Sweet Pick - Duke O'Brien's 8.10.07

Bad name. Just my opinion but, bad name.

Not a bad band. Sweet pick consists of some younger guys playing guitar, bass, drums and Tenor Sax. They are basically pretty good musicians and very well practiced-up and tight.

However, I'm not sure what they were doing in a place like Duke O'Brien's. It was a slower night there and it looked like most everyone there inside was a fan or somehow knew the band. There were maybe 30 people inside and not a lot outside. The inside group were definitely there to see Sweet Pick.

They just didn't entertain me. I am a sucker for any Fender Strat or Tele being played through a Fender Twin but the way the guitar player had his sound dialed up, it could have been any Silvertone through any Crate amp. I just was not a fan of the sound he had. The guitar player and bass player were good players. The sax player was OK. The drummer maybe was the better player. They did play very tightly together and had sounded like they had the parts down solid. They do a kind of jam-band thing and I was not familiar with most of what I heard ... but I was only there for an hour or so. There was one vocal during that period and it wasn't anything to sing about.

I'd say just an alright band. They're maybe a Class C band (see my band ranking system in the May blogs). You really aren't driven to dance with these guys and a place like Duke's is really more of a dance-kind-of-a-place rather than a "concert" venue. Check their web site out at http://sweetpickmusic.net/default.aspx Just OK. Once was enough for me.