Read Yellow

Alpine - March 12, 2006

Live Review and Photographs by Alexis Roberts

You may have heard rumors about Read Yellow’s abnormal stage antics.  Well, I can tell you from my first hand experience that they are all true.  After hearing that their singer, Evan, was known for singing into people’s crotches, I tossed that information into the back of my mind and discarded it as one of those urban scenester legends.  I went to this show expecting the standard indie band performance: a little singing, a little dancing, perhaps some audience interaction.  But I was totally knocked off my feet by the set they gave to the 30 person audience in the loft of Alpine.

It wasn't until about the fifth song of the set when Evan began jumping off stage and dancing around in the crowd with his maraca.  Then he proceeded to do exactly what was rumored, he got down on his knees and serenaded the crotches of a handful of lucky audience members. (They seemed way more flustered about it then he did.)  He then got back up without missing a beat, hopped up on stage, took his guitar from its resting place and handed it to some random kid in the audience to play.  Things got even more bizarre when Evan took his drummer’s snare drum and sticks and handed them to another audience member.  Not sure what to do with these things, the two just started having fun with it—which, I think, was the point in the first place, to get the audience into their performance, literally. 

Read Yellow is a band native to Amherst, Massachusetts, and may not yet be familiar with the way audiences act in California.  We Californians all feel that bands must prove themselves worthy before we start nodding our heads and tapping out feet to their songs.  Until that point we will give you nothing more than a blank stare and maybe a light applause at the end of each song.  But when bands are still willing to play their hearts out up on that stage and do oddball things to get the crowd going, it shows that they have got true character.

They played mostly newer songs off of their current release Radios Burn Faster—good, original tunes that are catchy but not overbearing (they don’t get annoying after one listen).  On disc this album has a feel all of its own; live, however, they reminded me a lot of At the Drive-In, circa Acrobatic Tenement, with their crazy guitar riffs and Evan’s outlandish mix of yelling, moaning and singing.

They ended their show with Evan singing in a weird headstand position and the audience members with smiles on their faces.  After they thanked the crowd for coming to see them, someone yelled out “Wait! Who are you again?” and Jesse, their lead guitarist yelled out “Read Yellow!” with pride, knowing that their band had gained yet another fan, and that this would be only one of many more to come.