The Chinese Stars

Last night I saw the Chinese Stars at BeerLand. The opening bands were:

• Dated - a young three piece that pretty much just made noise
• Alters - a punkish three piece that had serious issues on stage. First of all, the guitarist and vocalist (who happened to also be the singer for The Riverboat Gamblers) couldn't figure out how to use his Boss guitar tuner, nor tune by ear. After about 10 minutes, they just started playing out of tune. After a couple songs, the guitarist's D string broke, but they didn't have a replacement so they just kept playing out of tune and with a broken string. Eventually the guitarist from Dated lent them his guitar. On the first song played with this new guitar, Alter's guitarist broke the E string. I'm not kidding. Then he made some jokes about how everyone had friends that died during high school. Things just went downhill from there.
• Sensitive Hearts - a two peice with a girl pumping out simple synthesizer rhythms on a keyboard, and a guy singing to her and banging on a tom, floor tom, and symbol. In the middle of the set their equipment crapped out too, so for ten minutes while they fixed the problem they showed home movies on a projector screen. The skits were pretty much low budget adult swim skits, and were kind of funny in that bizarre understated way.

The Chinese Stars put on a pretty good show. I think the singer could have brought his vocals up in the mix a little more, but it was already loud as hell. They had home-made lighting effects that made it seem as though the band was dancing in firelight. I might steal that idea. The show lasted until almost two in the morning, which is strange considering that the Chinese Stars only played like six songs.