Last night I went with friends to see Pomplamoose and others play at the Brainwash Cafe in SF. Brainwash is an awesome little place on Folsom Street where you can grab a beer while doing your laundry. We arrived at about 7pm in time to hear the awesome Danielle Ate the Sandwich playing her beautiful folksy music to a gaggle of geeks and college students. The place was packed. Apparently Brainwash can fit 59 people. There were already at least a hundred. I heard one of the guys selling T-shirts saying that they never would have expected so many people. It was incredible.
A woman came round offering the last of her pizza. It was the nicest piece of pizza I’ve eaten in a long, long time. People were edging inside the already-packed place. More were outside watching through the glass windows. Someone released balloons and we punched them across the room. A group of girls were dancing and goofing around on the benches.
We couldn’t move more than a few inches at this stage and could see nothing (Brainwash really is just a cafe – there is no raised stage so the performers were literally just standing a few inches from the crowd around them). I stood on a chair once to see Danielle Ate the Sandwich. She’s pretty hot in a cute librarian kind of way.
Eventually the Pomplamoose duo (Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn) arrived. Everyone was going crazy and I was starting to feel claustrophobic as people pressed up against us at the back of the room. The sound wasn’t great, but the music is just so wholesome and Nataly’s voice is so angelic, it makes you feel really happy. About 3 songs in, Jack and Nataly ran outside and sang a song for the people on the street who couldn’t get inside. She was cold, so she asked everyone to get in closer to warm her up. People loved it. They loved them for doing that. It was so kind. The whole event was just so wholesome – I feel like it’s one of those moments that I will remember when I’m old.
And, with this their only second physical performance (they’re a band ‘made’ on the Internet) not a single ‘traditional’ news channel is talking about them. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
Hblog.org 
What did you think of the crowd though? Everyone had to squeeze and struggle to get into the room, but then most of the people inside were talking loudly to their friends rather than listening to the music. As a result, I couldn’t hear any of Danielle Ate the Sandwich or much of Pomplamoose. Are Internet fans so used to watching their bands on YouTube that they don’t know how to be polite in a crowded bar?
Perhaps. But it might have been the fact that they/we couldn’t see anything. If you can’t see someone, then it’s like listening to a band on YouTube. I was talking too, I know đŸ˜¦ But mostly because all I could see was someone’s butt.