OlyMusic Experiences

Went to the Midnight Sun after work. I hadn't been to a show there before, and I liked the space a lot. Good energy with the group of people there last night. The I Love Ryans were terrific, I really enjoy what they do. They are fun. Mostly they just radiate good energy while playing music that makes me want to twitch around rhythmically. That Rhodes guitar sounding keyboard is sweet and played well, and some excellent drumming and guitar work was also observed. After they played I went looking for pizza up at Old School, but alas it has not reopened yet after the fire there. SO I went back and there was a band playing that I didn't catch the name of - they were pretty loud thump thump bang bang crash crash kinda thing. I could sorta almost get into it, but I have a hard time with that. There were some guys thrash dancing around obviously loving it, and I think I heard someone shout "straight-edge!" in that angry straight-edge hard core grr kind of way that I remember people shouting in high school... I bopped my head for a while but started getting very thirsty, so I went over to Hannah's and got a beer and read The Sitting Duck. Then went back and Vaya was setting up. They set up for a bit and then they started washing waves of sound over us. Swirling Keyboard & Guitar by a guy who looked vaguely familiar, Drums (played by Jason Kilgore, soon to be at the Art Institute in Seattle) and Bass played solidly by a slightly older looking gentleman who also looked vaguely familiar. The music had a strangely sad feeling for me while at the same time being rocking and a little jazzy. The way they layer their sound is cool, particularly the vocals on the last song, and some of the guitar riffs that went with a vocal. It was their last show, hopefully we will hear more from them all at some point in the future.