The Saturday Knights Owned Friday Night At Nectar
The Budos Band opened up the night in style! Photo by Seattlest's Abbey Simmons.
The Saturday Knights/Budos Band show at Nectar on Friday night was sold out by 9:30 p.m., as in guest lists closed, no further entrance, and crowds of people partying outside the gates. Seattlest arrived at a normally respectable hour of 10:45 p.m. to find the Budos Band's shiny brass horns blaring, congo drums thumping, and every inch of Nectar packed with happy people.
Our brief summary: the Budos Band sounds like "Hot damn!" spicy, and we're head-over-heels for the sunny punk-pop-rap-rock of The Saturday Knights.
The classy Budos Band, aptly labeled as Afro-soul funk by critics, played a diverse and absolutely danceable set. We loved "Up From The South" and "Budos Rising," both of which you can hear on their Myspace page. The guys on stage ranged from a cutely dimpled trumpet player out of L.A. to a wiry, grey-haired guitar player straight from the '60s—East Coast style—and a dreamy-eyed dude on the keyboard with lovely curls. This is music Seattlest and our father could both appreciate for once, bridging generations with skilled brass players, memorable song composition, and hot, organic rhythm.
More on The Saturday Knights' performance, including a photo, after the jump!
Coming to you live, it's The Saturday Knights! Photo by Abbey Simmons
The Saturday Knights threw down consistent fire with thunderously fun, old-new sounding songs from Mingle like "Patches," "Dog Park," and "Nobody Beats Us." But, most of the people standing outside the frenzied five foot radius from the stage seemed unsure of how to respond to TSK's unique sound. Let us give you a hint: rock out like a fool, rinse with whiskey, and repeat. It makes you feel like you're driving up I-5 with all the windows down and your best friend's cracking honest-to-God-funny jokes in the backseat. Without losing any integrity or smoothness, Mingle sounds in turn like every genre we've ever truly, madly, deeply loved.
We can understand the crowd's hesitation to a very minor, quibbling extent—TSK's opening song, "45," started off not quite as pulled together as we'd hoped for. But the performance gained momentum and quickly convinced us we hadn't been mistaken in our appreciation. Tilson is a genius-level emcee, Barfly has drawling, blue-eyed charisma to spare, and the music is The Shit. We will be bumping Mingle all summer long, baby, and maybe next time TSK drops their magic, everyone in the room will be able to shout the lyrics. "Best of show, best of show, best of show..."
