ruminations on hotel cafe

Monday, July 14, 2003, at 06:38AM

By Eric Richardson

I did make it out to Hotel Cafe on Saturday and got my weekly fill (or at least it's been weekyl recently) of live music. The Hotel's definitely the place to be these days, the last few times I've been there it's been pretty packed. Crowds seem to be biggest earlier rather than later. Part of this has meant that the atmosphere is changing a bit. I used to be amazed at how quiet people were while there was an act on. Now that's not quite as much the case. When Gus Black started his set on the 3rd you could see him trying to drag out his intro, hoping that the people around the bar would quiet down a little. Partly this just comes with the territory. If you're going to play small coffee house type shows, you have to get used to people having conversations. But on the other hand people need to show a little respect. If you want to be loud, go somewhere else. The Hotel's for the music.

But that's all prelude. This Saturday I went pretty late and only caught Saucy Monky and the band in front of them, and I've already rambled, so I'll just jump straight to Saucy. I know I've said this before, but they're just a fun band. They're loving being on stage, and it shows. At some point between the show and today I was thinking about how I like the fact that they don't have a lead vocalist, pre se, they've got two of them. It's sort of a tag-team, as one or the other leads through a song. But it's not a real tag-team, it's more of a WWF tag-team, where before tagging out the two team up while the ref's not looking.