{"id":886,"date":"2018-06-27T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=886"},"modified":"2026-06-27T14:41:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T14:41:49","slug":"ted-leo-and-the-pharmacists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"Ted Leo and the Pharmacists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>June 2009, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From the moment he walked on stage until the moment he left \u2014 nearly two hours and two encores later \u2014 Ted Leo was a man having fun and at comfort with his surroundings. \u201cThe 40 Watt is one of the best places we play,\u201d he said midway through the main set. \u201cThey make us feel so welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Leo and his Pharmacists braced the 40 Watt stage with a constant barrage of all things rock (indie, punk, traditional), playing new and old songs and delighting the crowd of a couple hundred. The previous time he was in Athens, laryngitis cut his show short, as he opened the set imploring people to sing along if they knew the words. His voice was no issue this time, and the longer set more than made up for the troubles of the previous show.<\/p>\n<p>He opened with \u201cLittle Dawn\u201d, its constant arpeggio gearing up the crowd for a bouncy night. He took selections from <em>Hearts of Oak<\/em> (\u201cThe High Party\u201d, \u201cWhere Have All the Rude Boys Gone?\u201d), <em>Shake the Sheets<\/em> (\u201cMe and Mia,\u201d \u201cBleeding Powers\u201d), and <em>Living with the Living<\/em> (\u201cColleen,\u201d \u201cWho Do You Love\u201d), throwing in a half-dozen new songs (including an impressive \u201cWhere Was my Brain?\u201d) for a soon-to-be-released album on the heels of 2007\u2019s <em>Living<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Having fun bantering with the crowd (at one point near the start of the first encore, someone yelled \u201cone more set\u201d causing Leo to comment he\u2019s not heard that one before), Leo packs so much power because when he plays, you can feel he really means it. Every song is a crusade, and all the better when the crowd buys in (like it did on this night). After each song he yelped a \u201cThanks\u201d to the clapping crowd, then attacked the next song with vim and vigor.<\/p>\n<p>One of the night\u2019s top moments was the start of the first encore when he came out solo and covered Nick Lowe\u2019s \u201cSo it Goes\u201d with just him and a guitar. He turned his back to the audience just before playing to make sure he remembered the chords, nodded, then started to play. It was as if he was in his living room, playing songs and having some beer with friends.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, he was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>June 2009, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga. From the moment he walked on stage until the moment he left \u2014 nearly two hours and two encores later \u2014 Ted Leo was a man having fun and at comfort with his surroundings. \u201cThe 40 Watt is one of the best places we play,\u201d he said midway through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45,130],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-40-watt","tag-ted-leo-and-the-pharmacists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}