The Machine at Toad's

The cover band is a pretty funny concept when you think about it. The more you can play a song like the original band, the more audience approval you get. Depending on what band you cover and how long it's been since they've been on tour, you can actually make some good money playing other people's songs. Also, everyone knows that any good cover band has to know every song by the band they cover.

I've seen The Machine twice now, and they're a pretty good Pink Floyd cover band - I mean, tribute band. They're not Australian Pink Floyd with the crazy show recreations, and they don't always sound exactly like Pink Floyd (though sometimes they do), but they really fill that live music void for Floyd fans. At Toad's Place on Saturday night they played "The Wall" and then a pretty long encore of additional songs. It was pretty cool, and it was also cool that we knew what was going down because they played some of "The Wall" then let us know they were going on break then coming back to play the rest and then maybe playing some more.

They started around 9 and ended just after midnight because Toad's Place was turning into a night club for two hours. Tickets were $15, which wasn't bad, and I guess the "Gold Circle" up front was $30. I think people were getting more into The Machine's set when I saw them at The Webster in Hartford, but the seating setup at Toad's could have been to blame on Saturday. That was the first time I ever saw those chairs at Toad's, and it was kind of weird. Anyway, there were definitely people into it, even though most were sitting. Even though you could tell the band could have played for at least two more hours, I was glad it ended after three because it was just enough. A little more would have been too much - like that time Shakedown played until 2 a.m. That was cool for the big fans, but for those of us who got to the show when they started playing (which is later than doors), it got tiring.

My old band director used to tell us that his band director told him to always make the audience leave wanting more. People were definitely getting tired toward the end of The Machine's set, and a good chunk of the people up front had left already. Any more than three hours, and they would have gone way too far past that point.

4/19 - Of Montreal and Janelle Monae!

This show was so fun. As soon as Janelle Monae took the stage to open for Of Montreal, Toad's Place was just loaded with energy. In a recent Spin feature on her, she said that she's been blessed to have people be too afraid of asking her how she'll fit into the mainstream. We're blessed too. I like that she's different with her front-pushed hair and jockey outfits. Her music was dancey with a touch of Outkast and a whole lot of herself shining through. At one point in the show, she painted a picture on stage and handed it to the crowd.

As Of Montreal started their first song, I almost thought that Janelle outdid them. However, as they moved on with their set, they were incredible. Totally freaking out the bouncers. With their guys in stretchy pink costumes to hobbits to a tiger doing unspeakable things to someone else in a stretchy black costume, it was a crazy party on stage, and that party feel really spread to the crowd. Especially when they performed some of their more popular numbers like "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger" or "Gronlandic Edit," which are both very danceable with recognizable and repeating background beats, they got the crowd going. I was surprised they didn't play "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" for obvious reasons of what might have been going on in the audience, but I was very happy with how much they played off Hissing Fauna as well as Skeletal Lamping. This was probably one of my top 5 concerts, and my boyfriend and I danced more than we ever danced before.

2/20 P-Funk

I got down just for the funk of it. George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic had a show at Toad's place, and it was one of the most interesting Toad's experiences I've ever had. The show was good. At times, some songs dragged on repetitively, but really, that's what a lot of the crowd wanted. They just kept on dancing. And the crowd was so diverse in both age and backgrounds, which also made this interesting. George Clinton is the man. They played their hits. They played some covers. They added some soulful singers. Clinton's granddaughter came out to MC and rap about marijuana. P-Funk turned a concert into an all-out event, and they gave us the whole funk and nothing but the funk.

12/30 The Mighty Mighty Bosstones at Toad's Place

Ahhh, the nostalgia. Going to ska shows takes me back to when I was 15 and skatastic. I didn't pull out my checkerboard belt or Capri Sun purse, but it still felt right.

Now, I've been to lots of ska shows, from smaller local bands to bigger headliners, but I had never seen the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and this was pretty exciting for me. They went on a hiatus in 2003, which was a year after the last time they played Toad's. Their recent reunion and tour was a big deal, and the fact that they're an older band really showed in the audience - there was everyone from high school kids, parents with younger children, parents of old ska fans who became ska fans, and you name it. The Bosstones played their classics. Their everyone singalong choruses and breakdowns really pumped up the crowd. The dancing guy made me giggle and want to dance too. Everyone in the room sang along to "The Impression that I Get," and it was a really feel-good, fun time.

It was a really good thing that a good chunk of the band put down their instruments to help sing because lead singer Dicky Barrett was losing his voice. His voice is pretty hoarse to begin with, so it was a rough situation. On the brighter side, with his hoarse voice, slick hair and snappy business attire, he totally looked like a villain from a superhero movie.

Tip the Van opened for this show, and frankly, they open for almost every ska show. They're also opening for Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto when they play Toad's. They're also opening for that line-up in MA. I've seen them everywhere - from UConn to smaller shows to Catch Xmas, and they always manage to impress a lot of people. They definitely deserve to get bigger real soon.

11/25 The Wailers at Toad's

I don't think I've ever seen so many dreds in one place before.

The original Wailers, as in Bob Marley and the Wailers minus Bob Marley and a few other guys and plus a few new guys, brought the Bob Marley vibe to Toad's place. It was a pretty sweet show - from an emotional "No Woman, No Cry," with two soulful backup female vocalists to a 15-minute "Jammin'." They played all the great hits, pretty much everything from "Legend," and had everyone swaying and singing along to the good old "Three Little Birds." I felt pretty Rasta for like 3 hours, man.

8/3 -- Gogol Bordello at Toad's Place

I had a ton of fun at the Gogol Bordello show this past Sunday (Aug. 3). I knew the band would put on a high-energy, crazy show sparking a lot of dance and "friendly moshing" in the crowd -- I was already warned and shown YouTube videos -- but the experience was better than anyone could describe to me, or even show me. There was a huge crowd in Toad's Place, which was a really cool surprise -- I mean, I know the band is highly praised in the underground music world, but I didn't hear about the show selling out, and I didn't think that many people in the area had heard of or were into Gogol Bordello.

But this was the kind of show where someone could bring a friend who hadn't heard much of the band who would end up getting really into it. I'll admit, I was a girlfriend in this situation, so this is proof.

The show was just a lot of fun. What really struck me was how cultural the "gypsy punk" music was just that, gypsy and punk music with Eastern European sounds fused together. I later read more about the band and learned from their website that they're made up of immigrants and refugees from Russia, the Ukraine and Israel, which makes them as much a statement as a band. And they make a big statement on stage with their shirtless lead singer jumping around and working the entire stage, other band members wearing feather collars, shaking tambourines and screaming and the two petite girls dancing on the side and later banging on a marching bass drum and crashing cymbals. Their energy was contagious. Their loyal fans were singing along and dancing hard, and their new fans joined in.

Toad's Place is my favorite concert venue because of its small size and intimate atmosphere. This year alone, I've seen shows as different from each other as The Mars Volta, where I started in the front of the crowd near the stage and had to move out after two songs so I could have enough space to breathe, and Daniel Johnston, where there were a lot of stage leaners singing along with maybe as much emotion as Daniel had when writing his songs. The Gogol Bordello show was different from any show I've seen at Toad's Place (or anywhere) but like the other shows, the crowd reaction made it feel right.