just saw Ted Leo & the Pharmacists

[Rae]

We went to see Ted Leo on his Living With the Living tour at First Avenue last night.

The opening band was Love of Diagrams, who are evidently from Australia. Couldn't be more timely with all the talk we've had around here about early Siouxsie & the Banshees recently; these guys had that sound down to a tee. I was kinda into some of the guitar work and there's no doubt that they'd mastered a particular style, but overall it just didn't hook me.

Ted & the Pharmacists took the stage in a relatively timely fashion and ran through a set that was pretty heavy on material from the new album and Shake the Sheets. It was nice to see that James Canty was back in the band after a hiatus that seemed to have started right before Hearts of Oak. Things went a little awry about halfway through when Ted got a little overenergetic in the middle of the set and accidentally knocked over his stack. Rather than take the time to get the equipment back together, he just finished the set sans guitar. There were a few other technical difficulties, and before the encore, Ted basically apologized for a "bad show" and promised they'd be back soon. I don't think that the audience saw it that way, though, as most everyone was pogoing up & down the entire time. They finished with a fine cover of the Chumbawamba track "Rapaport's Lament" (which is also on the bonus EP Mo' Living that came with first pressings of the new album).

Overall a good time although probably not the most memorable of the 10 or so times I've had the pleasure of seeing the Pharmacists over the last six or seven years.

~Rae

[DariusNYC]

Thanks for the report. I've seen them live a couple times, and so I understand why you keep coming back.