Amen And The Hell Yeahs: These dudes drove from 1,895 miles one way, from Minneapolis, MN, to Riverside, CA, to play one show: Awesome Fest II. They didn’t make a tour of it. They just wanted to play. Simple as that. When I asked them what they did for work, they said that they worked for an asshole wine distributor and they’d have to cannonball it back home the next day. They were young dudes, very sincere, and totally down. The music follows. It’s simple, sloppy, direct, and fun. Nothing mind erasing, but real solid and full of promise. The Manix: Do you think it’s possible to channel the crowd’s reaction to a great, past band? The Manix don’t sound much like “Kids Don’t Follow”-era Replacements, but I can totally imagine someone in The Manix being in the audience, and soaking in all of that drunken, catchy, alcho-poetry, going home, and starting a band of their own (twenty years later; a bad analogy, I know), and forming with a band that just wanted to continue to harness that feeling. Good stuff, both bands.
–todd (Heart Of The Lakes)