review: 04.22.01- Hot Cocoa Night with Jeff London at the Meow Meow
Cut and pasted from my e-mail to Matt. I'm too tired to conjure up more unoriginal and hackneyed adjectives:
Last night I went to this thing at the Meow Meow. It was titled Hot Cocoa Night with Jeff London. It's an intimate show with mostly acoustic guitars, the occassional keyboard and harmonica, and people can even volunteer to play stuff. Anyone can play, but there are scheduled musicians. Jeff is this sweet guy who does his own solo work and plays with the band Boycrazy (a indie pop band). He was super late, but when James and I got there, we were super excited to see Ben Barnett from Kind of Like Spitting. James just recently made me a tape of a Kind of Like Spitting album of his, and I am so in love with the songs.
Anyways, the show started off without Jeff- the guy who heads up Jealous Butcher Records started by playing some covers and tunes from his band. Then a guy named Doug Shepherd played some beautiful emotional glossy pop songs. Honeybunch was next, a guy playing guitar and a girl with her quivering, unstable but lulling voice on the keyboards. They employed some recorded beats and played sugar pop with lots of harmonies and silly lyrics. Hutch Harris from Urban Legends played after, and he was one of my favorites. His voice is reedy and sweet. He played a harmonica that was rigged to his mouth and a guitar. More pop songs, but his were very structured and beautiful.
Finally, Jeff and Ben played a couple of tunes together. They were my favorite. Jeff, whom I met before at an informal 'zine meeting and got the impression of him being a super duper academic type of guy merely dabbling in music, totally knocked my socks off. He and Ben play a lot of music together- at this show, they back each other up. And their harmonies were luscious. Both have very able voices. The make up of the songs were very complete and made me go all misty-eyed.