RANA @ Mercury Lounge 8/16/08

I thought I'd start at RANA and then most likely go to Banjo Jim's for Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout or Rehab for FunkArk. I knew it was a while since RANA has played and it might not be as good as I remember.

I got there during the 2nd to last song of the band before them. Metzger came up and joined them for the last song, and reminded me how great he is. It was awesome once he joined. I was getting pretty psyched for RANA after that.

Now, A Big Yes And A Small No were playing first and then there were 2 more bands before RANA. That meant that many of the RANA/Russo fans were pretty drunk by the time they came on. They weren't that bad, though. It just meant more beers were getting spilled on me than usual.

I guess they came on at around 11:30. They started out pretty good and ended pretty good. The middle was kind of boring and I ended up standing outside for a lot of that.

At setbreak, it seemed too late to go to Banjo Jim's, where it was scheduled to end at 1am and it was too early to go to Rehab, where it was scheduled to start at 1am. I figured I would stick around for at least part of the 2nd set and see what happens.

I'm very glad I did because it was definitely much better. It was pretty good considering they hadn't played in a long time. I was into it and had no desire to go to Rehab to check out a funk band I've never seen before. I wanted rock.

Things got great, I mean really great for the last 1/2 hour. They ended the set with their instrumental that put me in another zone. It was phenomenal. I think that was the last song and they turned on the music, but we wanted an encore and we were able to get a short song and then a great long song. It was an awesome way to end, I guess at around 2:30.

I now wish they had more instrumentals and it would be really great to get an all instrumental show some time. Yes, I am assuming I will be seeing them again. There were some in the crowd yelling out that they should tour. They said no, but indicated they would probably be playing NYC again.