How Was The Show - Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, Parts For All Makes at Hexagon Bar

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Little Lebowski Urban Achievers CD Release Party at Hexagon Bar on 9/8/07

Little Lebowski Urban Achievers at the Hexagon - Photo by David de Young

Despite the slacker image they cultivate on stage, Little Lebowski Urban Achievers are a band that gives you your money’s worth. It didn’t hurt that the CD Release Party at The Hexagon for their self-released 3-song EP Is this a party or an intervention? was free to start with. The bill Saturday included Divorce Force, Harptallica (two harpists from Baton Rouge who play nothing but Metallica covers and almost stole the show) and Parts For All Makes, who got into the party mood themselves by ordering some frightening libations they referred to as “oatmeal cookie shots” from the stage.

The current Little Lebowski Urban Achiever lineup, according to the CD liner notes, is Tom Rongitsch and Jesse Hendrickson on guitars, Brandon Koontz on Bass and Jason Lundgren on drums. All members contribute vocals, and bass player Koontz stood front and center at this show. (Oh, and in what might have been an act of defiance against übercool-shod hipster bands, the band played the entire show in their socks.)

The band’s merch table fittingly featured an LLUA shot glass as well as t-shirts and, of course, music for sale, including an actual 7-inch record they recorded at The Sound Gallery this past summer in Minneapolis. The vinyl release included three songs: “I Wish I Knew How to Quit You,” “A Touch of Dickel in your Mouth” and “It’s a Fine Line you Walk in the Wife Swapping Business.” The buy of the night, however, was the 3-song EP on CD-R for just $3, which included six bonus tracks.

LLUA writes listenable, passionate, well-crafted, Twin-Cities-rock infused ballads (and by Twin-Cities infused I mean the songs swim in that sound somewhere between early Replacements and Husker Du). Their songs are almost always disguised by humorous titles that may or may not be relevant to the corresponding song. “John Olerud Hasn’t Changed in 10 Years So Why The Hell Should I?” is one of the aforementioned bonus tracks, and one of my favorites on the disc. It is about the joys of drinking (and falling down) in Minneapolis, and as far as I can tell has nothing to do with baseball.

Little Lebowski Urban Achievers

LLUA’s set Saturday was a bit of a train wreck at times, but I mean that in a good way. There was so much audience interaction it was sometimes difficult to tell who was having more fun: the audience or the band.

The show was not without musical moments, though at one point I did turn to my companion and laughingly said, “They really don’t give a fuck, do they?” The band was drinking liberally on stage, and drinking is apparently such a part of their master plan that it’s basically written into their mission statement. Their MySpace page suggests the philosophy behind the initial formation of the band was: “Let’s all break away from our respective bands, start a side project where we get drunk and write some short sloppy songs.” Not sure if at inception they calculated what I understand was a successful tour of the West Coast this past fall.

If you leave an LLUA show remembering you had fun but can’t recall a single song, you’ll probably still be back for more. The band enjoys what they’re doing so much it’s contagious, and they’re not likely to quit until they’re kicked off the stage.