my favorite people in the whole world came to visit. yay! it had been a whole two months since i'd seen them, but even that was way too long. things have certainly changed for the band over the course of two months, too. tony, bass player, decided to pursue his own musical endeavors and left the band. pretty much broke my heart, because i had no idea i wouldn't be seeing him again for a while the last time i was in chicago. this was quite the abrupt decision, he played his last set with them on new year's eve opening for local h, and that was that. so once again, state and madison was back to three members and are still in search of a bassist. alex ward of the noise fm stepped in this time around though, so it was great to see him as well last weekend. it's always neat to see friends step up for their friends' bands and help out when needed. just goes to show how supportive the chicago music scene is of each other.
the show went well and there was quite the large crowd at the firebird last saturday evening. it was an early show - the firebird is starting to host two shows on saturdays, so doors were around 5:30. i was home in st. louis for the weekend, so my drive wasn't too bad. i had agreed to pick up the lovely molly cowan though, who didn't get off work until 5. so i picked her up around 5:30 and we got there in time to see the opening band. i hadn't heard much about either the opener or the headliner (state and madison played second of three) but they were some youngsters. average crowd age was probably around 14 or 15 and there were lots of parental units floating around the outskirts of the venue. molly and i made our rounds catching up with everyone. ran into my friend matt who goes to school at slu. and in general readied oourselves for the party that was to come next. the boys played a great set - although it always feels so short. played the usuals, (molly and i made sure to sing all of tony's vocals, tee hee) played a "new" song called come back from the sea (that i've actually heard a couple times already, and then a real new one that they played for the first time that night. and it sounded great! i remember it being catchy, but that's about it. i'm sure i'll be hearing it again sometime soon.
we sang and danced to the headlining band. they weren't terrible, i probably would have loved the pop-punkish set from them in my pre-teen years. but we had a good time belting out hearts of to fall out boy and the starting line covers. shenanigans were had, and we eventually shipped out to cicero's for dinner, where more shenanigans were had, including the mindblowing tricks of matt's phone, which IS WATERPROOF. bad. ass.
if you haven't checked out state and madison yet, shame on you first of all. second of all, check out their website: http://stateandmadison.net and their twitter: http://twitter.com/stateandmadison
and check out the noise fm while you're at it, since alex is a dear to fill in for them: http://thenoisefm.net.
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