it is relatively pretentious of a band to include "the" in their name. in american vernacular, "the" (when pronounced like "thee") is often used to convey a superlative (i.e. "this is THE show of the summer!"), so bands with "the" in their names should be good (unless maybe they pronounce it "thuh"). well, the fitness is not good. they play synth rock with lyrics about fashion and look a hell of a lot like scenesters who didn't have anything better to do. from what i could hear, the lyrics were ironic, but irony is as much the domain of scenesters as fashion. oh, and note to all bands (ESPECIALLY synth rock bands): if you play without percussion, you better be damned interesting, because mimicking someone else's style without a beat makes your imitation more limp and boring than it already would have been.

anyway, next were columbus' own the cinema eye. they were also synth-oriented but they had a fuller sound with a low end keyboard and a high end keyboard, drums, and a guitar. passionate and subtly undulatory female vocals were nicely juxtaposed with an energetic young fellow playing the guitar, and it didn't sound as stale as some new wave derivative rock does.

finally, the red light sting are cool. they ended up being both much more energetic (think blood brothers) and much cuter (think coordinated gym outfits with shirts that spelled out the band name if they were lined up) than i expected. if the blood brothers traded vocalist jordan billie for a keyboard playing female who sang back-up, then wrote songs with more humor and less violence, they would sound a lot like this. viva la rock.