Well, he took his pants off after the first song.

I caught the tail end of Sir Prize Fighter who sounded promising, shame about the band name tho. The Detachment Kit was even better, and the lead singer made an interesting unspoken point by sporting a "trucker hat" through the set. You don't see them so much them anymore, since getting branded as a 2nd wave hipster accessory. But this guy was very thin and tall and had long hair. With the hat on, well, he actually looked like he might be a trucker. The music was solid, making me again wonder if I would have been better off in Chicago, since I like nearly every band from that town.

But New York still has its charms. As Damon Che later asked, "How do you guys afford to live here?"

Top replies:

• Prostitution
• Selling crack
• My parents pay my rent

So Don Caballero finally took the stage. I've never seen them live before, and Che had quit Bellini by the time they played here, so I didn't even know what he looked like. Maybe it was the plaid shirt he was wearing, but to me he looked like somebody's older brother, the kind of big-for-his-age type that might sneak up behind you and smack the back of your head just to see you jump. They say Damon Che's an asshole, and probably for good reason. I mean, he went on tour with some musicians and stole his old band's name, as well as the music. But when all is said and done, the guy can play drums. I kept thinking while watching him that it was like watching a master chef chopping onions. Wait, I'm going somewhere with this. A professional chef can make really fancy dishes and we know that, but imagine his skill at the simple task of chopping up an onion. He's incredibaly fast and flawless, the muscle memory so ingrained he barely has to look at his hands while dicing at top speed. That's kind of how Damon Che plays the drums. If you look at the pictures, you notice he doesn't flail his arms about much. Even right up front, I could barely tell what he was doing. Of course, he was fairly obscured by his own drum set. While not quite as impractical as Alex van Halen's set, Che had a lot of drums up there. I counted a kick, two rack toms, a two snares (one on either side), and one roto tom. And even though he has the two big crash-ride cymbals way overhead, his drum style is very different than Todd Trainer, who also favors a long reach for his cymbals.

Anyway, enough fawning. The show kicked my ass. I kept telling myself, "Legs, now don't go getting into this music too much. These guys are mostly shills taking the place of the real band." But it was impossible to resist in the end. Even if they were basically a glorified cover band, it's pretty impressive material they're covering. I'm not even sure how much stuff was Don Cab material, there was a lot of stuff I didn't recognize. But how much of that was due to the differences in hearing something live and the fact that I don't know all the Don Cab stuff by heart yet, I'll never know. The only song I definitely placed was "I Never Liked You," which has always been one of my favorites (and a good graphic novel by Chester Brown). They totally nailed it, and during the breakdown section (in which the guitarists loop their parts through a delay mechanism), Che got up and started doing this weird thing where he ran the drum sticks across his face, first vertically, then horizontally. It was kinda funny, and kind of stupid, but I didn't care. He made a move to stage dive at one point, which is a fearsome prospect indeed. He's a pretty big guy and the audience is full of spindly record store geek types. Woulda been like a rock landing on a popsicle stick house.

Speaking of the audience, let's talk about the guys standing next to me. Now, I love boisterous hecklers, so don't take this the wrong way: These guys were morons. I'm not the type who has his night ruined when people are assholes at shows. I enjoy it as part of the public spectacle to a point. These guys (a few skinny guys and one big fat guy with a fratboy haircut and a Heinie in his mitt) were acting like it was their first night at summer camp, giggling at nothing, pushing each other around in a weird ritualistic macho way. They were looking for their friend who had the unlikely name of "Dickhand". I know this because they kept shouting it every 3 seconds. These guys thought they were hilarious. How do people get like this, I wondered. Why am I never possessed with the desire to say dipshit things and holler with such obnoxious abandon? Then when the band took the stage and said something about Brooklyn, the guys started saying, "Brooklyn? Naw, Jersey!" Then they began chanting, "DIRTY JERZZZ! DIRTY JERZZZZZ!!" and hooting "AhhhHaww!"

I have nothing against people from Jersey. A lovely people, a fastidious people. But people who say things like "Dirty Jerzz" pretty much explain themselves. It's like those wannabe playas who were at the Alibi that one night, talking about how easy it is to score chicks (they were strangely unescorted that night), who kept saying they were from "SLEAZEside, New Jersey."

But who am I to ruin their fun? They only got on my nerves when they started moshing and one of them knocked into me, spillng a lot of my whiskey on my chin. That's another thing: it's not really a good idea to mosh to music that has a lot of time signature changes; it's self-defeating. So the set finally ended but they eventually came back for an encore. A lot of people left anyway because they had probably reached their limit for Don Cab's particular brand of sonic assault. I can understand this, my head was ringing all the way home. I'm really glad I got to see how the music is played, even if compromised by the fact the original musicians weren't present save the drummer. So whatever did happen to the other guys, Ian Williams, Mike Banfield? I'd sure like to know what they're up to.

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