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summer wouldn’t complete without a descent into the sweatbox that is the first unitarian church to see denison witmer, hail social & rainer maria. my friend arun lives two blocks away so i stopped by for some awesome vegetable lasagne (and blade 2) beforehand. ingredients included spinach, zucchini, boca meat. i’m going to give his recipe a try once it gets a little cooler.

met up with anthony at the show. he recently moved back to the area and i haven’t seen him in forever. also met a cool kid named randy, who was at friday’s denison witmer show. speaking of whom, after seeing him for the second time in three days, i’d be willing to bet that he never plays a bad show.

although i can think of a couple of bands who do the indie disco-rock thing better than hail social, i didn’t think they were bad at all. the beats and bass were solid and (while my friend george opined otherwise) i really liked the singer. as was the case with witmer, i would have liked to hear another 2-3 songs.

i probably haven’t listened to rainer maria seriously since long knives drawn came out and i’d forgotten how much i liked them. the biggest turnoff for a lot of people are caithlin de marrais’ yelping vocals but live it works out extremely well. they were super energetic despite the oppressive heat of the church basement and got me totally excited about pulling out their records again. “mystery and misery”, “artificial light” and “CT catholic” - with the all-too appropriate line “it was the hottest summer ever… it was keeping me from smiling and i wished that it would end” - really stood out.