Concert Review: Hail Archer, My Only Danger, Feverbell, Haedon Aeon at the Riot Room

Dateline: Wednesday, January 7, 2009

I think about what it feels like to play music, something you wrote and to have to live with. This usually occurs to me after I’ve seen some band that’s had to carry on for years, and must have found some sense of regeneration to keep at the same choruses over and over. Sometimes, I get it. I get why Keith Richards can still look like he’s having fun after so many years, because he gets to play the opening chords of “Tumbling Dice” every night.

After seeing these four bands at the Riot Room Wednesday night, I wondered, did they enjoy playing this stuff? Did they enjoy writing it? Could they still if they got lucky and became big stars and had to play their early hits 10 years later? It was the kind of show where you go to the bar to get a drink, and you wait for your beer and talk to your friend, and then when the bottle finally comes you look up and realize, ‘”Oh, shit. That’s still going on.”

Hail Archer photo by Peter Rugg