We learned earlier this week that Maccabees is yet another word Americans manage to pronounce differently than us English.
There I was, perfectly happy with my pronunciation of Mack-a-bees, when my local expert on Jewish affairs said it should be pronounced as Mac-aah-bees.
Aside from being terrible at using those phonetic thingamys you find in dictionaries, I'm guilty of going with my first pronunciation.
I must have spent too long in the indie music desert of San Francisco, because no-one I know has heard of them, despite their having released three CDs so far. And it looked like that unawareness was true of the rest of the city too, as The Independent was only half full.
Mind you, the support from Oakland's Mwahana must've kept people away in droves. They were a tuneless, mediocre outfit attempting to channel Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne days with synthesizer-driven psychedelia. My wife / comedienne said that when they announced they had one more song it was like being stuck at the airport and hearing you're flight's been delayed another 2 hours.
I can't imagine what possessed the Maccabees to pick this crowd of no-hopers as their support act, but at last our boys appeared on stage at 10.30pm and blew the place apart. They were sharp, lively, exciting and - unusual for a set containing only two songs we'd heard before - memorable.
In fact, these relative newcomers were miles better than last night's New Order.
Mind you, the support from Oakland's Mwahana must've kept people away in droves. They were a tuneless, mediocre outfit attempting to channel Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne days with synthesizer-driven psychedelia. My wife / comedienne said that when they announced they had one more song it was like being stuck at the airport and hearing you're flight's been delayed another 2 hours.
I can't imagine what possessed the Maccabees to pick this crowd of no-hopers as their support act, but at last our boys appeared on stage at 10.30pm and blew the place apart. They were sharp, lively, exciting and - unusual for a set containing only two songs we'd heard before - memorable.
In fact, these relative newcomers were miles better than last night's New Order.
Perhaps after this show, the word will get around a bit.
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