Sam Hart

This last weekend was apparently my birthday, so my wife took me to the Irvington Halloween Street Festival thing. It was pretty fun, nothing spectacular, but it was okay. It was mainly fun to people watch... and dog-watch as a lot of people had their dogs dressed up in Halloween costumes.

We also went to some Handicraft fair in this old theater. This didn't really sound very appealing to me at first, I kind of thought Jessica was just offering me the Halloween festival to get me to take her to some crappy craft fair :-)

However, once we got there, I kind of dug it. The theater was old and in moderate disrepair, the insides were dark and muted. It honestly fit in with the whole Halloween theme, even though I doubt that was the intent.

The acoustics in the theater were terrible as well, and there was this band up on stage playing music way too loud for such a place. It made it hard to talk to the vendors, and at first I was kind of annoyed by the sound. But soon, I realized that I was getting into the music and that the band was actually really talented.

The band's name is Amo Joy, and they have a MySpace page here. They play this really interesting eclectic music. The lead singer, Adam Gross, has kind of a Mathew Sweet look, and sounds like an upbeat cross between a Monkee and Thom Yorke. They use interesting sounds like kazoos, toy pianos, and bells. With all of this, they are very fun to just watch. Couple this with the fact that it was Halloween and they wore costumes (Alison Pitt, member of the band who usually has some of the most interesting instruments, wore a Tinkle Bell or fairy outfit) and it was a very entertaining show.

Anyway, I bought a CD from them... which unfortunately didn't work (my suspicion is the CD label was put on off-kilter and this throws the balance of the CD off when you try to play it). So I emailed the band and they showed me where you can download their album. It can be found here, and I'd highly recommend checking them out, especially if you like more eclectic and independent music like I do.

If you want a good sample of their work try out "The Sane Design" or maybe "Ready Hezzie?" (which is kind of off-the-wall and just crazy fun). In fact, "Ready Hezzie?" reminds me a lot of Twink (probably the toy piano thing).

Anyway, check them out, they are pretty cool.