The Pazz & Jop poll is online finally, and I'm not in it. Crap crap crap. Hopefully next year. I better start working on my comments.

I was surprised to see that the Sage Francis show at the Ottobar last night was absolutely packed, and apparently these kids knew something I didn't. The last time I saw Sage was about three years ago at the old Ottobar when he played with Sole and Alias and I'd never heard of any of them. I remember being impressed with his intensity but not floored or anything. Well, he got really good when I wasn't paying attention. The show reminded me more of a hardcore show than any hip-hop shows I can think of, with these really tense moments of band/audience interaction and with the entire crowd singing along with all the big moments. Sage and Joe Beats came out in suits at the beginning of the show, and so did these two guitar players who looked like Alkaline Trio refugees. The guitars added a whole, whole lot to the show - it sounded vaguely folky even though they were sticking to snakey surf-guitar/spaghetti-western riffs. And Sage dissed a heckler by covering Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang" as "I Had to Shoot You Down" with the band playing the Lee Hazelwood riff. Way awesome. And he covered Bob Seger's "Turn the Page", which was a surprise to me and no one else. The show got a whole lot weaker when the band left, though it stayed pretty good. He came back out in a shirt that said "sellout" with the Epitaph logo and lots of fake jewelry. Then he did a song while staring into a mirror. On one song, he got a lot of people jumping up and down and then ended it with "If you were jumping up and down just now, you missed the point," which irritated me to no end. People who work in pop forms shouldn't show that sort of disrespect for pop music or for their paying audience. But still, a great show, and I don't have to agree with everything he says to enjoy it. I don't agree with 50 Cent all that often either.

Grand Buffet killed it as always, and it was great to see them rock a packed house of the unconverted. I was going to write all this stuff about how great they are, but I've done that before here, and I just can't think of anything new. They're amazing. Give them money.