Low - Awesome. Evidently, they're doing a little better financially, as they now have *2* drums in addition to a cymbal, guitar, and a bass. Not surprisingly, they were really nice, quiet people - in fact, the bass player was so modest that he didn't face the audience throughout the entire performance. I could listen to them for hours and not get bored of them, so it was too bad that a) they were the opening band and b) I was a little tired, so their quietly beautiful tunes caused me to doze a little. No matter. They were great.

Dirty Three - Here's the low-down on Dirty Three. They're from Melbourne, Australia, and consist of drums, guitar, and fiddle. OK, that's the "Three" part - what's the "Dirty" part? Yes, well, that would be the fiddle-player himself (Warren). No telling what Warren had to drink before he hit the stage, but while he was up there, he was handily consuming a bottle of red wine. Warren gyrated like you wouldn't believe - I would almost go as far as to say that he was more limber than I am - kicking wildly in the air, shaking his bum, writhing about - all the while sawing away at his fiddle. I don't know *what* Warren was on, but let me give you a selection of some of his song intros, and you can draw your own conclusion:

• "This is a song about when you're lying in a hospital bed, waiting to die, and you have this fleeting thought that maybe God is Jim Morrison, but you realize you're wrong as you start to slip off and Elliott Gould comes down and says, 'Warren, I knew it would come down to this.'"

• "We'd like to do a song about love, about how you love someone, but they're not there with you...or they're dead...or sleeping with someone else...or something...but you still love them."

• "This one is kind of like when you're in this band with Jerry Garcia, except that you play bass, and he plays bass, so there's this whole friction thing going on...it's also dedicated to a friend of ours who died, but saved all his money so he could buy nice leather handbags and shoes that fit really well and squeak when you walk in them...it's also dedicated to anyone who's dead or dying."

• "It's kind of like you're in that Weezer song, and you're Buddy Holly and she's your Mary Tyler Moore, but you realize that the love is gone, so you do some drugs to try to get that whole love thing started again, but as you're walking on the street, you look in a store window, and realize you're Burt Reynolds and she's Sally Field, and you're about to make that Smokey and the Bandit movie, part 152, and the love is just never going to come back, but at least you have the drugs...and you realize that Elvis popped more pills than Jim Morrison, but Jim Morrison just had a bigger mouth."

If you'd like, you can email me here: richard@hearingmusic.com.

Oh, and all content on these pages is copyright Richard Lewis.