Seriously. Not impressed, Kalamazoo.

Barking Tuna Fest was this past weekend. Four acts; 20 bucks; about the only time we get any sort of reputable indie acts in town. Okay, so $20 is a bit steep for a roll-call of mostly underground bands. Still, I would think that once you’ve shelled out the Hamiltons, you’d stick around for the show.

So here’s the rundown:

• Matt Black and the Natural Mystics opened up. Awesome. Local rapper backed up by a full band, including a saxophonist and accordion player. Hip hop plus accordion equals bad ass.
• Amoebas. They had been booked as the band in the basement until Notes to Self got held up at the border (thank you Homeland Security, sure glad you’re protecting us from those Canadian terrorist-musicians), so Amoebas got bumped up to the main stage. Lead singer equals Billie Joe Armstrong wannabe. The microphone needed an umbrella. Amoebas should have stayed in the basement.
• Good crowd for Small Brown Bike, reformed post-punk rock band out of Marshall. We estimated maybe 120-150 people in the audience (of course, dwarfed by the State Theater’s size). Nice crowd; nice show.
• The Fruit Bats. ALMOST EVERYBODY LEFT BEFORE THE HEADLINER. SERIOUSLY. There were maybe 50 people in the audience when the Fruit Bats went on.

Now, there were a couple of things going on here. Reformed Kalamazoo rock band the Sinatras were playing at the same time across town. That sucked up a large portion of the not-broke hipsters around here. On top of that, the Fruit Bats were a late addition to BTF, and a group a lot of people (myself included) had never heard of. Lastly, I’d bet a lot of people were saving their pennies for Andrew Bird next weekend, but that’s just speculation.

Nonetheless, no excuse, Kalamazoo! You all wonder why so many of the good groups head to GR… here’s why: You don’t show up when they come here.

For the record, the Fruit Bats were awesome. They came out as scheduled, played a really solid set and even deigned to serve up an encore. They didn’t whine and mope around on stage and they didn’t try to pretend they were playing to a packed house either. They played their best stuff and they played it well. And they even interacted with the dozens of people in the audience.

Would I ever go to see them again? Probably. Will they ever come back to Kalamazoo? I wouldn’t blame ‘em if they didn’t.