Last Friday, I went to see Jose Gonzalez at the Mod Club. Jose Gonzalez is a Swedish folk guitarist (I know! I was surprised too that there are people in Sweden that don’t make ABBA-music) who is probably best known for doing some of the vocals on recent Zero 7 albums (at least that’s where I knew him). I saw him perform with Zero 7 a few years back at VFest (he also had a solo set but I was watching something else at the time).

The show was 19+ and an early show. An early show is generally good, because I would get home at a reasonable time for work the next day, but being schedule for a Friday, it didn’t make a difference. A 19+ show was good too, because there wouldn’t be teenage kids bouncing off the walls, although his music is much too laid back for that sort of thing. The concert consisted of Gonzalez sitting alone on the stage (no backing band), playing acoustic guitar with a single spotlight shining on him. So as you can tell it was a low-key and mellow affair. We had a nice view as we scored a balcony spot off to the side.

It wasn’t bad but couldn’t say it’s great because I wasn’t really into the music. I like my shows to have more energy. The opener, Cass McComb was even worse. His two bandmates, playing guitar and drums, looked as if they were stoned or were robots. There was also a lot of conversation during the concert, not from the bands though; McComb said nothing (!) to the crowd, and Gonzalez just said a couple of Hi-s and Thank You-s, but the crowd kept chatting so there was a indistinct but constant drone of conversation to the point that people in the audience were yelling Shh.

Gonzalez played for about an hour, with a three-song encore at the end and was all done by 9:30. It was short, but cheap, so I didn’t mind spending my time there.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: concerts