Jack's Mannequin

May 24, 2006

I like going to concerts at my favorite small-ish venues around the city with my concert crew, Will and Abe, and it was bound to happen eventually...we double-booked.

Last night, we had the choice to go to see either Architecture in Helsinki at Great American Music Hall, or Jack's Mannequin at Slim's.

The lead singer of Jack's Mannaquin, Andrew McMahon, is also the lead singer of Something Corporate, and he was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia last year, resulting in them cancelling tour dates for both bands. Well, apparently, he's doing much better and is on tour now. So, we decided to go see him play while he's healthy and doing well.

Too bad, I was psyched to see Architecture in Helsinki, they're a wacky Australian octet that feature instruments as diverse as analog synths and samplers, glockenspiel, tuba, clarinet, and recorder along with the more predictable drums, bass, and guitar. I solicited my tickets to Architecture in Helsinki on Craigslist, sold them in front of will call, and we hopped back in the car and headed to SOMA.

We had a good but typical Thai dinner at Manora's Thai Cuisine on Folsom before the show: Fresh mint rolls, Tom-Yung-Goong soup, Pad Thai, yellow chicken curry.

We arrived at Slim's partway through the set of the second opening band, Cute Is What We Aim For (good name!). Cute Is What We Aim For is on the same label, Fueled By Ramen, as hot indie alternative bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and The Academy Is. This label was started by dudes from Less Than Jake, and other alumni bands include Yellowcard, Jimmy Eat World, and Home Grown. They're like emo-punk gods.



The funny thing about this show was that the majority of the audience was in the American Eagle Outfitter's demographic of 13-24 years old. There were a lot of kids, and a smattering of their parents in the back of the bar.




Here's a short (1.5 minute) video clip that I took of Jack's Mannequin playing one of my favorite tunes, "Mixed Tape", from their current album "Everything in Transit"...


During the standard encore, Andrew came out with one of the guitarists, and played acoustic versions of two Something Corporate songs, "21 And Invicible" (Will's favorite from this band), and "Astronaut". It was so great to hear him sing these songs again, as we had seen Something Corporate play at the Fillmore a couple years ago and they were phenomenal. They followed with two covers, and acoustic "Friend of The Devil" by Grateful Dead, and a sweet rock version of the Police's "Message In A Bottle". I am quite certain that the kids in the audience had no idea what these songs were. I was also quite excited that the show ended by 11:30 pm, which puts me in zzzz-land at a decent hour...maybe I should go to more shows with the youth...