Shinier Toy Guns & r & Already back after a raucous October date, the Shiny Toy Guns return this weekend to the Big Dipper. Fans rejoice!
Crowd Control & r & Next time we go to a show at the Big Easy we're gonna bring lawn chairs. The intermission between Andrew Bird's two-man show and Nickel Creek last Saturday was more than 30 minutes long. You'd think they were setting up for Rush, not an acoustic quartet. It seemed even longer standing in the overwhelming crush of bodies on the main floor. The crowd itself, though, provided many of the evening's highlights. Besides their enthusiasm at the onset of each song, they also bent to the band's many whims. At one point, the 1,500 fans dutifully chanted the tagline for an old deodorant ad: "Buyyy MEN-nen." Later the crowd sang along to "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The best crowd moment, though, came when guitarist Sean Watkins was talking about his favorite brand of eggnog. We heard one guy way in the back yell, enthusiastically, "Darigold!" In a town of head-bobbers, these are glad tidings.