Combine what’s essentially free beer (since all the money went to charity), a gorgeous afternoon (the rain never arrived downtown) and the first great outdoor concert of the year, and you have the recipe for a serious party. Saturday’s Finnegan’s ShamRock outside the Cabooze was all that.

Built to Spill put on a masterful if sometimes meandering set, playing a few new/unreleased songs along with such favorites as “Carry the Zero,” “The Plan” and “You Were Right” (all from 1999’s “Keep It Like a Secret”). Other highlights included 2006’s “Wherever You Go” and, going way back to their 1993 debut, “Nowhere Nothin’ F—up,” which underlined just how far the band’s three-guitar orchestration has evolved.

The highlight of the day, though, had to be Ol’ Yeller’s finale right before BTS came on. Rich Mattson and Co. brought out the Brian Boru Pipe Band, who were marching through the crowd between bands (in honor of Finnegan’s Irish roots, as if the potato beer wasn’t Irish enough). What song could a quartet of garage-rockers perform with a quartet of bagpipers? AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll),” of course, the one where Bon Scott showed off his Scotsman pipe-blowing talent. OY guitarist Andy Schultz, it turns out, can sing a great Bon. Not only was it a high point of the ShamRock, Romantica bassist Tony Zaccardi — watching from the crowd, mouth-agape like I was — went so far to call it “the highlight of the summer.”

Doug Martsch of BTS, BTW, was watching Ol Yeller’s Bonfire from behind the stage, smiling like everyone else (look close and you can see him in my photo). Martsch apparently was an OY fan even before he got to town. Somehow he got a copy of one of their CDs. You can bet he went away even more of a fan.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under Concerts, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.