Plain Jane Automobile played a special 'secret' show in October 3 at the Bowery Electric in NYC - that I was lucky enough to be at. It wasn't really that secret - if you RSVP'd to the invite that they'd been circulating for weeks prior, you were in. The Bowery Electric is a tiny venue on the Lower East Side - and the room we were in holds maybe 100 people - and that's being generous. As Lisa and I were in NYC already that weekend to see Jimmy, we decided to stay for PJA's show and make the 3 hour drive home at midnight. We actually finished up dinner early and ended up heading over to the venue a bit early before doors opened, where the guys had just arrived and were loading in. Tiffanie was with them, and announced she wanted coffee or something, so we went with her to keep her company and it was great to just hang out with her and talk about everything and nothing.
Quiet Lights, a local Brooklyn band and friends of Plain Jane opened, and I'm usually pretty optimistic about giving unknown bands a chance, but I wasn't wild about them at all. First off, I felt the lead singer was getting completely drowned out by the instruments around her - I could barely hear her. I don't know if the sound mix was off or what, but I was getting more music and not much vocal. Secondly, I felt like this gig was being treated as a band rehearsal - there was almost zero interaction with the crowd and it just felt off. Anyway, they only played for about a half hour, and Plain Jane took the stage around 11pm.
As was the case with the last 2 shows I had seen them play, they did play a mix of new stuff from their album upcoming in early 2011, and older stuff, including
Blue Jeans which is one of my favorite songs. The sound was good overall, but I noticed Duke a few times point to his mic and point up, as a sign to turn him up a little bit, as the music was drowning him out a tad. Once they got it straightened out, it sounded really good! There were a lot of familiar faces there from the show the night before, plus I saw Jon-Paul, the lead singer of God or Julie (I also had seen him the night before at Don Hills) but I was far too wussy to go over and say hi either night, plus Lisa and I had to leave immediately after Plain Jane's set. So it was fun to see everyone! Plain Jane wrapped up close to midnight, and we got up off the floor from where we'd been sitting so we could say goodbye to Duke. He had known that we would be leaving immediately after their set, so once he was finished talking to the people that had grabbed him as soon as he came off stage, he saw us standing there and came over to us immediately to say goodbye and thank us for coming. We got hugs and chatted for a minute and said goodnight, as we had a 3 hour drive ahead of us.
Once we said goodbye to everyone else, we headed home, finally arriving back in MA around 3:15am - I don't think I'll ever do that drive again at midnight. It's not a horrible drive overall but a lesson learned to not do it that hour again. I was pretty delirious the whole way home and the next day was a zombie at work. It was absolutely worth it though, and I'm glad we stayed! I'll be keeping up with these guys in the coming months as they move towards their next album release - which you should all definitely check out because from what I've heard, its going to be awesome.
All of my pictures from that night are
here. Please credit if used.
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