Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson @ Zebulon, Brooklyn- pics

September 4, 2008

photos by Ryan Muir

Saturday (August 30, 2008) was a long day. After four bands in a row at McCarren Pool, (Ryan and) I considered going to watch some bands perform ’round robin’, but the idea of a hot Market Hotel didn’t seem that appealing. Instead I went over to the much smaller and much less DIY bar and performance space, Zebulon, to catch Holly Miranda (The Jealous Girlfriends) and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (the Internet). Ironically, Zebulon ended up ridiculously crowded and hot, but I’m not complaining.

Holly was great, though I stood towards the back of the bar where I couldn’t even see her for most of the set. Miles and band put on a good (and free) (not counting tips) show, but not a great show. I moved near the front of the club early on in his set because there was no chance of enjoying it from the back of the noisy venue. That helped a lot. Unlike Holly’s voice who cut through the whole club, you could barely hear what Miles was saying, even from the front row. There’s something soft and choppy about his voice live that makes it hard to get into. Production has fixed that on the record. Maybe he just needed to turn his mic way up. That said, the songs still made me want to tap my foot (which is about all the dancing you can do when the setup is such that the whole crowd needs to shift so someone can get from the bar to the bathroom) and there were still a few big clapping moments.

I have yet to read a good review of his live show (here in the comments or elsewhere) (ok, I take that back…). People probably expect a little more once they’ve seen you on the cover of Fader. Maybe touring with TV on the Radio will be good training. He and full band played for about an hour with no encore (crowd’s choice). More pics below…