Blood Brothers – Live at the Avalon 11/8/06

November 11, 2006 at 6:29 pm | Posted in Concerts | 1 Comment

Alright, so here’s the concept – two guys with microphones go out on a stage yelling indistinctly for a little less than an hour with one of them occasionally providing a melody on a synthesizer. Believe it or not, they had all my attention. I couldn’t look away, I didn’t know what they would do next. By “them” I do mean Jordan Billie and Johnny Whitney, the principle vocalists. The screaming duo hails from the west coast but more specifically Seattle, where it seems like nothing has come out of since the grunge era in the early 90s.

Now, have I ever told you how much I hate co-headlined tours? Well, I hate them a lot, and lucky me this tour the Blood Brothers are on with …And You Will Know Us By Our Trail Of Dead happened to be one. One would think when two bands co-healine a tour that they would trade off who gets to close the show every night. Well in theory, probably, but for this tour the Blood Brothers are only set to close 3 dates out of the 40 that are scheduled.

Alright, now for the actual show… unless I am forgetting a show I went to over the summer, I don’t think I have been to the Avalon Ballroom since last year when I went to see Broken Social Scene and hence had forgotten how ENORMOUS the place is. nonetheless once the Blood Brothers took the stage the pit was packed. As expected they played mostly songs off their new album Young Machetes but to my surprise they also played quite a few songs off of Crimes including the first three tracks. I guess when your songs are mostly under 3 minutes you can play a lot of songs. The brothers kicked off the show with the first track off their new album “Set Fire to the Face on Fire” but it wasn’t until they played “Vital Beach” (one of my favorites off the new album) that the crowd really started getting into it. Whitney began warming up to the crowd at this point as well, starting by climbing on the Avalon’s notorious Lego block style speaker cabinets and then moving towards the front of the stage where he joined the crowd in singing along to “Trash Flavored Trash”. They ended up closing their set with one of their more epic songs off of Burn Piano Island, Burn entitled “The Shame”, watch the video below. After it was over I asked myself, would I see them again, to which I replied to myself, if they are headlining the show. The Blood Brothers are one of the most enthusiastic bands that I have seen on a big stage before and I would suggest everyone go out a catch them at your local venue.

The Shame

Posted By: ALEX