Fine Line Cafe

Very nice venue. :)



One of the many old brick office and warehouse buildings on the north end of downtown, where new (and old) clubs are so popular. The night life on the street (the people living it, that is) was worth watching after the show let out. Hm. The clothes. Some you'd have to see to believe.

I didn't think they still made dresses that tight and short. Yikes! How do you sit? Same question I asked myself in the 70's when mini-skirts were the fashion. There were girls then who somehow knew how to pull it off (a certain one whom I still know.. ;) ), and girls who didn't.

Same thing today. Some can and some can't. And fair or not, the men didn't have the same issues with exposed flesh - just issues with good or bad style. Some get it.. some don't.

Inside the cafe', it was up a notch from some venues, but not as glitzy as others. You could reserve a table for $50 (which my buddy S and I did NOT do), or find a bar stool on the balcony rail (which we DID do), or stand (which a lot of people did.) It was crowded but not so much so that you couldn't move.



Even though the pictures from the balcony make it look a long way off, the club was more intimate than this.




If you were standing on the lower level, you were much, much closer to the artist.



In fact, from the artist's perspective - the audience was kind of in your face. And that lent itself to a very casual atmosphere with the performer acting more like they were playing some songs for friends in someone's garage. :) It kind of rattled Ingrid Michaelson now and then. I can see why.



She did great, though. Her concert was kind of a stream of consciousness thing - constant and random chatter, plus singing. And she seemed comfortable with herself. Her biggest hit, The Way I Am, she horsed around with, had fun assigning audience parts (which they all knew - she had quite a following.) Then she sang it straight - to great applause. Watch for a review of her CD "Boys and Girls" in a future post. :)

The opener was Greg Laswell, local boy. He sounds a lot like ... everyone. ;) You could hear Keane, and Snow Patrol, and Chris Martin and... lots of different people in him. He was fine for background, an easy style to warm up to, and not one who would overpower the minimalist approach of the headliner.



I'll review some of his stuff in a later post, too. For once, I preferred the headliner to the warmup band. :) But not by a ton. They are both nice to listen to. But neither were so compelling in their performances that S & I had to stop talking very often. ;) We had fun. Nice night.