The Good Life
September 27, 2007
Triple Rock Social Club
Minneapolis, MN

It was a tiny crowd at the T-Rock last night. Perhaps it was the super early all-ages show that had to wrap up by 8:45. Maybe it was group leader Tim Kasher’s Minneapolis curse.

On their last pass through Minneapolis, Kasher’s rock band, Cursive, earned themselves a 5:30 p.m. set time opening for Against Me! Ugh. People weren’t even off work yet.

In an interview last September, Kasher told us:

“We consider Minneapolis to be one of our slower going cities. Both Cursive and the Good Life spent a lot of years not getting to the right clubs there. For instance, we’ve done some 400 Bar shows to almost no one.

It’s not a bad thing. But when Bright Eyes and the Faint really took off, it kind of confirmed my hunch that Minneapolis fans tend to embrace indie rock more so than harder rock. But I feel it’s good as a songwriter to be comfortable enough to say maybe a cities’ fans don’t dig what we’re doing.

But especially over the past few years, we’ve been building good momentum with fans. I just feel like we started late. We had to work at building crowds for a few years, and initially our Minneapolis shows would either fall through or we’d end up just playing a record store.”

So unfortunately, with the street cred our fair city has with Kasher and company, the quartet was not surprised at the low turnout and poked fun at the crowd.

“Why didn’t you bring your friends?” said Kasher with a grin as he taunted the 30 odd concert goers before launching into a robust set — including a good number of tracks from their disc, Help Wanted Nights.

Although Kasher’s slower tracks are poignant and high quality, crowd favorites were some of the harder tracks (”Lovers Need Lawyers,” “Notes In His Pockets”) from the group’s debut, Album of the Year.

The set ended with Tim Kasher standing in the middle of the sparse crowd strumming his acoustic guitar and singing a chorus. What a show for those of us there.

Oh Minneapolis, you continue to disappoint.