Review: Econoline Crush – Zaphod’s

Friday had me go to class again…I don’t know if I will either enjoy a Friday afternoon class (where it has me leave work early) or come to loathe the Friday afternoon class (because it’s essentially work on a Friday where your brain is mush, PLUS I foresee group work happening afterwards). The one good thing I have going is my Professor seems amazing for a Quantitative Methods course.

After class, I picked up the car and headed back over to Trish’s where Mike and gallantly hooked up her VCR and Super Nintendo and then sat back and enjoyed some drinks and pizza before heading out to see Econoline Crush at Zaphod’s. We also watched some King of Queens and Trish gave me my Christmas gift – the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks! I feel well armed for any impending zombie attacks on us. Did you know that the smartest thing you can do is to get onto the second level of your house and destroy the stairs as zombies cannot climb? It’s true…it’s in the book.

The last time I saw Econoline Crush in concert was in 2001 while they were supporting their Brand New History album. Econoline Crush are a Canadian industrial band although I think we can define them as a rock band nowadays as they seem to have swayed away from the industrial tinges that layered The Devil You Know and Brand New History. They had broken up and eventually had Trevor Hurst recording with Ross Childress (of amazing guitar player from Collective Soul fame) and releasing an EP called Hurst. We saw Hurst open up for Theory of a Deadman a few years back and they were decent.

Anyhow, fast-forward to now and Trevor Hurst got the blessing from the other band members to continue on with the Econoline Crush band name but with all new members. This isn’t as shocking as you think as it turns out that a lot of the members have severe disabilities that prevent them from even playing instruments any longer! Dang!

We arrived at Zaphod’s around 8PM which was silly on my part because when I saw that the show started at 8PM, I thought that this really meant that the band was on at 8PM. In the end, they showed up on stage aroun 10PM so we had a few beers and had numerous debates stemming from Chuck Klosterman’s Top 23 Questions He Asks a Person to Determine if He Can Really Love them. I had stumbled upon this chapter in his Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs book and immediately loved it. Here’s an example question (paraphrased and no copyright obtained but I hope that this will be fine if Mr. Klosterman ever stumbles upon my little website and realizes that I’m listing a question from his book in order to entice readers to buy your book, which is amazing.):

“Someone invents the ‘dream’ VCR which allows you to record all the dreams you have during the night. However, there is a catch. The inventor will only allow you to see the tape of your dreams if you watch it along with your closest friends and family at the same time. Would you still do this?”

This brought forth some great debate which descended into madness when someone brought up the topic of being either deaf or blind and then Mike went on a rant about how deaf people shouldn’t be allowed to drive whereas I pondered why hearing has anything to do with it considering car stereos can be cranked to a volume where you couldn’t possibly hear a nuclear explosion occuring right outside your door. Unfortunatley for Vero and Trish, we were into this heated debate to the point where we weren’t exactly democratic in allowing anyone else to get into the debate!

Econoline Crush took the stage and took our hearts away. The band was back, albeit with all new members. They railed through a lot of their new album which sounded great upon first listen (this night was their CD release party so I had yet to listen to it) and a lot of their older hits. Zaphod’s is a great little club to see a band and you could see that the band were having a great time. I don’t really have much else to say other than I would probably go see them again if they came to town.

The rest of the night had us dancing a little while (where some girls came and danced with Mike and one of them may have brused her hand up against him. Mike comments “Was this really happening? How did this occur? This was awesome!”) and we left early on as a) We had definitely had our share of alcohol and b) We had forgotten that Vero had to work in the morning.

All in all, a grand night and I’m glad to see Econoline Crush back in the saddle. I’ll review their album after a few listens.