Of Montreal’s show Thursday at the Madison Theater was one of the more troubled concert experiences I’ve ever had. My car broke down on the way there (it has since been fixed), some friends picked me up on their way there… and then they were thrown out because one of them tried to drink underage. Funny part was that I didn’t find out they’d been kicked out until three hours later when the show ended. But even after all that, I can say that both bands I caught were fantastic. Sugar and Gold, who I’d never heard of prior to Thursday, were absolutely fantastic.

I really should have written this last week, because I remember there’s a lot I wanted to remember to say about Sugar and Gold. This San Franciscan group brought out a bag of funk and threw it everywhere. They sounded like Funkadelic, the Talking Heads in the last 2/3 of Stop Making Sense (so all the Bernie Worrell songs) and occasionally like the Lipps Inc song “Funkytown.”

Very rarely do I see bands that can completely captivate an audience that was previously that day unaware that the band existed. And Of Montreal fans, bless their hearts, are very often only interested in seeing Of Montreal. I’ve see some otherwise open-minded young people talk loudly or yell things during Loney Dear, Love is All and two different Robert Schneider bands. They might have listened quietly to the CD, but if you didn’t bring some hip-shaking music that they already know, please get off the stage. That’s why it was so surprising (but not really, given how good the music was) that Sugar and Gold had people jumping up and down with their hands in the air during the first song.