(For web article and photos follow:
http://blogs.tampabay.com/tbt/2009/08/review-sons-of-hippies-dear-old-liar-dive-into-the-hub.html)
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You can't tell a drinker that
the Hub is not one of Tampa Bay's best bars. It certainly has to be in anyone's top two or three dives.
But that was already the case before the Hub began staging
occasional free live concerts earlier this year. Originally called Full
Moon Shows, they were exactly what they sounded like: concerts that
took place on the night of a full moon.
But considering it was a haven for local musicians and roughnecks
before the live music started -- and considering its vaunted jukebox*
is one of the most beloved elements of any bar in town -- the question
we now must ask is: Does live music actually make the Hub better? Or
worse?
When
Maxim published a
guide to Tampa
in advance of this year's Super Bowl, one bar that they made sure to
include was the Hub (even if 90 percent of the people who appear in
Maxim's pages probably wouldn't be caught dead inside it). Its coolness, its sense of belonging, is effortless.
Also, it's pure scenester bait. Not to go all Robert Evans on you, but ... Were there Pabst Blue Ribbon signs in every direction? Oh, yes. Does the jukebox contain Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain? You know it, baby. Did I see a guy in a Modest Mouse T-shirt roaming the bar? You bet your ass I did. (On the other hand ... was I wearing a Death Cab For Cutie T-shirt**? You bet your ass I was.)
The stage setup is simple, but awesome. I know I once said Dave's
Aqua Lounge has the coolest backdrop of any stage in town, but the
Hub's absolutely takes the cake. Behind the band is a glass wall
dividing the bar from its adjacent package store, so the band is
playing in front of backlit rows of bottles of gin, rum and whisky. God
help the drunken performer who might someday decide to take a header
past the drum kit and into the glass wall ... but man, a more rock 'n'
roll maneuver, I cannot possibly imagine.
First up was Cosmic Baklava, a solo guitarist for whom I will once again trot out the cliched comparison of Explosions in the Sky (but only because his moody, slow-burning, feedbacky soundscapes were just a little darker than Sigur Ros). It was just him and an iPod/drum machine, and it was nice.
Then Cosmic Baklava was joined by a bassist and a drummer to form Florida Night Heat,
another atmospheric band whose wordless jams had more of a
Latin/Spaghetti-Western/surf-rock/stonery feel. They closed with a song
called Take On Heat, which was a drugged-out cover of A-Ha's Take On Me (mixed with what sounded like Iron Butterfly's Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida). Trippy.
And speaking of trippy, up next were
Sons of Hippies, Sarasota's answer to this decade's tradition of male-female alt-rock duos (the
White Stripes, the
Ting Tings,
She & Him,
Matt & Kim,
Mates of State). Having released their debut album,
Warriors of the Light, in July,
Katherine Kelly and
Jonas Canales recently added a bassist,
Michael Kreick, to help flesh out their live sound.
Live, they're like an amalgam of everyone from Radiohead to Metric to Ours to Broken Social Scene to Veruca Salt to Guided By Voices to the Psychedelic Furs to, yes, just a little of the White Stripes. It's spacey but it rocks, .
At one point, Kelly asked the audience to scream as loud as they
could during a certain part in the song. The band was recording the
song for a single they plan to release, and Kelly later told me she
plans to mix the live version with a studio version to create one song,
not unlike how the Beatles used two very different recordings to create Strawberry Fields Forever. I screamed loudly, so maybe I'll be on the single. That would be fun.
They printed 100 copies of Warriors of the Light, and I bought one. No. 96. It was well worth my $8.
Then came Dear Old Liar, a mostly female St. Pete foursome I'd most compare to PJ Harvey, or the Cowboy Junkies, or Portishead, or Fiona Apple, with slow-burning '60s-'70s guitars instead of piano. They played a cover of Metric's Glass Ceiling, which Kelly loved, calling it "ambitious."
Vocalist Micheal Hooker was marvelously breathy, and guitarist Leanne Dunn just shredded. Smoky, bluesy, noirish, Twin Peaks-y -- they were a perfect choice for the Hub. They even played a song called The Hub.