Overwhelming, overstimulating, crazy, ridiculous, and over-the-top. Just a few words one could describe last night’s Les Savy Fav (myspace) show at the Mezzanine.

While I don’t dislike Les Savy Fav and actually like some of their songs, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. I decided to go to see their show after hearing repeatedly what a show Les Savy Fav puts on.

Before I get into all the things Harrington did, let me actually attempt to cover the music for a moment. The band was tight and Harrington, for all his antics, delivered his vocals. The problem was it was hard to notice the music with overwhelming performance going on. I doubt as many people were as absorbed in the music as they were in the show. That’s not to say people weren’t rocking out. The crowd was certainly rocking out.

I’d heard stories of what Tim Harrington, the frontman, does during shows, but I couldn’t have been prepared for the actual show. It was like he was going everywhere, doing everything to be outrageous. Later I was trying to decide how much is a performance and how much is a innate. My inclination is that he has to have that crazy inside somewhere–I can’t see how else he’d even think of doing the things he was doing.

Among those things–some of which you’ll find photos here–spitting beer and water on the audience, pouring a bucket of water on audience members, duck-taping an audience member that had come on stage to himself, eating half a banana and shoving the other half into a photographer’s mouth, kissing a different photographer’s lens, making a face on a trash can with tape and then wearing it, tackling a audience stage dancer and taking his shoes and socks off and later using that sock into a sock puppet and even later shoving that sock into an audience member’s mouth, singing completely horizontal while hanging off the stairs, placing a phone call during a song, wearing a curtain as a cape, wearing an audience members ski vest, and descending into the audience too many times to mention. Oh, and coming out wrapped in toilet paper and gradually stripping down till he was shirtless.

Do you see what I’m saying about the performance aspect overshadowing the music? That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the performance; it was worth going by itself.

More photos after the jump and in my photo album.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 10:33 pm Posted by adrian in SF bay area, live review, photos. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.