set review: jenny & johnny at the troc

last night i had the immense pleasure of seeing my favorite act of 2010, Jenny & Johnny, play a gig at my favorite venue in Philly, the trocadero. J&J played as the direct opener for Superchunk, who from what i can gather had a fairly decent following in the '90's but who id never heard of until that show, and the opener, a band called Versus, that i need to definitely spend some more time getting to know.

we were able to get right up front with no problem when we got there...i guess thats part of the awesomeness about being a pretentious indie hipster who only goes to shows with other pretentious indie hipsters...everyone wants to stand in the back, arms folded, and pretend like they dont care about the bands on stage. im not as pretentious as i claim, because i really like being up right in front of the stage at whatever show im attending (remind me to show off my really poor quality pictures of adam lazarra from the taking back sunday show i attended a few months back...)

jenny & johnny opened their set with the same tune that opens their album, which is "scissor runner." the song sounded great, minus the technical difficulties with jonathan's mic, which didnt seem to want to let him sing. After fixing that, they went on to play my current favorite song, "my pet snakes" which jonathan said was written about a "greedy snake." this song is widely thought to be written about jenny's former bandmate in rilo kiley, blake sennett. whoever it was written about, im glad it was written, because that song is pretty freaking awesome.

the rest of the setlist is a bit foggy to me. i found one posted online but i know that its not totally right, because its missing a song.

these were the songs that got played, though not in this order at all:
scissor runner
my pet snakes
committed
just like zeus
straight edge of the blade
slavedriver (which jonathan said that jenny wrote for him on valentines day of 2009, i hope he was kidding)
the end of the affair
switchblade
just one of the guys
big wave
animal
the next messiah (from jenny's 2008 solo album "acid tongue")

for those of you that arent aware of the song "the next messiah," its an epic song, consisting of three movements, and clocking in at 8:45 and every second of that is just so totally good. to hear that song live was really exciting, and really impressive to see them perform. it was really cute when jenny introduced the song, because she said something along the lines of "this song is from WAYYYYYYY back in 2008. some of you were still in high school then. oh, high school...." the banter and the way she spoke to the room made this a very memorable show.

im really excited for just one of the guys to make its way onto a cd. i really loved that song a lot...maybe even more than "my pet snakes."

finally, the best part of the night:

this is how close we were to ms. lewis

it was a good night. <3