Barack The Vote

The Bowery Ballroom was full of Obama supporters last night, as a group of musicians and comedians urged fans to vote in today’s election. Of course, they had a specific candidate to push, but anyone who came to the show had advance notice. Organizer, Craig Wedran spoke with sincerity of his own past apathy and tendency to forget to vote in primaries, telling the audience exactly how important this election is. The political talk thankfully never reached that preachy “I’m famous so I know what’s best for you tone,” making it a pleasant, uplifting experience. Ironically, the young girls that made up a third of the audience didn’t even look old enough to vote, and seemed to be miserable until the night’s headliner OKGO took the stage (except when actor Paul Rudd made a guest appearance with the guys from “Stella”).

Aside from politics, the night had its fair share of quality performances, including an absolutely hilarious spoken word musical piece by Michael Showalter about bread. Craig Wedren performed brought back his old band Shudder To Think and introduced a new one, Birds (which featured beautiful female 3-part harmonies and included the Cardigan’s Nina Persson). Despite the slew of other fine performances, OKGO ruled supreme. The quartet didn’t dance on treadmill, but they still made their catchy power pop plenty fun. For the final number of the night, OKGO and Craig Wedren brought all of the performers from the night, and the large group put together an inspiring cover of Zombies classic “This Will Be Our Year.”