Saturday, April 12, 2008

Black Lips - Gagarin 205 Live (10/4/2008)

Thanks to a brave but commercially suicidal promoter we got to see the Black Lips in Athens at the right moment. After last year's release of their excellent fourth album "Good Bad Not Evil" the Atlanta, Georgia band find themselves at the best point in their career so far. But the thing is that new rock bands cannot easily find an audience in Greece and the few that does pay us a visit usually face half-empty clubs. This was also the case here, but thankfully the rather small crowd was loud and overly enthusiastic, creating the necessary party atmosphere for a good garage punk show. The Black Lips responded with a frantic 90 minutes high-octane set connecting the dots from Chuck Berry to The 13th Floor Elevators, with highlights including "Bad Kids", "Cold Hands" and "O Katrina!". Top marks also to Jared's moustache, the craziest 'tache in rock since Greg Norton (Husker Du bassist, ask your dad kids)!
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4 comments:

Unknown said...

yeah, the promoter had to be really brave to charge 25 euros entrance, without being beaten up. bravo! punk!

ody said...

Let's see: ticket price to see the Black Lips in New York = 15$ (about 10 euros), ticket price to see the Black Lips in London = 8,5 pounds (about 12 euros), new cd price in Amazon = between 12 and 16 euros (incl. postage). Ticket price in Athens = 25 euros, cd price in record store = 20 euros. Result = most greek fans download their music through the internet and very few turn up at shows. Conclusion = music is a very expensive hobby here. Still, 25 euros is the minimum you expect to pay for a ticket. How about the 40 to 80 euros for PJ Harvey in the summer? Now that's what I call a rip off (with all due respect to Polly)...

Anonymous said...

is it worth playing live music in greece, we have a good band called Victorian Dad
have a listen

www.myspace.com/victoriandaad

one day we would love to come and play Athens
Rock on!
VD

ody said...

Well, I would gladly go to your show ("Lowdown" is the bomb) but if you like a big crowd here you better start practice on some Black Sabbath covers!