30 August 2010

Walri, Auld Lang Syne @ Abilene

Walri and Auld Lang Syne repeated their set-swapping antics at Abilene last Friday night. This time it was outside on the patio with more space and fresh air, this time it was more well-rehearsed, this time it went even past 2am, and this time it was even better than last. It was just about as good a night of local music is going to get, good enough that I hesitate to even qualify it with the word local at all.

I'm calling this conglomeration of bands Walangri and I'm hoping they pull off more evenings like this in the future. These nights will be the stuff of legend once these bands both make it big. Which they will.

To refresh your memory, Auld Lang Syne played a set on their own to open things up, then Walri followed. Then the two joined forces, and then they repeated the whole thing, 6 sets in all. That is if you really even could call them sets, the turnovers between bands was minimal.

The best set of the evening was the first combined effort. It started off with all members on stage for a fantastic cover of Paperback Writer. They followed that up with God Only Knows, absolutely nailing the insane vocal harmonies. Those two in succession left me with only one word on my tongue, ballsy. The rest of the evening was such a loose and freewheeling affair, but these two tunes were well rehearsed and masterful. The rest of the combined set ran through a whole bunch more covers including even more Beatles (right down Walri's alley), and Born on the Bayou (right down Auld Lang Syne's alley). The second go round Walangri set leaned more heavily on the Auld Lang Syne side of things, with loose bar room rockers and blues tunes. Many instruments were swapped, many lyrics were missed, many verses were repeated unintentionally, and many beers were drunk. And at 2:10 when it was all said and done, there were still a good 40 people hanging onto the final notes of What'd I Say. Until next time...

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