Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Transit in Philadelphia
July 9, 2003

For those of you in Philadelphia who haven't been to Transit, it's a neat place to see a show. Once we were finally let in around 9:15 there was a DJ who was spinning Bauhaus, early Cure, New Order, and other classic New Wave/Alternative tunes. The way Transit works - at least for the 21+ crowd - is that you can drink downstairs with the DJ and then the band will come on later upstairs. So around 10:45 my friends and I head up to get a good spot for seeing the stage. BRMC was set to come on around 11:00 with no opening act.

Based on some posts on [the Excellent] list, I was a bit concerned about whether or not the new material would be as good as I would want it to be. Some of those concerns went away when the show started. Not surprisingly BRMC played a lot of new material, maybe 2/3rds of their set actually. I had not heard any of the new stuff until last night and it all sounded very good live. I can understand how some people say they haven't really moved in a new direction but at the same time, it's not the end of the world when a band find something they are good at and stays with it for a while.

In the case of BRMC, I think the new tunes packed a lot of punch. We'll see how the recorded versions come out.

From the first album they played:
- Love Burns
- Red Eyes and Tears
- White Palms
- Spread Your Love

The set lasted until 12:15 or so, with a 1-song encore called "Heart and Soul" (I *think* that's what they said it was). This song went on for about 10 minutes or so, in all the right ways.

All in all it was a great performance by BRMC. My only minor complaints were that they were perhaps *too* loud as it was really hard to hear the vocals in many songs. I've seen them before in smaller and bigger venues where the volume was more manageable and the mix was much better.