Apparently Thursday night’s No Knife show at the Belly Up was their last, according to Wikipedia. The San Diego based band has been around since 1993, and has released 4 records in that time and toured extensively. The band consists of Mitch Wilson on guitars/vocals, Brian Desjean on bass, Ryan Ferguson on guitar/vocals, and Chris Prescott on drums. They’ve toured with such bands as Jimmy Eat World, Switchfoot, and drummer Chris Prescott has also played with Pinback. Original member Mitch Wilson now also plays for The Focus Group who opened the show. The evening was put on by 94/9 FM.

The show did not sell out, but it was rather crowded. It was also very noisy. It seemed like people were more interested in talking than listening—especially during The Focus Group, which was extremely slow and mellow. It seemed like a lot of people in the crowd were big No Knife fans, they cheered and shouted request, but also kept talking through the set. At one point Ferguson told people to be quiet because they were about to play another song, but no one did. One nice element of the show was when Wilson started to explain how they’d been playing since 1993, and shortly after that they received their first piece of fan mail from a girl requesting they play more all age shows. The girl’s name was Candice and she was at there at the Belly Up, so they brought her on stage and dedicated a song to her.

As for the music and the band itself, it really isn’t my thing. It is a fairly standard four piece rock band with a drummer, bass and 2 guitars. The singers switched the lead vocals responsibility, but I found Wilson’s vocals to be pretty bad, and he is a founder of the group. The music just sounds like any other rock group that hasn’t quite committed to punk, but is still generic enough that is sounds like a soundtrack to Laguna Beach. A lot of the stuff written about them calls it “Math” and “Experimental” rock, but I found it to be very weak in comparison with some of the stuff out there right now.