The Redwalls with BABY TEETH and julie ocean

May 7, 2008 by BYT at large  Send to a Friend

You can view the full photo set here, courtesy of Raisa.

Last Thursday night, DC9 was by far the best bang for your buck.

The bill for the night: Two chicago bands, The Redwalls and Baby Teeth, and one local band, Julie Ocean

I purposely did not listen to the bands ahead of time, to try to be a fresh child from the start.

The first band of the night went by the name Julie Ocean. When I showed up, I thought that this would possibly be a folksy acoustic act by a budding female, by the time the band was done, I really really wished it had been. Julie Ocean managed to write, record, and perform a song called “#1 song”. As if naming a song “#1 song” isn’t pretty much enough to destroy its chance of ever even dreaming of a position on the charts. Julie Ocean’s songwriting and performance were enough to seal the deal. For the most part, they sound like a cross between Ted Leo and Blink 182. For masochists or those who like all things that are bad, you can go to their myspace. Moving on.

Next, the headlining band:

These gentlemen are a band that I stumbled on about two years ago, when I caught their performance of “Thank You” on Conan O’Brien. I was PUMPED, and ready for them to be my new favorite band. Though I can’t find the specific performance anywhere on the nets, here is their video for the song (still a good song, but not nearly the same experience as the performance I dug). At the time, their first EP was just being released, and I had a few outstanding suspicions, and the kept the musical jury hung for the time being.

Suspicion #1: They were going to rip of the Beatles. Blatantly and frequently.

Suspicion #2: Their songwriting and style was going to be one-trick-ponied.

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correct. I am this fool. I had written a beautifully worded, intellectually insightful, inspiring and uplifting post about Thursday night for all of you to sit back and take in, to drink tea and booze and discuss for years to come. This post has been lost inside the internets, all of the internets. The groundbreaking nature of the lost post is yours to dream about. One thing I do know, now that it’s a couple hours later, I’m glad I held back from throwing my computer earlier.

So, here it, now, cliff and his notes:

The Redwalls were signed to Capitol in 2005, opened for Oasis in the summers of 2005 and 2006, and were dropped from Capitol in early 2007. My opinion is that they are solidly good, but by no means great. Their live show is fun, but gets boring and repetitive, and both of my previously stated suspicions are true true true. They’re surely sleeps with videos of Ringo Starr playing drums in the background, and they even said a statement that sounded exactly like the soundclip of John Lennon from the Beatles Anthology, saying “Paul’s broken a glass, broken a glass, Paul’s broken a glass, a glass, a glass he’s broke today.” Enough said, remember this the quick course.

Oh yeah, the lead singer’s face may be made from animatronics, which is good.

Moving on…………….the second band of the night:

Baby Teeth

Why save the second band for last?

Cause they are TIGHT.

How tight?

So tight you might get pitted.

How pitted?

Please view this demonstration:

Baby Teeth is an awesome, awesome band from Chicago. They sound like Foreigner and Queen snuck into the backroom and conceived a sleazy disco child that grew all big and good.

Their bass player’s writes his parts like a smart man and uses a killer tone, their drummer is rock solid and looks like the lead singer of the Flaming Lips, and their lead singer/piano player has a crazy right leg and can sing his ass off. They put on a great live show, and nail tons of three part harmonies. The show I saw featured a lot of good tunes, but two songs to be remembered, lemme just say one is called “hustle beach” and the other is called “Snake Eyes”. I’ll leave it at that, except to say, “if you think you know about snake eyes, you’re right”

What’s their name again?

B – A – B – Y — T – E – E – T – H

http://www.myspace.com/babyteethmusic

The song in this video is more James Brown than usual for them, so it isn’t a perfect example of their style, but it does show that Baby Teeth can write write a good horn part, and Abraham can sing his face off.

The saddest thing is their greatness simply does not come across well enough in their recordings, even though they aren’t half bad recordings. So I leave you with this:

If Baby Teeth comes back to town, it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.
If Baby Teeth comes back to town, it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.
If Baby Teeth comes back to town, it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.

If Baby Teeth comes back to town, it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature. GO SEE THEM.

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