Walter Meego and VHS or Beta bring the synth beats to The Echo. - Oh My Rockness

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Walter Meego and VHS or Beta bring the synth beats to The Echo.

September 4, 2007
There are some times you just need to stop reflecting (like fishing on a lake, or reading that Sherlock Holmes anthology from your rocking chair) and just plug the hell in. You know, spice it up and get some electricity in your life. There's time to relax and contemplate like Walden when you're old and tired of seeing bands (sorry, but it's going to happen). But we're young, so just give us access to a power source, some synths, and some laptops and we're good to get rocked. And, of course, it helps when you have bands who know what to do with these electrical things. Thankfully, there's Walter Meego and VHS or Beta.

Remember when we were talking about DataRock and Hot Chip and how they were two of the few bands that can pull off making happy electro rock? Well, silly us. We totally forgot to mention Walter Meego. We really love these dudes!

Walter Meego are a Chicago duo (and sometimes trio or quartet, I guess... who knows)that kicks out the seriously cheerful synth jams. There doesn't seem to be a pretentious note played in their musical repertoire (which is not easily said of an indie-dance band), and that's mighty refreshing. It seems like Walter Meego's mission is just to help you party by plugging in and going off. And they brought the house down during the Oh My Rockness March Radness II party we put on in NYC in March. It was insane.

Also playing is another rock band that says, "Yes, but what I really want to do is dance." VHS or Beta met in the onetime indie mecca of Louisville (birthplace of Slint, Palace, and Rodan in its glory days) in 1997 and discovered that, besides indie rock, they were all kind of into disco, soul and French techno, too. So they started a band and people started dancing thinking they were listening to Duran Duran.

VHS or Beta have a sound that's electric (literally more than figuratively) -- they use tons of keyboards, samples, and exuberant drum loops to flesh out their bouncy, sometimes cheesy, sound. They were good enough to be picked up by Astralwerks, for goodness sake. Call them new-wave-post-dance-post-post-punk. Or something like that.

VHS or Beta and Walter Meego play The Echo (ex_PLX), on Saturday, September 15th.

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