^{The Least Terrifying Result of a Google Image Search for “Pink Skull”}

So, yesterday, Philly’s Pink Skull played a BBQ at Nectar. I interviewed the band here, and Charles Mudede recommended the event here. Still, no amount of encouragement could change the fact that pretty much anyone who gives a shit about live music in Seattle seems to have been completely exhausted yesterday following two mammoth days of Capitol Hill Block Partying. I couldn’t even convince my friends who already really dig Pink Skull’s Zepellin III to come out to the event. When I got there, around seven, there were maybe a couple dozen people in attendance, and it seemed like half of them were cigarette reps, because this BBQ was a corporate deal. I try not to get all high and mighty about this stuff, because we’re kind of all implicitly in the business of peddling smokes and booze, and I usually don’t mind as long as I know what I’m going into, but for some reason I didn’t realize this event was going to be one of those things (I should have read the email more carefully), and the surprise combined with the low turn-out was just a massive bummer.

And Pink Skull, if not massively bummed, at least seemed pretty non-plussed about the show, laconically thanking the crowd through a wash of reverb. Still, their brief set sounded great—Nectar really can get away with the kind of bumping sound system that seems to have become suddenly illegal on Capitol Hill. The three piece band consisted of live drums, a laptop, keyboards and delay, and a rack of roto-toms, wood-block, and agogos. They played pretty faithful, but playfully divergent, interpretations of Zeppelin III, omitting bongos here, pushing vocals to the front there. They also debuted a new song, which they said would be on the next album, a vocal track that married Talking Heads vocal quirk to lively big beat far more effectively than that recent Norman Cook track featuring actual David Byrne. This set would have absolutely killed at Block Party. Pink Skull is due back in the fall, with a full band, and it should be a banger of a show.

(Hat tip to young Werther for the headline).