Monday, October 18, 2010

Sweaty Fun With The Heavy At The Bowery Ballroom


The Heavy: October 17 @ Bowery Ballroom, New York, NY


Sunday night and things were hot at the Bowery Ballroom. UK band The Heavy came back to NYC and rocked out. It was sold out folks. If you missed it, you missed a good one. Y'all know I love The Heavy ... if you don't know that, well then you haven't been paying attention or, you're new here. I even provided visuals. For you're viewing pleasure, there are some questionable pocket camera photos ... we'll call it old school QNYC photography. You should also know by now that me trying to take photos of The Heavy is a pointless exercise as you can't take photos and dance!

For those who aren't familiar, I'm going to tell you what I've been telling you since I first saw them in 2008 ... they are "bad-ass hot stanky fun ... yeah, they're that damn good." Judging by my fellow audience members, I'm not the only one of that opinion.

The band, Kelvin Swaby (vocals), Dan Taylor (guitar), Spencer Page (bass) and Chris Ellul (drums) were once again joined by the horn section and vocal powerhouses Kimberly Nichole and Myoshi.

The Heavy are a tight band and Swaby is a sweat and swagger, high energy soul singer who can sing to me anytime ... seriously. There were minor changes since June. Ellul's kit wasn't on a riser this time around. And, Taylor didn't sing "Love Like That" which I kind of missed. By the way, is it okay with y'all that I might have a wee bit of a crush on Taylor? Shh, don't tell! They did make me squeal when they played "Set Me Free." The minute I heard the cowbell start, I squealed. So, color me happy I got to hear the song that hooked me on them the minute I heard it back when! They didn't play that the last time I saw them and that had been the only flaw in their otherwise stellar set. Other than that, the set was the same, just shuffled around a bit.

I danced. I sang. I was hot and sweaty. I had a damn good time. If you haven't seen The Heavy play yet, put them on your list of need to see live bands. You won't regret it.


Set List
  • Short Change Hero
  • What You Want Me To Do?
  • Big Bad Wolf
  • Sixteen
  • Coleen
  • Set Me Free
  • Girl
  • In The Morning
  • That Kind Of Man
  • No Time
  • Oh No! Not You Again!
  • Brukpockets Lament
  • She Got To Go (they may have done this before Brukpockets can't read my scribbling)
  • How You Like Me Now?
Kicking things off was Childish Gambino. I wasn't familiar with him but he's apparently on a TV show called Community. I'm not into rap. So, needless to say, he wasn't my cup of tea but he wasn't annoying and my fellow audience members really liked him.


After him came Mayer Hawthorne & The County. I wasn't familiar with them either. I asked the person next to me what kind of music they played and she said Motown type stuff. Okay, I can hang with Motown. They weren't bad. They had a lot of fans showing them massive love. I wasn't so much into Hawthorne's vocals but The County was a tight band ... guitar player gets extra props. Anyway, I was hanging well enough with them until they covered the Doobie Brothers, whom I like. But, the bad part was, they didn't even cover one of the good Doobie songs! Oh well.