The Randies

So I'm in Salt Lake tonight at a conference. Nice town. Go out with M. L., MD to get a bite to eat. Not knowing the city we head to someplace called the Trolley Something-or-other and stop by the Hard Rock Cafe. I've been to a few Hard Rock Cafes. There's one in Denver (though I haven't been in that one) but we were surprised to find a live band performing. While there were maybe ten people in the whole place, The Randies jumped into their set with eagle claws. I saw a few confused older couples. One drunken family. But for the most part everyone enjoyed the show - part of a series of shows with the Hard Rock supporting Breast Cancer Research (which lead, of course, to some "randy" descriptions of self breast exams. And some not so self.)

The Randies were in good form. Laura Cataldo - vox, bass - has a great presence. She looks like she could read Whitman, eat fried chicken and kick you in the head at the same time. All with a sneery smile. Drummer Aaron Polk knows what he's doing but he just needs to temper himself. Just because all those drums are there doesn't mean you need to hit them. Maybe a marching beat would be nice. Sienna and Laurita layed down some really killer Sabbath riffs and knew how to make feedback sound like feedback. Dirty like.

The sound at the Hard Rock was pretty tinny. That made for some very muffled lyrics. I mainly heard, "Aye Aye Aye" at every chorus. They've got the cred. The exposure. A good look. The Randies don't need my help moving on up. If I had any advice it would be to listen to the first few Killing Joke albums and hear what The Fall was so entranced by and what Nirvana gushed over. There's still gold to be mined there ladies...