Dresden Dolls at First Avenue: Minneapolis, MN

October 19th, 2006 in Bars and Pubs, Metro, Minneapolis

A couple of weeks ago Kevin asked if I wanted to go to see the Dresden Dolls at First Avenue with him. We have gone to see Ike Reilly (at First Ave) and here (at Station 4) before. Kim, Aaron, and I caught They Might Be Giants at First Ave as well.

Anyway, I have a cold (stuffy head cold like none I have ever had before) which was making me dizzy which was worrying me about some of the long term health issues I have. I took off work at 4:00 and headed to the doctor for 4:30. I really didn’t want to go to the show after the doctor and feeling like ass but I didn’t want Kevin to have to “Miracle” the great ticket to someone else. Thanks again dude, BTW.

I went home, made dinner, and changed clothes. I headed out to Kevin’s at around 6:45. I made it to Kevin’s door before 7 and we were soon headed out to the 28th Ave LRT station. The last time (see the Ike Reilly show at First Ave) Kevin and I saw a show at First Avenue we missed the train and ended up having to get a ride from very helpful strangers back to Bloomington. This time I was nervous about missing the train and mentioned to Kevin that we might want to leave before midnight. I’m such a pussy.

After we got to the venue we had to wait outside in the fucking cold for the doors to open. We stood next to a cute young couple who joined us in commenting on the Hard Rock Cafe’s choice to include Seal on the side of their building. My sole comment was something along the lines of, “well, if you were fucking Heidi Klum you too would be a rock star.”

We soon were inside and I found the Ms. Pacman machine. It was in full working order, surprisingly, and sunk a single quarter in and started playing the Original Crack Machine (TM) (the second coming of the Crack Machine (TM) was Golden Tee 2003. I scored a quick 85,710 and headed over to find Kevin seated at our table with the First Ave staff fighting off the hoardes of nearby douchebags insistent on sitting at the tables clearly marked “Reserved” without paying. Just as I sat down I spied a Tetris arcade machine behind us. Ooooh. Unfortunately this machine wasn’t in as good of working order; with sticky buttons and a worn joystick I didn’t fare as well and don’t even remember my meager score.

The show started somewhere around 8:30 with an interesting, funny, and energetic opening act: Sxip Shirey. He did some weird and experimental shit that made me think of Haunted House music and ghouls and goblins flying around. Very cool sounds — he has some MP3s available on his site including this one which is the best of the lot available online.

After he finished up, The Red Paintings came on. This was one majorly fucked up band. They were all dressed in different shit — everything from a geisha to the lead singer in a long green robe with tentacles at the bottom. They had an extremely bad stretch of luck in the past two weeks with their tour manager and sound man quitting, three flat tires, having all their equipment stolen from their truck, and so on.

Hailing from Austrailia these guys brought a whole knew meaning to performance art. Jumping around holding children’s toys and watching toy robots blink and spin was making my eye balls bug out of my skull. Not to mention the fucking near naked people being painted on stage in front of the woman painting bug-eyed women on canvas behind. The bright Christmas lights on the Geisha’s hollow violin were constantly tugging my vision from the movie screen showing pictures of atomic weapons, animals being eaten by bugs, and the crazy sense of deja vu that I just had writing this — as if I’ve seen this entire act somewhere before. Anyway, their music was energetic, exciting, interesting, and wondeful — as long as you didn’t look at the stage while they were playing. If you did you were sucked into a visual hellhole from which you could not escape.

For me there were two very memorable highlights to their set:

* The first was the lead singer, smelling the rank burned pizza smells commenting, “I love the American stench, hot dogs, french fries, doughnuts, and fat cops.”

* The second was the God Save the Queen Sex Pistols cover that they fucking rocked out on. I actually enjoyed The Red Paintings version more than the original. I’m a sad Punk fan ;)

Sxip hopped back on to introduce Dakota Rooney and Jim Domenick of Watch Humans Fly. They performed crazy ass, fucked up, stunts like hanging by their necks from a loop in their rope while spinning at near light speed. Absolutely beautiful and fucking scary to watch.

Sxip introduced The Dresden Dolls and they came out to rock their set. Compared to the visual overload from The Red Paintings and the near death experiences with Dakota and Jim, the Dresden Dolls were fucking tame as declawed kittens. While I enjoyed the first part of their set I felt that they were really starting to wind it down at the end (apparently their new album is slower and softer). Bleh. Not what I need right before I go home.

Overall, an absolutely fantastic whirlwind tour of crazy performance art and new aged Punk. I highly recommend that you check out a Dresden Dolls fiasco at your earliest conveinience :)

See all the bad pictures from today here (mobile).