Hard-Fi at The Bowery Ballroom

I sat down to breakfast with my friend Mark and he said "are you going to see Hard-Fi tonight?"

My immediate reaction was that somehow the Ticketweb concert notification emails were ending up in my junk mail folder, but instead I said, "where are they playing?"  He replied "The Bowery Ballroom."

So I asked Mark if he could work some magic with his friends in the music biz and get me tickets.  He said he’d see what he could do.

Mark and I talked toward the end of the day and no tickets were to be had.  It was a "hot show".

Meanwhile I had picked a convenient location for my dinner with my friend Ronny and his son Evan (we went to Little Giant which was good but did not live up to The Gotham Gal’s rave review).

After dinner I walked by The Bowery Ballroom and inquired if there were any tickets for the show. "Sold out" the guy at the door told me.  I was heading home when the bouncer asked me if I was looking for tickets.  I said yes and he introduced me to a young woman and her friend.  She had two tickets. I asked how much and she said, "they are yours, I got them for free".  Being by myself, I took one and headed in.

Inside I met a young woman who produces a Maxim radio show on Sirius and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend. And then I met a guy who used to work for Return Path who reads this blog and found out about Hard-Fi by reading it.  Cool.

Then the band came on.  They played pretty much the entire record plus the cover of The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army" from the Cash Machine EP.  Highlights were Cash Machine, Tied Up Too Tight, Feltham, and the closing song – Living For The Weekend.  Here is my Flickr photostream of the show.

The lead singer was super high energy and I couldn’t help but think he was the punk rock version of Joshua Schachter.  He played this cool instrument that was like a recorder with a keyboard on it.  No idea what it is called, but it makes that great sound at the begining of many of their songs.

I am really glad I went. They were great.

Go see them if you have the chance.  And I hope you get a windfall like I did.