However, I managed to catch The Format before they broke up, when they played a show at the local major independent venue, the Cat's Cradle. It was August 26th, 2007, and it was one of the larger lineups I've seen in my time. The Format was backed with Limbeck, Piebald, Reubens Accomplice and Steel Train. The overall highlight of the night was certainly all of the bands coming together to play Van Morrison's "Caravan" at the very end, but this was definitely a show that helped encourage my policy of checking into opening acts. There's a good chance I'll talk about Piebald another time (a very good one!) and Steel Train as well, but right now, there's a reason I'm talking about the band I'm here to write about.
Yesterday, I made the excited purchase of a number of items, from an album someone almost got me as a present ten years ago (but skipped on as it was apparently nowhere near gift quality in its used state), to two albums I've been searching for intently at every store I enter, to a well-regarded album that influenced a number of bands I like or love, to a difficult-to-find band of less known status--and even a few others. And yet, I came home and found a link in my e-mail, began my download, and those two albums I'd been searching for finished ripping to my computer and have remained untouched since. Indeed, the trays of my optical drives are sitting outside my desktop with the discs still in them.
That download was a link to the new Reubens Accomplice album.
I left that show five years ago with a rather large selection of merchandise:
