The opening band for this early show was our friends and yours, Madison's own Driftless Pony Club. This was the second time I'd seen them since Marcus left and Craig became the new singer. It's interesting seeing the transition, since Craig's voice is clearly different from Marcus', lower and more gravelly; you can really tell how the new songs were written specifically for Craig's voice. I wonder if there are some songs they can't really do anymore because the ranges might be too high. However, I think the new songs are pretty terrific, especially "Pinch Me," which I think is the best song they've ever written. Reminds me of Cursive, though Craig said one of his friends thought it sounded like the Dismemberment Plan. If they keep writing songs like that, they're going somewhere for sure.

Up next was a band from Phoenix, AZ called Ticker Tape Parade. They had a good sound, sort of a Jimmy Eat World-esque pop thing going, nothing too original but pleasant nonetheless. The singer had a pretty strong voice, and overall they were enjoyable.

Up next, the Stereo, from Minneapolis. Unfortunately, there were only about 15 people in the audience at this point, and most of them were members of the opening bands. Apparently this show got added pretty late and didn't get much publicity. The Stereo is really just the singer, Jamie Woolford, and whatever bandmates he can find at any point in time. I've heard that the reason for this is that he is extremely difficult to work with, and after seeing him play, I'm not surprised. Jamie struck me as being a bit arrogant and a little too high-energy; he talked way too much in-between songs about uninteresting things, when the audience clearly just wanted them to play. When they finally did get around to playing songs though, they sounded great; Jamie has a really good voice and their music is just a lot of fun. I have one Stereo CD, Rewind and Record, which they played a few songs from, including "Pay No Attention," "1994," and "Tell Your Football Dad No," all very enjoyable songs in my opinion. They played for a pretty short time, only about 45 minutes, but I suppose it's hard to want to keep going with such a small audience, the majority which appeared to be unfamiliar with the band. So overall, even though I found Jamie Woolford extremely annoying, I like his music and the band sounded great live.