late 80s NW music – I won’t say the word, but the scene involved flannel. There are occasional slower moments, but mostly it is very high energy stuff, liberally sprinkled with interesting time changes. I was impressed with the vacuum sealed tightness of a lot of the material. These guys obviously practice… The drummer was banging the shit out of stuff to great effect, the guitar was always right there, and the apparently newer bass player was tight as well.
So objectively all that stuff was “happening”. With the quality of the musicianship, the vocals were a touch less compelling. They weren’t bad, they were just missing a little extra “something”. Which brings me to the crux…as good as these guys are, for me, they didn’t have that intangible “thing”. Call it charisma / stage presence / “IT factor” that draws me into a show and gets me really emotionally involved in the performance. To be fair, it is REALLY hard to get that kind of energy in a nearly empty room…so it’s possible on a packed night they’d be able to feed off the energy and develop that kind of thing with a good audience. Just on this night, in this empty “knife shop”, I wasn’t feeling the feedback loop between band and me…
For folks that like tightly executed, energetic & powerful rock/alt., I’d recommend giving these guys a try to see if they crank the intensity up a notch for the right crowd.
Last little note/small pet peeve…if you have a myspace as your primarily method of online marketing…try to keep it updated with members & shows…otherwise, the people that are trying to find you won’t be able to!
