Nico Vega & The Gray Kid @ Mezzanine, 7/21/07

You know it’s going to be a rough night when you lose your charm before the night even begins. I don’t literally mean my charm– that’s here to stay- but my cute little boom box charm on my ghetto gold necklace fell off before I even made it to Mezzanine to show it off. Cheap ass POS. Poor me.

My partner in crime and I were fired up for our 3rd Gray Kid show and also about checking out Nico Vega. Myspace photos of Nico Vega revealed that we should be in for quite a show. Plus, it’s a Saturday night with no plans for Sunday and girls only thing, which just spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e in the form of my too tasty drink of choice, grapefruit juice and Malibu (maybe I shall name it Mezzanine), way too late in the night shots of Patron, and of course, lots of dancing.

And, as I’ve said before, The Gray Kid is your man if you feel like dancing. He delivered another solid set once again, with some more new songs and a special appearance by Guntor during Ole. I’ll let the pictures do the talking:

The Gray Kid’s latest album Vultures releases on July 31st, and is a concept album/soundtrack for a film. You can catch him next weekend opening for M.I.A. at Rickshaw Stop on Saturday. Now I’m just waiting for a collaborative performance with Daniel Stessen to come to SF. Pretty please.

Nico Vega, also from LA, is fronted by this tiny girl who comes out in this tiny flapper dress and starts belting out this voice much larger than her stature. It’s as if she’s channeling Janis while showing Karen O how to do her job. She completely disappears both times she jumps off stage. Unfortunately, while the three piece band meshed well together in the studio, the guitar is just too much live. There needs to be more stand out moments for a guitarist to shine in a three piece band environment–otherwise, it turns into a singer highlighted extravaganza. And she easily steals the show.

In case you were there or aware, there was another band that ‘headlined’, Midnight Movies. They were way mellow in comparison and didn’t fit in the last spot. Just when I was really getting warmed up to get my groove on, we had to move it on to somewhere else.

On another note, July 21st happened to be one of those nights that occurs every couple of months where at least three shows conflict with the same fanbase: The Lovemakers and Honeycut played Bimbos, and Immigrant played Bottom of the Hill. That was a tough choice to make for all of us concert goers…resulting in a less than desirable attendance at Mezzanine. Oh well, always better to have too much to do than too little!