CMJ at CBGB's in NYC 16/9/99 after the first three bands..... I can say that up until this point all the bands that had played had brought with them an honest attitude of being there on their own merit and hoping you liked them. But then came "Cobra Verde" and along with them this very tiring attitude that they were the shit because they had been the Gudied By Voices band with Robert Pollard. Well first off I never thought Robert Pollard was the genius everyone makes him out to be and secondly these guys sucked. These tired old fuckers couldn't make enough money to pay off their bar bill, which from the sound of them had to be somewhere close to the national debt. The singers comments and his obvious attitude because due to a schedule change "Juno" had been returned to the bill and these guys had to make room for them, were bitter and actually driving people away. I was glad to see them get the fuck off stage. It was a dam shame that "Juno" had to come on at 1am to a nearly empty club but as soon as they started to play it brought everone left there to the front to see them. I know there are more then a few of you who have the album and have probable wondered could the awesome insturmentation be recreated live? Well it can...it was incredible. Now Juno's music is never going to make it onto radio with there long and complex instrumental breaks and changes and one might think they would shorten the songs for live performance? They didn't, they played the full versions of all their works and their were people there who plainly were hearing them for the first time and their mouths were just hanging open in amazment. There were somewhat long periods of tuning that went on between songs and I chauked this up to the fact that these guys were going at the music like it was real artwork and the sounds they were producing are not easy to come by. It was by nature of the small crowd left in the club at this late hour a very intimate performance and there was casual conversation between the band and the audience. I congratulated Arlie Carstens [vox/guitar] on his recovery, less then a year ago he had a halo screwed to his skull after breaking his neck snowboarding and today he is back on stage. He said thankyou and a few songs later announced that they were playing this song for "that guy, right there" and pointed to me which prompted Gabe Carter [guitar] whom we had meet earlier to say that my name was James and I had come from Detroit to hear them play...which brought a look of disbelief and and a comment of "you must be crazy..how cool" from Arlie. The whole deal was just to neat. R.F.Jimmy
