Originally published in ‘zine issue #14, 1995
Letters To Cleo, Fig Dish, and Dirt Merchants
9:30 Club, Washington, D.C.
by Editor
The night started out early with the Dirt Merchants playing their brand of way-too-mellow and stagnant music. Whey they did start to rock, there weren’t enough changes to keep the songs interesting either. Plus, the singer’s guitar was inaudible.
Fig Dish was a step up with more energetic tunes and a more devil-may-care quality about it than the openers. The singer bore a startling resemblance to the actor who played the abductee in the Fire in the Sky movie. They even did an Alanis Morissette cover of her current single, whatever it’s called.
Letters To Cleo was unquestionably godlike (while the singer was goddesslike of course). They took the stage and proceeded to blow everyone’s heads off, basically. They played several tracks off the new LP, including the single, “Awake,” “Pizza Cutter,” and “I Could Sleep,” and a large handful off the first album, such as of course the single, “Here and Now” (which featured a delectable new vocal arrangement to the pre-chorus refrain), the second-to-last song before the encore. There was a girl in the front row who knew the lyrics to every single song in the set. They played the songs just like on album and the energy and presence were amazing. I’m glad I made it to this gig. ■
Photos: Letters To Cleo performing that night
