kasabian/mad action at the 9:30 Club

last night i met a friend of mine who had passes to a 9:30 Club show....the headliner was a british band -KASABIAN- thats been getting a fair amount of press (at NME for example) back home and beginning a tour (their first me thinks) of the US..... it must be hard on these young bands to come to the US -after becoming flavor of the month/cats miau back home where they play festivals or what have you for 50,000 people- and here play small half empty clubs even with $10 ticket prices ... often it seems that the bands come to the US to be able to say back home that they came and did america... if you're in a rock'n'roll band i suppose you got to do it no matter how painful... for every british band that breaks in the US- radiohead comes to mind- there seem to be 50 that never make it.. and lets not go into how stressful touring america is for a lot of these bands made up of youngsters.. the sex pistols and stone roses both cracked under the pressure... some bands like supergrass seem content to come to the US every two years and play clubs knowing full well they will never make it past that level....

kasabian, a band made up of a couple of kids that has received some good press back home, is trying to make it to the next level... whats a new english rock band sound like these day? i got one word for you: OASIS... the oasis influence is front and center... from the lead singer's liam gallagher dance moves to the haircuts to pretty much everything.... kasabian - for all the comparisons with stone roses or manchester scene- really came off as a type of oasis.. curiously enough they were 20 times better than i remembered oasis... the music sounded like a heavier variant of oasis...more racous/punky.. the lead singer sounded a lot like liam to me ..this may have something to do with the accent...

an interesting difference between british bands and american bands i noticed is that bands like kasabian just can't shut up.. between each song the lead singer would yell out "thank you washinGTON DCCCCCCCCC!" ... or "god bless you washinGTTOOON DCCC!"...... american bands, meanwhile, seem to specialize in ignoring their audience... (there is a long tradition of this in rock passed down from bob dylan who at times played with his back to the audience- of course he may have got this "move" from its inventor: miles "the grouch" davis)...

kasabian's drummer was a maniac. he really went off on one song.. he was the most convincing aspect of the band.....he pounded the skins like his life depended on it... the bassist seemed solid enough and exchanged roles with a third guitarist who on the last track played what to me sounded like some cranking fuzz bass...i have to say i don't get why they needed three guitarists..at times the singer and lead guitarist and second guitarist would all play guitar.. didn't work for me.. at times they used synthesizers to create some textures on the songs... at times i thought i heard synths no one was playing.. not sure what that was about but anyways i guess that i had heard kasabian tried to marry rock with synths and i saw a little of this but not too much... (this is by the way the very thing new order and joy division- i think- sorta invented in the early 80s)......

its a bit disturbing how british rockers all seem to look the same and i almost get the feeling sometimes that with these british bands they seem to be created by record label executives looking to bring together models.. i mean too many of these guys for example seem remarkably tall...like most bands starting out and coming from britain they only played for an hour ten minutes.... seems to be accepted there that if you've got only one album thats all you play pretty much.... not sure why a band would not want to stretch out and play a 90 minute show.. this show was done at 11:15 so...

a special thanks to the members of the opening band "mad action" whom we hung out with backstage and chatted with over a few beers.....this is a band from philadelphia thats going to be opening up for kasabian during their two month tour.... check out their web site here..