Sugar & Gold

Echo - August 3, 2007

Live Review by Alexis Roberts

I hate The Echo. I have always hated the stupid Echo and there has never been a reason to like The Echo but if there is a band worth seeing that is playing there, I will swallow my pride, step through the doors and face the impending doom that awaits me. Sugar & Gold happens to be a flamboyant disco band from San Francisco (surprised?).  I like them - and they just so happened to be playing The Echo with Gravy Train so I sucked it up and went.

The show was an early all ages type deal, as normally the venue is only 18+. Due to the fact that it was all ages, there really were people of all ages there. I mean I saw an eight year old kid with her older sister and mom. The majority of the room was packed full of high school age kids dressed like total fools in the most un-chic hipster gone disco sensibility. NO BUENO. All of the bands on the bill (Mika Miko, Sugar & Gold and Gravy Train) have an interesting fashion sense; it will never make sense to me why people go to their shows dressed like that, though.

Sugar & Gold played at 7pm (I know it hurts, especially when most people don’t even leave the house until 9pm). The Echo was already pretty packed, though, and when they opened up their set with “Do It Well” (off of their recent album Creme), they got the crowd going. There was a pretty substantial amount of bad dancing going on, which is one of my favorite spectator sports, and this show might as well have been the damn Olympics.

The band, sans drummer, seemed to be having technical difficulties throughout the set. Cables coming unplugged, people getting tangled in other people’s cables, etc. There was also not much of an explanation as to where their drummer went- other than “Our drummer went home last night”… so needless to say, there was a lot of extra pressure on their synth player. Not having a drummer did not seem to phase anyone, or make the set turn out poorly. If anything, it just made them sound even more like an authentic disco band.

So it is safe to say that everyone was pretty into it. Lots of grooving and shakin’ it. Their songs, all reminiscent of other songs from the past, were successful and popular amongst the crowd, and their polyester pants were a big hit as well. They almost had me dancing, almost… but everyone knows I am too cool for public displays of busting a move.