A few weeks ago I wrote a bit on Green Apple Quick Step, and the place they occupied in my own musical development. Living in a very similar place is Sweet Water. As yet another Seattle band signed to a major label in 1992-Nirvana's Nevermind was released in late '91 to kick that trend into high gear-Sweet Water's '95 breakout record Superfriends lived for many years on my brother's extensive CD rack.

So to be assigned these two shows by Mr. Editor Man has been an interesting experience. Now I just need a Goodness reunion show to come through Tacoma and I'll be set.

Singer Adam Czeisler is an odd dichotomy of a rock star. As a frontman, he knows all the steps. There is a skill in dancing with the microphone that comes of years of practice, and Czeisler has it. So he moves like a rock star, but he doesn't look like one. Not conventionally, anyway. Sporting jeans and a baggy shirt, he looks like a rock star who took some time to grow up and decide he could look however he damn well pleased.

That growth is apparent in other ways as well. My aforementioned brother likes to tell of Sweet Water's appearance on the Tacoma First Night rock stage in the late '90s. A fan, as fans sometimes do, leapt onstage with the intent to dive during the performance of Feed Yourself, and was promptly given assistance in the form of a firm shove from Czeisler.

Watching the band today, it's difficult to imagine that kind of attitude. Everyone onstage is simply far too happy to be there. Perhaps it is a product of their return to moderate notoriety after a six-year hiatus - and 10-year lack of new material since 2000. Sweet Water's onstage antics now match the central vibe of the music itself - bouncy, poppy, energetic, and above all simply fun.

In this way the two shows seemed markedly different. I'm quite confident that the guys in Green Apple Quick Step enjoy playing music. It's not an industry you keep hammering away at if you aren't having a good time more often than not. But their excitement didn't translate. It didn't cross the barrier from stage to crowd.

Maybe that's why the GAQS crowd spent most of the night standing and watching, and the Sweet Water crowd spent their night dancing. And maybe it's why by the time the former made it off the stage half the audience had queued up for the door, while the sound guy tried desperately to wrangle enough cheers for an encore, and the latter's fans actually took some time to cheer.

The Nightgowns

I'd also like to quickly note that I stopped in at the Speakeasy's Urban Arts Festival benefit both before and after my trip to Hell's Kitchen. It was, remarkably enough, the first time I'd ever seen the Nightgowns - in this or any previous incarnation - and I finally get why they've had such a strong local following for so long. They are on a short list of groups in their particular milieu of indie rock that knows how to construct a pop song. Melodies and everything. Color me converted.

LINK: Photo Sweet Water photos