Social Rubdown

I saw a band Thursday called Social Rubdown with an old college buddy (for the purpose of this blog post I am over 40 years old and therefore have "old college buddies"). The venue was a Masonic temple down the street from my house in Fort Greene. I chugged two beers before heading over and had several more at the show.

I'd never heard of Social Rubdown basically, so I asked my friend to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 fame-wise, 1 being a band you see in a basement show and 10 being U2. He said 3 but I talked him up to 6 on the strength of Pitchfork knowing who they are. The lead singer also sings in a band called Wolf Mother or Wolf Parade or some band name with Wolf in it. They do a lot of waltzes, they have two keyboards and two sets of drums. The band members switch instruments in between songs. The lead singer has a sort of interesting voice.

Somehow the show gave off a college-y vibe to me, as though we were seeing Dispatch or Guster or even Ben Harper. I wasn't super won-over by the music but I liked watching the crowd and imagining that some of the people up front who were dancing and had their hands up in the air really love Social Rubdown.

A boyfriend-girlfriend duo, friends with my old college buddy, started cuddling together a little bit during the encore. I looked behind me and people had started pairing off in similar fashion. It occurred to me that there are two kinds of song: songs that make boyfriends want to fuck their girlfriends, and songs that make girlfriends want to fuck their boyfriends. Social Rubdown writes the second kind of song.