Welcome to Tally Hall in California! Whee!!!

(A quick reminder: While Donita is on tour with Paige, I'm guest blogging on her blog. Be sure and check it out, there is a lot going on!)

(Tally Hall last year in Ann Arbor, MI, by the great photographer "speckers" on DeviantArt.com. But it looked a heck of a lot like that last night! Click for larger.)

Tally Hall came to the West Coast for the first time ever this week.
Tally Hall was on nationwide television for the first time ever this week.
And we were there! And it was great!

In case you've never heard of Tally Hall, they're a group of students out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who have put aside their various graduate degrees (2 doctors, filmmaker, artist, and some sort of economist, I think) for a while to make music.
Their music is musically energetic, with a nice complexity, and positive, intelligent lyrics. I first heard of them when their music video for their song banana man was shown on albinoblacksheep.com. I was intrigued, and explored their web site. They have several songs and videos available there, and I shared them with family and friends. Our family got into them, and when they released their first album last year we bought it.

Their music shares the nice, fresh musical combinations and intelligent lyrics with other recent bands I really like, including They Might Be Giants and (of course) TV's Kyle and the {Nom du Jour}. I'd call it "geek rock", but I might be a bit off in that label. Anyway, it's my favorite style of music that's currently being produced, and Tally Hall is one of the finest bands I've found of this intelligent, clever, funny, musical style.

When we heard that they were coming to California to be on the Late Late show with Craig Ferguson and do a couple of shows in L.A., we planned on seeing them at at least one of those shows. And last week, I decided to see if we could do Craig Ferguson too, and we did!

Wednesday Tally Hall were scheduled for the Late Late Show, and I had tickets for Lindsay, Kyle, and myself.
Suffice it to say it was great. The show treats you really well, and the other guests were Dr. Drew Pinsky and Carnie Wilson (Beach Boy Brian Wilson's daughter), both folks that I like.
We all had a wonderful time doing the audience thing; the sound was absolutely spot on, we were in the second row in a great spot, the band was great (they did "Good Day" twice and "Spring and a Storm" (which is one of my favorite songs by them) as well.
If you'd like to see it, here's a video of Tally Hall on the Late, Late show with Craig Ferguson.

Then last night, we went to Spaceland, a small club in L.A. The ticket said it was a 9:00 showtime, so we were there at eight. We were the first folks there, and even close to 9 there were few people there. Then this vaguely-familiar guy walked out of the door and said "are you folks here for Tally Hall?" Lindsay and Kyle recognized Tally Hall's keyboardist Andrew, and we had a really nice, long conversation with him. Lindsay had brought along a photo-print of her "fan art" "Tally Me Chinchilla" drawing that she had emailed to them about a year ago, and Andrew recognized it, said he really admired it, and signed it for her.

(Lindsay's cool Tally Hall fan art chinchilla; click to enlarge)

A little while later the rest of the band walked up from down the street (from dinner), and hung out with us for a nice, long time. They all signed Lindsay's drawing, and talked about art, getting here, and all kinds of goofy things. It was just a really nice chat with some great folks.

(It turns out that Tally Hall planned to go on at 10:30 (the tickets _did_ say 9), but our early appearance there allowed us to hang out with the band.)
After we settled in to the club, we had another small encounter with celebrity: Lindsay said "Isn't that the guy from "Will and Grace?"" We all agreed that it could be, but none of us knew his name (imdb.com tells me that that would be Eric McCormack. I did not know that.) Kyle pointed out that he also had appeared in a video for the Barenaked Ladies. After much discussion about this, Kyle and I egged Lindsay on until she decided to go up and ask him "aren't you the guy from the Barenaked Ladies video?" which seemed cooler to all of us than "aren't you "Will" from "Will and Grace?"" It worked marvelously. He said he'd never been asked about THAT appearance before!

The opening act was a duo appropriately named "Pity Party" that played what sounded to me like self-pitying heroin junkie music. I wish that, when older generations had called _our_ music "noise" I could have showed them this band's sound. Painful feedback and the such over repeated self-pitying lyrics. What a mismatch to Tally Hall. First time I've ever seen a drummer simultaneously playing keyboard (bass with excruciating sounds based mostly on the old "wasp" sound on a DX7 synth) and drums before, though...

Tally Hall's performance was masterfully executed, balanced, and just wonderful. Great execution of great music.
They played about every song I've heard from them, plus about 5 I'd never heard. All quite awesome. After their performance, they came out and talked with folks. Really nice.

There's a lot more that could be said, but suffice it to say, it was a really great evening, and a spectacular couple of days.

I believe that we were watching a band on the cusp of fame, and it was a magnificent thing to see. If you, like me, are generally turned away by the current mainstream music biz output, or if you just want to hear some really fantastic music, give Tally Hall a try; their album, "Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum" is currently available on itunes, amazon.com and here, and is (or so Craig Ferguson says) going to go into much wider distribution in September.