Thursday night I went out to Old Ironsides in Sacramento to see the Usuals play. They were on last out of 3 bands so they didn’t even start playing until around 11.
Up first was a band from New Mexico who are all still in High School. The name of the band is “Overnight”, but I can’t for the life of me find any kind of web page or myspace debauchery for them. I was relatively unimpressed with them live. Their bassist looked and sounded like he was mentally retarded (and no, he wasn’t really I talked to him after the show, he just goes all weird on stage). However, Jen bought their CD and I Ninja Looted it from her to listen to them recorded and there are two songs on their CD I do like which they didn’t play live because it sounds like their are more instruments than players (the beauty of recording studios). If you have the CD (somehow) the tracks I’m referring to are the last two on the album, if I can get their permission, or find their website I’ll see if I can get them for you to listen to.
The second band “We Prick You” might have been good, but honestly they were so loud that I couldn’t really distinguish their sound beyond LOUD. They did have one cool thing, its only two guys. All their songs are played by one drummer and one guitarist/singer. The guitarist has a ridiculous number of pedals and midi devices to help fill in and change up the sound and he did a good job of it.
Last on for the night was of course The Usuals, and they just plain kicked ass. Throughout the night there were maybe 8 people up by the stage to listen to the bands, and pretty much all of them I knew and were there to see The Usuals. When The Usuals started playing though they drew in the bar area, and had probably close to 20 people listening to the music and cheering between songs.
I think the biggest difference between the bands was how much fun they had on stage, overnight were very timid, We Prick You looked like they were bored but The Usuals were cracking jokes and having a good time. Cody even played with his fly down to please the ladies 
(He didn’t realize until the end of the show when his wife pointed it out).
In all the show was great and I really hope that those guys get a Friday night appearance somewhere because I think once that happens they’ll really take off. They have a few upcoming shows in Sacramento at the moment; you can always find their upcoming shows here.
One show, that isn’t listed on their web page, will be at our house, on May 20th as part of my 23rd Birthday celebrations.
And last but not least, maybe it was because I was having a good time or maybe it’s just to see if Cody really does read this but Cody and Becca’s friend Ricky Lee Riki-Lee was there too, and I thought she was pretty cute.