Confederates and Brainiac

In the afternoon Mary Beth and I went to see a play at Hattiloo called Confederates (by Dominique Morisseau). It had two alternating plot lines between a story with slaves on a plantation back during the Civil War and a tenured black woman professor at a prestigious school with some problems she's facing and it was extremely good. Then at night it was the Brainiac show. First it was Margin Walker. This is David Shouse's current iteration of the project he played during the first Memphis Concrète (manualcontrol) with the light sensors controlling a whole bunch of pedals and lots of lights and projections and rigged-up mannequins and such. It was a good show. Then Brainiac played and I know they've had a reputation of being an especially good live band and they lived up to it. I was most wanting to hear "Fresh New Eyes" and they opened with it! Then the other song I allotted myself to hope to hear was "Vincent Come On Down" and they played that too so all my wishes came true. We were up front and after a few songs John told us to come closer so then I was right right up front (like, I didn't wanna be THAT close, but still!). There was a lot of energy and I was moving around a lot for me (you know, like nodding my head a bit, sometimes even up to exactly halfway between nodding and banging). John was letting us all know how weird Memphis is (and we're all thinking "yeah") and had a story about the last time Brainiac played here and the Grifters had asked to jump on the bill and they were like sure so it was like a five or six band bill and Jeff Buckley's band was playing and Brainiac played last so everyone left after Jeff Buckley. They mentioned another band on the bill (I forget now who) and then they were "we're here!" out in the audience. Saw a lot of friends there (David, Jesse, Kole, Jacques, Corbin), had a fun time. Got a t-shirt after the show. I was wearing my Lung shirt (so they're opening for all the dates in this short tour except for Memphis, but they're playing here on Friday) anyway the merch guy commented on the shirt and said that they're taking a little vacation right now and going to some hot springs or something like that so that's why they're not at this show (but at least they're making it back in a few days!).