“Hello, Mark and Wendy- good to see you.”   It’s not exactly ‘Are you ready to ROCK!?’ but those words may never have been uttered by singer/songwriter Catie Curtis, and this certainly was a venue much better suited to her personal greeting to front-table friends. 

The Thunderbird Café was, perhaps, a bit more somber on Monday, the first day of March, than a roaring summer Friday night, but this was the kind of place where you, very likely, would not know the difference.  Inside and out the Thunderbird Café, right in the heart of Lawrenceville, looked like a dirty little dive that would serve only table red wine but have a very fine selection of tequila.  Though, luckily for its patrons, the café had a fine selection of alcohol and was very clean.

If you ask me, sitting down at concerts is for old people. Sometimes you do get tired of standing and feel like taking a seat for a spell, which is perfectly understandable. On the other hand, what isn’t perfectly understandable is eating a whole meal while sitting and watching a concert. I suppose that a place called Club Café lends itself to that sort of behavior though (notice how it has both the word club, used here as the dancing and/or music type, and café in its name) maybe it shouldn’t seem so odd. Pair that with a band called Enter The Haggis and the whole picture starts to look a little more normal. At least until the show’s beginning nears and you, the table-sitting-probably-old-person, are surrounded by all the folks who didn’t arrive in time for the early bird, seat-taking special. Dinner theater this is not. But I digress, there’s an actual concert to talk about here. And once you adjusted to the different atmosphere chances are you found the show quite enjoyable.

For a place as small as the Brillobox a sell-out crowd is not all that impressive. What is impressive is the amount of quality shows being held at a place that size. On any given night there’s a chance that you can satisfy your curiosity and see a great show by a band that you maybe have never heard of before. These shows might be attended by only a few people but that’s probably because the band playing is unknown not because they’re not good. In the case of the show this past Saturday headlined by Brooklyn band Bear In Heaven and featuring Freelance Whales and  Mariage Blanc, though, everything came together really well; there was good music played by bands with notoriety at a house packed with adoring fans.

The first band, Mariage Blanc, a local group , got the sold-out show started with an upbeat set  consisting mostly of new songs that they readily admitted theyhadn’t gotten around to recording yet. Despite the fact that that all but guaranteed no familiarity with what was being heard, the crowd as a whole seemed to be enjoying the slower, mellower, less punkish ska sound complete with the occasional trumpet accompaniment. But what started out as a strong set slowly started to sound the same by the end of the show and there were a few too many “oohs”, “ahs” and “ba da ba bas” in places where even a clichéd lyric would be a valuable addition to the song. Still, their upbeat sound was a worthy warm-up for the second, and in some eyes the best, act of the night.