Live review - TV on the Radio on St. Patty's Day

Any St. Patrick's Day that starts out eating corned beef and cabbage at the comfy Dundee Cork and Bottle and ending with TV on the Radio's stunning closer "Staring at the Sun" at the Voodoo Lounge in Kansas City has to be a damn good St. Patrick's day.

Seeing TV on the Radio at a casino sort of cheapened the experience of seeing this band for the first time. I sort of wished I could have seen them play somewhere like Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Kansas or Sokol Auditorium. But knowing full and well that I was lucky enough to have the band come anywhere within eight hours of Omaha made any discomfort of the venue quickly disappear.

Subtle quickly won me over. My friend who I went to the show with said Doseone, lead singer of Subtle, could have been a bastard combination of George Michael and Les Claypool. I was more than a tad concerned how Subtle's performing arts theatrics would go over in a place where people were blitzed on green beer, occasionally watching the NCAA scores and the occasional yell of "Wolf Like Me!" from a few drunk twits. Fortunately, the crowd mellowed and for the most part, gave Subtle the warm reception they so deserved. I plan to buy For Hero:For Fool on Tuesday when I pick up Modest Mouse's new one.

Moving on to TV on the Radio. The band expertly tossed out "Wolf Like Me" in the first third of their set - I was praying a few of the undesirables would then leave to gamble once they heard the song they heard on the radio. Once they got that song out of the way, TVOTR played "Young Liars" - a song so energetic in its live environment that the audience energy level barely dropped, even though most of the audience probably had heard the song for the first time that night.

Tunde Adebimpe repeatedly flailed his arms, pumped his fist and did tag-team duty with the two microphones set up. For a band who is on the short list for "THE" band of the moment, Adebimpe remained ever humble and modest, thanking the audience repeatedly throughout the set. David Andrew Sitek repeatedly draped chimes over the neck of his guitar, nicely mixing with his buzzsaw guitar style. Jaleel Bunton didn't miss a beat on the drums - though he occasionally got up to do guitar duty. Throughout all of this, Kyp Malone was fairly stoic in his playing, occasionally giving the audience a slight appealing nod - which the audience ate up - the mark of ultimate stage presence.

TVOTR brought Subtle back on stage to play various percussion on a tribal-jam rendition of "A Method." "Staring at the Sun" closed out the set. I left, smelling the BBQ I ate at Arthur Bryant's slowly sweating out of me. For adrenaline - TVOTR's performance was enough to get me back to Omaha without feeling the fatigue that comes with being up for about 20 hours.

iPod shuffle list from Friday...
"Me Against The World" - 2-Pac Feat. Dramacy *****
"Girl of My Dreams" - Charles Mingus *****
"Mr. Self Destruct" - NIN *****
"Save Me" - Queen ***
"Welcome to the Terrordome" - Public Enemy *****
"Help Me" - Johnny Cash ****
"Fast Car" - Tracy Chapman ****
"Ex Factor" - Lauryn Hill *****
"Sailin' On" - Bad Brains ****
"My Friend Goo" - Sonic Youth ****
"Outro With Bees" - Neko Case **** (short, but oohhhh so sweet)
"Total Eclipse" - Iron Maiden ****
"Somebody to Love" - Queen ***
"Fifty Years After the Fair" - Aimme Mann ** (compared to her other stuff)
"Refugee" - Tom Petty *** (never understood why this was on 'Chipmunk Punk'...)