dance party usa! er... uk, anyway

First off, happy (rather belated) Father's Day to all the dads out there, hope you had a great one. I spent the afternoon hanging out at my folks' house, stuffing myself full with Boca Burgers, baked potatoes, veggies & coconut cream pie. And despite massive amounts of cheating by team Mystik (that would be me and my baby brother), we still managed to lose a few games of euchre. Cheating on Father's Day? I know, I'm terrible... but the parents were pretty lit up, they'll never know what happened.

What better way to wrap up a day of family fun than to boogie down with Hot Chip at the Gothic Theatre? I could have sworn that when this tour was announced, they were supposed to be playing at the Bluebird. Ah well, it was a good night for it as the Gothic is relatively on my way home from my parents' house. Judging from the size of the crowd, the venue change (if indeed there WAS a venue change...) was a good idea; the Gothic was nowhere near sold out, but the little Bluebird would have been packed. As it was, I was pleased and surprised by the crowd - it was smaller, tamer and older than I expected. We had front row spots in the balcony, and although it was probably 90 degrees up there, the crowd was sparse. Happy happy. I was a bit worried at the outset, as I had developed a bit of a red wine/rum & coke induced headache on the way to the show. I don't know if it was the ice water I was drinking or the dweeb-funk beats, but the headache was gone shortly into the set. Yeehaw.

Hot Chip put on a great show. I'm not familiar enough with them to have worked out a setlist... they played a couple/few new songs which sounded great. They ended the regular set with an amazing, energetic rendition of Over And Over. It was so good, that I thought it would be impossible to top it with any kind of encore. Unfortunately, I was right; the encore was pretty disappointing - Everywhere (EKOLU cover); Electric Boogaloo (?) & In The Privacy Of Our Love. I guess what bothered me the most was that after a dancetastic main set, 2 of the 3 encore songs were slow. It just kind of killed the groove. BUT, it was a great, really fun show.