"Mike Shelby always plays for his friends, and Mike Shelby is friends with the entire world. A good set tonight. Our favorite originals, augmented by a cover from The Get Up Kids and the Smashing Pumpkins, who most of us are not lucky enough to hold tickets for.
"Despite every song being in a different tuning, Shelby keeps the set moving with banter between songs, as he tunes his guitar. Often, the banter is about how he has trouble bantering while tuning his guitar between songs. It's meta-banter.
"Before the show started, somebody asked me what he sounded like. Early nineties acoustic rock, I said. But not the stuff you listened to - it's the bands that the bands you listened to listened to (we're going meta again). That is to say, the Posies, The Old 97's, maybe some Sunny Day Real Estate.
"I don't know how he does it, and I'm not sure how to describe it, but the way he hits the strings on his guitar makes the music "shimmer." It's like LSD, but for your ears, only. You can see the music with your ears, man. It's trippy - it's ambient and soothing. It's meta.
"But enough verbal knitting from me - go to his page and check it out for yourself. All four of the tracks were recorded and mixed by yours truly, which probably makes this review a little biased. But I stand by my record. I listen to good tasting music, so n'yeh."
mike shelby , 6/28/07:
"i never said i could sing. or write lyrics."