‘The Bright Eyes Effect’ is a term used to describe an artist who’s live show is universally known to be on incredibly opposite sides of the scale in terms of quality. Basically these artists are either freakin brilliant or complete duds live, and its a total crap shoot as to which one you’re going to get each time you see them.

Examples given: Modest Mouse, Cat Power, Ryan Adams and that one Asian girl down the hall from you in accounting. You know, the one who looks smokin hot like 2 days out of every week; and the rest of the time she’s either got white rice stuck in her hair or some Ripley’s Believe It or Not dandruff issues.

So anyway, I’ll probably hit all those examples at some point later (yes, including the Asian) but for now lets talk about Conor. My first and only previous Bright Eyes show before Tuesday night, was in London this summer and it was absolutely phenomenal. I probably wouldn’t use the word ‘phenominal’ this time, but I would use ‘really’ and ‘fucking’. Oh,and I’d like to buy a vowel for ‘awesome’. He interacted frequently with the crowd as he worked his way through all his material providing a pretty balanced set. What more can you ask of with the guy? Plus someone in the band used a keytar lastnight at one point…a keytar sighting has gotta be mentioned.

The only two cliche events were at the end when he gave his anti-war speech and a couple songs later when they hit the lights and went with the ol’ disco ball effect. Geez, way to blow the production budget all in one load!

But the most comical performance comes from Brooklyn Vegan, who evidently had a 15 year old cover the show and review it. Seriously. Its pretty funny how stupid I felt after reading this. So either one of two things: either its a pretty lame joke or they’ve got an 8th grade class writing their show reviews for homework? Hmmmm, I really don’t know… but either way I give a 10 out of 10 on the gaydar. No one tell our friends at BV I’m rocking out to some John Lennon right now or tomorrow you’ll read “OMG, like first John Lennon came back to life and then totally did a private show for Jerry Blackbird…right after blowing some coke. LOL, I said coke!!!!. Wait, who’s John Lennon?”

- Jerold S. Blackbird