Did you miss Black-Eyed Snakes?

I was over at the Turf Club Friday, January 7th on my first night out of 2005 (in Minneapolis anyway) enjoying the strains of Vicious Vicious in their first public show in quite some time. Heads up! I am so enamoured of what Vicious Vicious are currently purveying I asked Erik Applewick if they they might grace the 2005 HowWasTheShow 3rd Anniversary Party (and my 3rd annual 39th Birthday party) coming up in June. Looks like a definite possibility at this point. I'm told Vicious Vicious will have a new CD coming out this Spring.

Anyway, though I was hunkered down at the Turf Club, it sounds like the Uptown Bar may have been one hell of a place to be on that same Friday. Greg Seitz did a wonderful review of the Black-Eyed Snakes show for us here. And howwastheshow contributor Cindy Collins emailed me that Greg had

"nailed the feeling of it, especially the stuff about the line about alienation early on and the anger and rawness not getting in the way of catchy percussive driven songs. Wish he'd noted how the last 5 songs were a miscellany of freeform stream of conscious playing, one thing leading into another, as Sparhawk told me. For example, when his drummer at one point did a slow, quiet, "tick, tick, tick" and a guitar added a low minor drone, I instantly in my mind heard the familiar beginning of "Bela Legosi's dead". And then they went into that in a phenomenally eerily accurate way. Great nostalgic moment as the vibe in the room was much like that scene in the Hunger film. I asked Sparhawk about that song and he said that they only knew they were going into that AFTER he heard those same familiar clicks and drones as well :) Loved that spontaneity. Loved his wry commentaries between songs."

The lengthily-titled blog If i were a 16 year old girl with the ability to predict the future and a habit of falling for rock stars also had a nice review. Looks like the writer of this piece was one of the women who got hit by the falling Sparhawk referenced in Greg's review. "I think I might still have a Chicken Bone George shaped indentation in the upper left quarter of my body," she said.