Babe and Vaeda

I hit a bar on Long Island with B13 on Friday night to check out the band Vaeda. I arrived too late for the first band, but according to B13 and his sister, I didn't miss much, especially since they had closed with an eight minute cover of Freebird. I caught the second act, Anna Yvette, a girl with a great voice and ridiculously perfect abs. I should have complemented her after she finished her set. We have so much in common since I too have ridiculously perfect abs. Yes, mine just don't show with the layers of fat in front of them, so perhaps it's best that I didn't bring it up.

Vaeda came on next and rocked the house. I really, really wanted to mosh at times, but as it is, the crowd was so young I felt like the weird old guy with a bobble head. It would have been really embarrassing if I broke my hip and had to activate my medic alert bracelet. It seems like just yesterday I was checking out Long Island bands on a near weekly basis, but I guess that was a decade ago or more.

I was really impressed by the professional quality of the trio. You can check out sample tracks on their site, and they've got some videos up as well. The tall bassist deftly laid down his lines while the drummer kept the room pulsating. The energy of the lead singer and guitar player was contagious, and his vocals were reminiscent of several professionals, including but not limited to Saliva, Incubus, Faith No More, Seether, Fuel, Daughtry, Three Days Grace and probably some other ones I can't think of right now. There was a familiar quality to the music, and I tried to draw specific comparisons. In between two of their songs, the vocalist started going into a rendition of War Pigs, only to fake us out and resume with original material.

The band seems to do well and has toured the country. Up until now, the biggest band I had seen in a small venue on the Island was Biohazard, and that was after the group's popularity. It'd be cool if Vaeda hits it big and I could say I saw them perform back in the day. We gave the band after them one song, but the Rollins wannabe rasping out a sub par Nickelback knockoff wasn't cutting it after a superior group, so we adjourned to another locale for hot wings and a hotter waitress.

Hopefully this was a coherent review; I'm exhausted. Maybe it was a long week or maybe I'm getting too old for this stuff. A nice long weekend stretches before me, though my services will likely be called upon to assist my folks with a tag sale at my uncle's house, soon to be under new ownership. If there are any interesting stories, they may make it into my weekend posts. If not, I'll surprise you.