LDE at Corned Beef & Co. in Roanoke

Lloyd Dobler Effect was playing for a full night at Corned Beef & Co. in Roanoke. I’ve heard of this place before since PMB used to play here back in the day and I have heard the stories of it through the band, Amy, and Doug. Something about a siren…

We get there and meet up with Amy and Julie and grab some drinks. Ugh – tummy full! I just needed the caffeine, no more alcohol! We walked around and scoped the place out, upstairs they were playing Amos Lee…my song no less ;-). Kick ass!

Before LDE even took the stage, we had a dancer. This guy could definitely rival Breakdancing Mike of the LoHo. This guy was insane and looked like a complete goon. You know he did this every weekend though. He soon had a much older female dancer join him. For the most part, pretty entertaining. Sad to say, I hadn’t seen either one of them drink, so you can’t blame being inebriated for their outward displays of ridiculousness.

LDE played a long, loud, great show. The long ones are always fun since they pull out the gems and their music is so varied. There was a pretty full crowd and everyone around us seemed into the music. Doug was taping, and also doubled as a body guard later. As the crowd started filling in, CB had quite a boy posse in front of him. Three guys in dfferent striped polos pumping their arms off beat and playing air guitar were smitten with Chris and the band. Maryann, Amy, and I all picked one of them for us.

During the set break they played really loud hip hop and implemented a siren at random times. What the hell was that all about??!?! Roanoke became a freak show as they all had sex on the dance floor. Oh, I would also like to mention that we scoped out the crowd and there was no one hot there, male or female. Johnnie brought two girls “on stage” and danced with them. As Doug and I were staring, he got pulled in and molested. He turned around and gave me this look of fear, but I apologize, there was nothing I could do. We joked after that hopefully he didn’t get an STD.

The crowd was ripe for set two. I was molested a few times. Ew, and this guy totally kept touching me, I kept moving away, then he asked me to dance to Stranger. NO! This isn’t a high school dance. Then suspender man came up and thrusted up a storm. He had to be near fifty, wearing suspenders, and doing the lambada. We changed “In the Water” to “In Suspenders” as we sung along. Our crowd was pretty much pushed all the way to Doug so we all spent most of the time rolling our eyes and making faces at the band. Good stuff, we appreciated it. The crowd was going nuts for them, which was eerily fantastic, it was like Logan House on steroids.

They did about a 30 minute Two Step, so I walked around and went to the bathroom. I come back to the stage area and just sea a sea of people jumping up and down and going crazy. I have a bruise on my arm now. Phil tried to get Morita to come up with him, but he didn’t, which is a good thing, because if Morita went up there, I’m sure the fratty brothers in the front would have thought it was an open invite to go up on stage. Ugh, speaking of which, some toolbag tried to grab the mic. Don’t be an ass face. Shortly after, some little girl came up and started gyrating to Doug’s mic stand. Why are people weird??!!?!?

After the show, the hip hope stared again and it was super loud. We talked for a bit but then decided to head out and reconvene at Sheetz since they still had to pack up and say goodbye to people.

I delivered the cookies to the boys at Sheetz and chatted it up with Phil about the upcoming week of LDE fun. Sheetz has milkshakes, but I opted for water. They were also out of forks, so coffee stirrers double as chopsticks. We said our goodbyes and headed to our respective homes for the evening. Sorry CB, I thought you’d be there.