Ulrich Schnauss at Joe's Pub

Saturday night, I made a rare weekend trip into the city to catch Ulrich Schnauss at Joe's Pub.

I'd never been to a show at Joe's and found it to be an interesting venue. It's small and intimate. Half the space is filled with tables and they serve food. It's a little like seeing your favorite artist playing in your dining room.

The show began promptly at 9:30 and Ulrich played through many tracks off his new album, Goodbye, including "Shine," "Medusa" and the title track. The only older tune he played was "On My Own," which I found disappointing because I prefer his previous material to the new album.

IDM loses part of its charm when performed live because essentially, it was just a man and his laptop, joined every so often onstage by a (hot) guitarist/lyricist. I joked that he was really just running his iTunes library and talking to his friends on iChat. My friend Cesar retorted that he was updating his MySpace profile and we finally decided that he was just looking at porn.

Still, the music sounded great, the visuals were nice and I couldn't help but think that it was a shame we'd given up all those party favors we used to indulge in back in the day.

After the show, I ventured back to CG$ and further still to Red Hook ¢, specifically Lido's Bar, for Daddy Dennis's 33rd Birthday bash. Unfortunately, I had far too many $4 cocktails, a course of action that ruined the 24 hours to follow and caused me to blow off my ball field plans on Sunday. Better luck next weekend!