Cotton Ponies, Bug, Reserve, The Hyphens

On Monday, June 27th, Matt and I went back Upstairs to see the Cotton Ponies headline for Reserve, The Hyphens, and Bug.

The Hyphens

We didn't walk out on them. Standard rock and roll set with people who are good on their instruments.

Reserve

A young punk group with a wild bassist. On the first song he broke his D string and played the rest of the song by transposing onto the G. For the second song he borrowed the bass from The Hyphens; by the third song he couldn't get it to work with his amplifiers so, mid-song, he pulled the D off the borrowed bass and put it on his bass. This was neat, but while he did this he also ran across stage and jumped off the wall, climbed the amps, and posed atop the monitors.

On top of the great performance by the bassist was some fun punk. I intended to get one of their albums but somehow didn't. If they open again I'll definitely check them out.

Bug

Bug played some beautiful, swelling rock. Also an opener worth seeing again.

Cotton Ponies

While the other bands were doing their thing, the Cotton Ponies set up on the side of the crowd. As soon as applause for Bug began to die down, the Ponies jumped into String Puller. I imagine that this has been done before, but it was wild to see.

As is precedent, their music is exactly what I want out of a drone rock set, so I bought their album. (It's also the second album I got in the past month to have hand-written liner notes with a misspelling in it.)

Tags: upcoming:21318, livemusic, cottonponies, reserve,bug , thehyphens