Julius C @ Crash Mansion

On Wednsday, walking the streets of New York with some friends, we encountered your typical flyer-passer-outer. My friends ignored him and kept walking but I caught the words "free concert, open bar" so I took the flyer. I assumed I probably still wouldn't go, but I wanted to see what it was.

I literally yelled "yes!" out loud when I saw who was playing though. It was Julius C, who I've written about once before here, and I'd been wanting to see them perform for quite a while now but had never managed to make it to one of their shows. I may never ignore another flyer person on the street again...

The show was at Crash Mansion. Crash Mansion is actually a really nice space. It's intimate but not cramped and there are nice couches to sit on and stuff. Julius C went on second and, in all honesty, I think that might be the most fun I have had at a concert all year. I know I tend to say positive things about most of the concerts that I've been to and rave about how awesome they were in various ways. But I usually have bad things to say too and I don't think I have any bad things to say about this show.

The whole band just had so much energy. They all looked like they were having the time of their lives up on stage. And they made the audience have a good time too. There was a lot of audience participation - they even had two halves of the audience singing different things while they sang a third part on stage. It was so much fun. I danced my little heart out and took ridiculous amounts of pictures with my piece of shit camera. Jay Stolar, the lead singer, even came out into the audience at one point and was standing literally 6 inches directly in front of me. I got some decent pictures at that point (see below).

The other thing that made it great was that the audience had energy, but they weren't rowdy. I would think that with the open vodka bar right before Julius C went on, the crowd would've been more unruly, but they all danced and had a good time and participated but didn't get shovey. I had my nice little square foot of space and wasn't being elbowed in the face. It was perfect. So many potentially great concerts have been ruined for me by the stupid rowdy audience, or by a really lame audience who lacked energy. And it was full, but not overly crowded. It seems like all the shows I go to are either packed or too empty.

If I had any complaints it would be the following: where was the brass section that makes their sound so full on the album? I really would've liked to see them perform too. And of the three songs that I knew before the concert, they only played one. In fact, that may have been the only song from their 6-song EP "Julius C Says" - which I am now the proud owner of - that they played. They definitely played less than half the EP. But it didn't really matter because they owned every song they played and it was a relatively long set.

As for their 6-song EP, well, I knew half the songs on it already, but I like all of the other three too. As I know I've said before, it's rare that I like 100% of songs by any band, even on EPs with only a few songs. I can't wait for them to come out with some new stuff. And maybe I can go to another concert of their's sometime soon.

A few songs from their EP:

No Way [mp3]
Tell Me How You Want It [mp3]

And a few more pictures (I finally broke down and got a flickr account because I took so many pictures at this concert, so if you want to see even more, go here):

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