i fell into a burning ring of fire

..or a happy days rerun.

last night at the showbox was.. different. i was wondering how all the opening bands were going to fit into the show without it running four hours long, but the show was structured kind of like a musical revue, which was interesting. first, vince mira came out and played a couple of songs, and then a duo made up of a man and woman named the antiques came on. the guys behind me were joking that they looked like the white stripes (the man did resemble jack white in passing, i suppose) and that they were going to say, "our first song is called seven nation army." ha. they were alright.

then stone gossard and his "hank williams khoir" (which i guess consists of a female singer and vince mira's backing band?) did some songs. for some reason, it always cracks me up when i see a member of pearl jam on stage in something other than pearl jam. especially here. for the last song, he played 1999. party over, whoops, out of time/tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999. that alone may have been worth the price of admission.


(excuse my crappy picture. but it's stone!)

one of the last bands to come out was called the dusty 45's. they played some songs, some of which were alright, some of which were a touch annoying. i think the singer described them as "honkytonk." uh, alrighty. however, for the grand finale, the singer nodded to some woman in front of me and she lit his trumpet on fire. he played the end of the song - with his trumpet blazing - standing on top of the stand-up bass. it was cool, but i was a little bit afraid that he would fall and set the stage on fire. that would have been exciting, i suppose, but nothing i really wanted to see.

i enjoyed vince mira. he, if you don't know, is a kid (16? 17? something like that) who sounds uncannily similar to johnny cash. he got his start playing around pike place market, and it was pretty impressive that the showbox was almost full for him last night. i'm no johnny cash fan, but, judging from the women down front who were screaming like they were on the ed sullivan show or something, he must be alright.