Criteria and Smoking Popes at the Empty Bottle

So, Smoking Popes recently did a show at the Empty Bottle and one of my favorites, Criteria, were opening for them. Honestly, I think that for the Popes it was a reunion show, but I could be wrong. I don't know if they've been split up or not. I guess they have like five albums, but like three of them are live albums or something like that. How lazy.

Before the show started, Stephen Pederson (the lead singer of Criteria) walked up to this guy in the audience who happened to be standing right in front of me.

"Nice moustache," he said.

"I figure it'll be gone in about 16 hours. It reminds me of one of those big machines in the rail yards that take big loads off of railroad cars."

"Wow. Deep. I'm going to be thinking about that one for a while."

The guy he was talking to turned out to be the other guitarist.


Criteria started the set with the song that I think they have always started with every time I've seen them (like, 4 times, now?), which is It Happens. Their set was pretty phenomenal. I've always been a little more of a White Octave fan (Pederson's band before this one), but at this show, I think it was the first time where I wasn't thinking that Criteria was just second-rate White Octave.


My friend Mike totally worships this guy and it was also tonight that I really understood at least part of the attraction. Pederson's just a natural performer. His movements are so precise but never seem forced or contrived. He had no trouble hitting any notes while he sang, either.

I impressed myself with being able to take this picture of the bassist, who was on the other side of the stage from me.

This one's also good.

There're a whole bunch of pictures from the show up at my flickr account. Go check it out.
Smoking Popes were decent. I was only a little bored. I felt a certain nostalgia watching them, so it felt good. But largely songs that really excited me back in the day didn't really seem to move me very much.

I don't know what the deal was with the bassist's outfit. That hat. That vest. A Loop shirt? Ugh.
Dawn thinks that I'm crazy because I think Eli is cuter than Josh.

But she is the one that's crazy.
During the Popes set, we decided to take a picture with Stephen Pederson to make Mike jealous. Mike is the one who's totally gay for Stephen. But then Dawn (Dawn is Mike's fiance) got the idea to have us take photobooth pictures. See, not only does Mike like Stephen Pederson, he also loves photobooths. It was really easy. We just told him we wanted to do it to make our friend in San Francisco jealous and he was like "sure."

I told him, "I actually have a picture of you from way back at Krazyfest when White Octave played. You're hugging my friend Rick, who had a sign that said "Free Hugs."

"No way! You should email that to me." Great. Now I have to find it...

Well, I looked through the archives and couldn't find it. Maybe I imagined taking the picture. Rick really hugged him, though, I remember that. Maybe someone else took the picture? Either way, I did find a couple of old White Octave pictures from Krazyfest. I'll send those to him instead.

After we took pictures I stood next to Stephen and watched the popes from the bar area for a little while and asked him how they'd ended up touring with the Popes and he said it was because they have the same booking agent. They hadn't really met before the tour. I did think it was an odd pairing.

I think he was talking to the singer of the Bollweevils, but I didn't want to say anything cuz if I was wrong it would look like "sure, the only punk rock black guy in the room has to be the singer from the bollweevils, right?

Lastly, there were these two really drunk guys by the bar behind us. They were being really friendly with one another, if you know what I mean. One looked a little like a skinhead, the other just an indie rock guy. I wanted to take a picture, but didn't want to get caught cuz a drunk skin head, gay or not, can probably get pretty angry pretty easily.

Shortly, they walked away. When I went into the pool room later, though, the indie rocker guy was sitting on the couch with another indie-rocker and they were all touchy all over each other. I've never picked up anyone at the bottle. This guy had moves!

OK, that's all.