Show report: Fatty Acids and Sat Nite Duets

Happy surprise: the Fatty Acids were good when I saw them before but great tonight — powerpop played so loud the amps start to get that blown-out sound, and then this very beautiful clean line of trumpet cutting through it all.

Notes on Sat. Nite Duets:

1.  They have arrived at the level of success where one row of people at the front knows the words to all the songs.

2.  Their songs are what you would call “anthemic” but the culminating shouted lyric is often something intentionally without intrinsic affect.  Examples include:

• “HE’S GETTING ORGANIZED!”
• “I’VE GOT BOOKS ON TAPE!”
• “WE ARE ALL REAL ESTATE AGENTS!”

3.   Relationship betw. Sat. Nite Duets and Pavement still not very clear to me.  None of their songs could be mistaken for a Pavement song.  But I think the way the songs are put together — not exactly the way the songs sound, but the way the songs make decisions — is more Pavement than anybody else who’s not Pavement.  Drums also similar.  In fact both Fatty Acids and SND sync drums to guitar in the manner of “Lions (Linden).”

4.  I don’t usually link to the same video twice, but “All Nite Long” is still the best song anyone has recorded in the young decade.  So here it is again.

Sat. Nite Duets’ new album available imminently.

I do like the Beatles! I do!

Reader majordomo comments on my post about the Sat. Nite Duets/Fatty Acids:

What is with you and obscure bands, I don’t understand your obsession with nameless, obscure bands. You’re probably one of those guys who hate the Beatles because too many people like them, right ?

Actually, no.  When I was 11 the only two albums I owned were Beatles best-ofs, the Blue Album and the Red Album.  I thought the Beatles were the best band in the history of rock music.  And I still think so!

But the Beatles have armies of people to write about their greatness.  Who will blog about Sat. Nite Duets and Fatty Acids, or Yellow Ostrich, or Grammar, or Carsick Cars, or The Stevedores, if not me?  These people work hard on their records, they give them away free or almost free — why shouldn’t they get some tiny signal from the world outside that somebody liked the songs they wrote?

By the way, I went to the show to see Sat. Nite Duets but Fatty Acids turned out to be great too.  Here’s “Astrovan”:

I hope that was not annoying to majordomo.  In case it was, here’s “I am the Walrus.” CJ watches this video a lot and I’ve fallen in love with the song all over again.  How do they get so much stuff in there?

Good Lord, did you know Styx covered “I am the Walrus?”  I did not.  It is awful.

As it happens, I actually had a post about Styx in mind!  I’ll put it up now.  I hope it is mainstream enough for majordomo.