Kristen Vrancken went to Union Hall on Friday Night

On nights of inclement weather, such as last, you can count on me doing one of two things: Buying a six pack of beer and blasting my ipod at home, in solitude, in a half-baked effort to recreate the going out experience, or possibly venturing a maximum of 5 blocks from my apartment. Last night better-judgment dictated I get off my ass, laziness dictated otherwise, until the two found a happy medium: travel one block to the old standby Union Hall in hopes of catching some live music.

I arrived promptly at 11:30, headed quickly downstairs to realize I had missed all the opening acts, but just in time to catch the full Euros Childs show. If you didn’t know, Euros Childs is Euros solo effort, the former lead singer of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. You remember, right? They were like, one of the most popular groups to emerge from the mid-90’s Welsh scene. The ones that, rumor has it, may have influenced the likes of the Magic Numbers. The ones where a BBC mini-site is dedicated to preserving their honor. The ones that pre-dated Super Furry Animals?? Is this getting clearer now? Don’t even act like you don’t know.

Ok, ok, admittedly, I didn’t know. I did a quick bio lookup of GZM on Pandora and was embarrassed to discover it had a ‘continued’…A continued!! That means they’ve done so much stuff that Pandora couldn’t fit it in one paragraph. Some artists don’t even get a bio, much less a paragraph and much less a CONTINUED!!

As for the show, it was loaded with fun and eccentricities and seemed to tackle every arena of the musical spectrum from folksy to country to psychedelic to a rabid fusion of all the above--which is great if you don‘t know what you‘re in the mood to hear. I got with Euros after the show for a brief chat, and asked him his thoughts of country-mate, Welsh-born Tom Jones, whom he was only vaguely familiar with, so I guess we‘re even. I also posited some more sentient questions, like, Do you have a girlfriend? And, do you think it’s kismet that we’re both wearing red t-shirts? Euros has promised a reply via email within the week, so stay tuned. Those Welsh accents are nearly impossible to transcribe!

And a note to Union Hall: Next time you give a gaggle of middle-aged woman a forum to hold their bachelorette party, can it not be where musicians are trying to perform? I don’t care if they’re owners or friends of the owner or whatever. I didn’t pay admission for the pleasure of hearing thirtysomethings yackity yacking at a decibel rivaling the artists on stage with microphones, ok? This is strike two Union Hall. Strike two! You remember strike one, right? Your overzealous bouncers, m’kay? Let’s get it together.