Toronto – Fergus and Geronimo are a garage pop band out of Denton, Texas who make music that touches on a variety of different genres and takes influence from doo wop and Frank Zappa. They’re named after two characters from an Irish movie I’ve never heard of, so I guess they win obscurity points for that.
While on album they sound quite diverse, live they come across as a more straightforward garage rock band, albeit one with a sense of humour. They’re the kind of band who can play a song about Roman numerals and all the great things they are related to – textbook diagrams, Star Wars prequels, Rocky sequels, and so on. This sense of humour was also responsible for one of the best sales pitches I’ve seen from a band. “Back in America, the land of opportunity, we all work regular jobs so if you’d like to buy a CD or any other counter-cultural artifact, give us your Canadian money. We’ll figure out a way to turn it into real money.” They also made two requests onstage for a place for the band to stay for the night. Ah, the glamorous life of a young touring band.
Overall, they were good but not outstanding. I think in many ways I prefer their album to the live experience (if only for the variety), but they did put on a solid performance and are a fairly tight band. Plus they have a drummer who sings lead on some tracks and that’s always a good thing in my books.