Concert Review: Alina Simone at the Record Bar

Alina Simone

July 29, 2008

The Record Bar

By CRYSTAL K. WIEBE

Here comes a bitter rant: The bummer about the rise of such awesome worldly rock acts as Gogol Bordello and Devotchka is that it’s led to some really annoying bands. Like Boom – the jokey polka, thespian group that played Record Bar last night. It’s always cool to see people break out squeezeboxes and other less common instruments of rock. But I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for Flight of the Conchords-style musical humor and a guy on stage wearing nothing but a green bath towel.

Apparently, pretty much everyone else in the bar was into that, though. Hence, the mass exodus after Boom marched off stage. The few stragglers who hung around caught something real special, though: Alina Simone covering the music of Yanka Dyagileva.

Dyagileva is a tragic, Kurt Cobain-like character for the tiny Soviet punk rock scene. I didn’t know who Dyagileva was until I caught Simone a few months ago. It was a similarly empty night at the Record Bar, and Simone got on stage alone with her acoustic guitar and started singing in Russian.