Music Review: Cuomo! & the Fucking Buckaroos!

La vie mes amis, it's true, sometimes the smallest concerts are the best times. Last night, I went by myself by BART to see a friend play, Cuomo!, a songwriter from Brooklyn whose couch I had surfed on & off for a month last January – (his girlfriend was my girlfriend's girlfriend.) He's wandering around the West Coast for a while on “tour”, playing in the streets, coffee shops, & just about breaking even with the payed gigs. The show was posted as “6:00pm” at the Mama Buzz coffee shop, so I arrived early with my book & drank a Californian drink, the very name of which might classify me & strike fear in the hearts of Fox News pundits. After fifty pages of Nabokov, tthere was no sign that there would be a show that night. Dave & Myan, his part-time upper-harmony from Maine, had gotten lost in rush hour, & when they arrived, there was still no sign of the featured act, a local folk-punk band. Oh, you know, we drank a few pints, spoke of politics & women, I made the occasional wity comment. At eight (an hour before the place closes), they sang their songs for me & a random girl in the back. Cuomo's music was exciting, poetic, & enthusiastically performed. Finally, half of the Fucking Buckaroos noisily stumbled in with a wave of apologies, bleary-eyed, they too had gotten lost. They played a short set (I would classify it as “The-Pogues-meets-Sam-Spade”) Some audience member (was it me?) requested a love song. The poor banjo-plucking Buckaroo was losing his voice. Despite diminished numbers, it was a great evening with better music than I've been experiencing elsewhere in my new town. I even hosted the after party, to which Myan invited the only other audience member, the girl in the back, a 100% turn-out. Ah, les soirées que j'ai! Je baiserais une amibe, mais je n'ai aucun aileron.