Squid Pro Quo: Alkaline Trio / Hot Toddies / Kepi Ghoulie / The Atom Age at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco

Friday, June 17, 2011

Alkaline Trio / Hot Toddies / Kepi Ghoulie / The Atom Age at the Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco

Alkaline Trio / Photo by Jason Duarte

So last night's show at the Bottom of the Hill was Alkaline Trio with the Hot Toddies, Kepi Ghoulie (electric) and The Atom Age. This show was mostly awesome. Let me explain.

The Atom Age was awesome. Those guys sounded tight, and made me want to check out more by them. They were full of energy and had a saxophone player, which I thought added a cool dynamic to the standard rock formula.

After the Atom Age was Kepi Ghoulie with a full band. Kepi is awesome as always. His music; his stage show; everything. This was the first time I've ever seen the full-suited monsters dancing around at a Kepi show. For his last song, "Freaks On Parade," he had Mikey Erg go through an obstacle course of sorts. First, Merg had to take the bass from Dino, play that for a while, then play the tambourine for a while. Then, he took over on drums mid-song, and then played Kepi's guitar. It was pretty entertaining. He also had at least 6 large garbage bags full of balloons, which everyone was hitting around in the 240-person venue. He also threw out streamers, danced around like crazy (along with everyone else) and made it one hell of a party. Everyone was having a blast. During "Chupacabras," one of the fully-suited monsters came out, who was a CHUPACABRA! A few songs after that, an ape guy came out and was dancing around and kneeling and moving around with his fists like a real ape. It was awesome.

After Kepi Ghoulie were the Hot Toddies, which was the low point of the night for me. I understand the whole surf-influenced girl pop thing, but they just didn't do it for me. The vocals were pretty monotoned and the music was just too soft and low-fi for me. They did a creepy song called "Matt Skiba Sandwich." They were over, then it was time to see my favorite band in San Francisco.

Alkaline Trio took the stage and killed it the entire. fucking. set. I mean, they didn't practice and it was slightly noticeable cause Skiba would concentrate a little more than usual on the songs, but it was so loose and relaxed and awesome that it didn't matter. Plus they weren't using their own gear or anything either, and they played fantastically. They opened with the first song they released under Asian Man Records; "Cringe." What followed was amazing. At the end of their set, people rushed the stage and started bringing everyone they could on stage to sing along (though scarcely anyone knew the words to the Nomeansno cover). It was a great show and Alkaline Trio always pleases me when I see them.

Alkaline Trio Set List:

Cringe

Armageddon

Emma

Cooking Wine

Clavicle

Crawl

Nose Over Tail

Goodbye Forever

Mercy Me

You've Got So Far To Go

Snake Oil Tanker