Having a Rave Up With The Rubinoos

Last night I went to see the Rubinoos at the Great American Music Hall.

It was the first (and last) date on their "2008 World Tour", so they had tour t-shirts made up for the occasion. Of course I had to buy one to show I was there. It's like a regular tour shirt with all the dates on the back, except there's only one date on the back (June 21st, San Francisco).  

The Rubinoos don't play many local shows, and are usually opening for someone when they do, so it's a good idea to catch them when they're headlining. They've gained a much higher profile since the "Avril thing", so the GAMH was pretty full, with a lot of parents bringing their kids, which made a more engaged crowd than the standard indie-rock audience. It was like a sock-hop with everyone dancing and singing along.

They played all the old classics like their Avril song and their Tiffany song, as well as recent stuff like "Altamont" and "Go Go Tokyo" from their most recent album Twist Pop Sin, ending with "Rock And Roll Is Dead (and we don't care)", but rock and roll will never die as long as the Rubinoos keep playing at least one gig a year.

The opening act was a Yardbirds tribute band called the RaveUps. Tribute bands make great openers, because most people know the songs, and a Yardbirds tribute band can play pretty much all their hits ("For Your Love", "Evil Hearted You", "Shapes Of Things", "Over Under Sideways Down", "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago") and still have enough time for a six-minute rave up of "Train Kept A Rollin'". There was another band called The Rave-Ups back in the 80s (who kinda sucked imo), so I was glad it wasn't that band.

The show was MC'd by M.Dung (former DJ of KFOG's "Sunday Night Idiot Show") who spun some tunes between sets on his iPod. Dung hasn't been on the radio for awhile (his style doesn't fit the Clear Channel era), but he still doing Idiot Show podcasts, which I guess makes him a "pod jockey". "Rock'n'Roll Bay-bee!"