Fairly often, honest-to-goodness readers--not publicists or booking agents--email us with pleas for coverage on certain shows. Not because they have a vested interest in the act's success, but because they have a genuine interest in seeing an artist, and they think others should check out the performance, too. On that note, we present Reader Recommendations.
A friend of DC9 checks in this afternoon, offering up tonight's Bart Davenport gig with Cocky Americans and Sean Kirkpatrick at Club Dada as promising take:
"Don't know if you saw that Bart Davenport will be in town tonight from Berkeley. Bart is one of the top baroque/chamber pop guys around and put out one of the best records in the genre several years back, Game Preserve. He's been on the Bay Area scene for about 20 years, dating back to his work with the original Loved Ones (one of the best R&B bands to emerge from the California garage scene). The Loved Ones featured him and Xan McCurdy and became a legendary act on the west coast. Xan has gone on to success with Cake, and Bart has worked with Feist and toured with Kings of Convenience. You may also know Bart's work from his other band, Honeycut, which had reasonable success with one their songs "Exodus Honey" being featured in an iMac ad. He also had a hand in discovering Devendra Banhart...hosting San Francisco's Café Du Nord's folk shows.Anyway, thought you might want to mention him on DC9 At Night. It's great when someone like him comes through town."
Sounds good to me. Now, I'd be lying if I said I was wholly familiar with Davenport's catalog, but one visit to Davenport's Myspace page certainly paints him in a flattering light. His piano-based, almost twee-pop sound should actually work greatly as a contrast to Kirkpatrick's piano-based gloom and doom.
As for me? I was already planning on heading out to Dada tonight--been hankering to check out Cocky Americans live for a couple weeks now, but kept getting sidetracked by conflicting shows--so, if, say, you wanna punch me in the head for my apparent underestimation of Robert Pollard's draw, well, now you know where to find me. --Pete Freedman
