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Vampire Weekend shows youth, promise at Turner Hall show
Vampire Weekend.  
By Velia Bolda RSS Feed
Special to OnMilwaukee.com
Photography by CJ Foeckler
E-mail author | Author bio
More articles by Velia Bolda

What is a blog?  For us it is a short blurb that we write when the mood strikes us.  It can be first person, funny or informative. In short, a blog is whatever we want it to be. Published April 6, 2008 at 10:51 a.m.
Tags: vampire weekend, chachi, yacht, turner hall

Remember, Milwaukee: There's always a Milwaukee connection. The hypothesis held true Saturday night, as Turner Hall welcomed the band whose bassist is related to the man who played "Chachi" on "Happy Days."

Vampire Weekend played to an enthusiastic crowd of fans who sang and bounced along to the quartet's Afropop-inspired indie rock.

Playing a 45ish-minute set proved to be a bit of a challenge for the young band, with just one album and one EP in its discography. Perhaps it explains why frontman Ezra Koenig chatted up the audience after each and every song. Every audience appreciates acknowledgement from a band, but that much "blah, blah, blahing" broke down any momentum Vampire Weekend began to build. (Between Koenig and keyboard player Rostam Batmanglij, we must have heard at least a half-dozen times that it was Vampire Weekend's first Milwaukee show.)

Another jolt to the system came in just the third song when Koenig stopped the band and told the audience he needed another guitar. It was unclear whether the problem was a broken string or Koenig's incorrect guitar choice, but does it matter? Whatever happened to "the show must go on"? Maybe he was just trying to kill time.

The New York band certainly has talent and a unique sound (if you chose to forget The Police cultivated it back in the late '70s); the members just need some seasoning and more experience. More material wouldn't hurt either.

The band worked through its eponymous album, it's "Mansard Roof" EP and even treated Milwaukee to at least one song from its second, forthcoming album. The quartet closed out the show with the high-energy "Walcott" as the encore.

Opening act YACHT proved more interesting than the headliner. The creative alter ego of Jona Bechtolt, one-man YACHT served up enough showmanship the fill the stage and then some and enough sound to fill the hall. He explained his other half was stuck in transit somewhere, but with his electronic-music-producing laptop and charisma, she was hardly missed. When YACHT worked the crowd, he did a goofy Q&A, answering that his favorite color is sea foam green (excellent choice), that he was not single and that he attended Catholic school but was no longer Catholic. Now that's the kind of stuff that woos an audience.

6 comments about this article.
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Recent Talkbacks ...
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webuiltanotherworld you've got to be kidding me. yacht was awesome. he has such a great talent of ...
Bettybcool Vampire Weekend woo'ed me! I enjoyed how we got clarification on a few of their ...
EliCash Good show overall, but they seemed taken-aback by the crowd and venue size. ...
Pooch Yacht was quite a character with some decent beats, coming from a hip-hop head ...
Bee Tee The short set is common in bigger cities that tend to get bands sooner than ...


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