Apples @ Housing Works

As any faithful Suite 16 reader already knows, I’m a huge Elephant 6 fan. So you can imagine how excited I was to see The Apples in Stereo (finally!) at the Housing Works Used Book Café on Friday night.

Housing Works, if you’re not already familiar with their mission, is an organization committed to providing a variety of support services to homeless people suffering from AIDS and HIV. Their used book café in SoHo helps fund the project, and occasionally hosts special events and concerts. I was happy to find out that guitar maker (and Shore Fire client) First Act sponsors these great shows, and they even donated a custom painted Steve Keene guitar that was raffled off Friday night.

In terms of the band and the show itself though, things started being awesome right away and only got better. I met Apples’ lead singer Robert Schneider (you may remember him from his appearance on The Colbert Report) before the show, which scored pretty high on the No Way! scale. Robert was amazingly sweet and remarkably tolerant of my excitement and giggling.

Not that I really expected anything less from them, but The Apples certainly knew how to put on a great show and have fun doing it, and the audience seemed to be made up of other diehard fans like me who just couldn’t get enough of their power pop genius. They played all my favorites from their newest record, “New Magnetic Wonder," and made my wildest dreams come true when they closed their set with ‘Ruby,’ my favorite song from their entire catalogue. I’m told that I was singing along so loudly at the end that people around me had trouble actually hearing the band. (Apologies.)

I would have been a very happy camper if the night had ended there, but I stuck around for a little bit after the show to chat with a few other giddy fans and got the chance to flag down bassist Eric Allen and guitarist John Hill and thank them for a great night (and snap a few pictures!).

Me and John Hill!!!

Eric Allen = super nice