Khaela Maricich, aka The Blow, kept the crowd laughing as she did about 50 minutes of karaoke last night on the black box stage at Mershon. With her collaborator Jona Bechtolt off doing Yacht full-time, Khaela was left with her backing tracks, manic dancing, and rambling monologues to help bring her songs to life. It worked for the most part, but some of the song intros ran a tad too long.

I liked it and I'd see her again, but it sure would be nice if she could find at least one other person to accompany her so the music could be more spontaneous.

Saturday Looks Good To Me played a lot of new songs from their just-released Fill Up the Room. This version of SLGTM is a bit more rockin' than what I was used to from their earlier records, but it also worked for me.

SLGTM leader Fred Thomas sang and squeezed riffs from his telecaster, and as the set concluded, the keyboardist picked up Fred's guitar and he switched to a tom and snare at the corner of the stage that I assumed had been set up for The Blow. It lead to a big rock crescendo thing that left me wanting more.

I talked to Fred after the show and asked if they'd be back to headline in Columbus. He said most of the band lives in Ann Arbor, so coming to Columbus again is a definite possibility. This, I think, would be a good thing.

We could have had more of both The Blow and SLGTM if High Places didn't take 25 precious minutes to play distorted polyrhythmic backing tracks while the percussionist beat on something, I couldn't tell what, and the singer's vocals were completely lost in reverb. The experiment didn't work on me.