By Amber Shafer, SDAM Staff Writer
©Copyright 2024 SDAM.com/Amber Shaffer

We arrived on the scene relatively early so we could catch part of The Eels' opening act, MC Honky. Someone had seen one of his videos, set to cartoons, which was apparently quite entertaining. As we passed through 4th & B security, the massive beats coming from the main room lead you to believe there would be a party going on in there. But that's 4th & B's little joke on you - they conceal the main room so you have no clue what's going on in there until you round the corner. In this case, we turned the corner to find about 40 early birds standing near the stage watching MC Honky, dressed like a cross between Mr. Rodgers and your 80 year old British grandpa. Assuming you're British. I wasn't too entertained by what he was spinning, and the slouched, old-man smoking a pipe routine was only interesting for about 1 minute, so my two cohorts and I resorted to entertaining each other in a battle-dance of sorts. We displayed classics such as The Sprinkler, The Lawnmower, and invented a new move called The Hedge Cutter. Then my friend started to do something that was probably going to be funny, until he kicked me in the shin. He swears he was doing The Running Man, but I've never seen that karate version from anyone before. After that we retired to the lounge area to catch our breath and soon found ourselves sharing our corner of couches with a bunch of people my friends knew. I let them debate the greatness of Bjork (no thanks) and whether going to Lollapalooza the next day was worth the Chula Vista heat (maybe) while I polished off Marie's Tic Tac's in an effort to remedy my stinky Indian food breath. I was later informed I needed to work on it a lot more. I don't know who The Eels are but I think they've been around a while. They certainly look like it. They only play San Diego once every five years and said they intended on sticking to that pattern. Because LA is, after all, a two hour drive. We entered the main room to find 3 men clad in matching red denim jackets, red jeans and black tee shirts. The bassist had on some black hat that made him look like a Ken doll while the guitarist looked like a Talking Head with a beard, standing their all stoic. Or maybe he looked like a ZZ Top. They played some long instrumental intro and I tried to figure out which member of the trio was the singer when all of a sudden a harmonica started playing out of nowhere. A spot light flashed to the back of the room to the main entrance and I learned that The Eels were actually a four-piece. The singer rode into the room on the shoulders of a roadie, playing his harmonica the entire way. It was quite a cool entrance. The rest of the show was so-so, mostly because the music just wasn't my thing and I never really got engaged with the band. As musicians, they're fine. I just didn't dig their songs that much. They played a bunch of alt-rock, although it sounded like the first 5 songs were covers. Front man E switched guitars after every song which was reminded me of when I saw Trail of the Dead a few months ago at The Casbah. At the end of their set they played a poor version of their hit "Novocain for the Soul", at which point I was able to say "Oh! They played this?" while my friend who kicked me commented "Sounds like someone's played their hit one too many times..." Then they went away. Then they came back for an encore. Then I went away to the lounge and listened from there. Then they went away again. Then they came back for a second encore. Then they went away once more. I heard people start to leave and could see the house lights had come back up. Then they came back AGAIN and did a third encore to the 1/3 of the audience who hadn't left yet. I got up and went to watch the third encore just because I've never seen a band, especially one that didn't have a huge or energetic crowd, play that many encores. They should have just skipped the first two because the third was by far the best. A roadie came out and danced on stage, the bassist took over drums and the drummer did a break-dancing solo (Marie: "The break-dancing was a really good hidden track."). And then FINALLY they were done. Had I not been tired, I probably would have been more tolerant. I was doing a very good Oscar the Grouch imitation by the time we got in the car and got lost going home. Despite my lack-luster impression of The Eels, I would like to present them with the following two awards: Best Entrance of the Year Longest Encore of the Year And they receive an honorable mention in the Most Coordinated Band category (the award went to The Aquabats, who clad themselves in matching green spandex superhero costumes at SOMA a month ago). Find out more about The Eels and MC Honky.