I know what all of the cool kids in NH are doing now. They are following the Pat and the Hats band all over the state. I had read quite a bit about them, but had not seen them until recently. My friend Gorden and I took a trip to my second home, the Strange Brew in Manchester, NH to check this band out for ourselves. Between the two of us, we have roughly 90 years of listening to all sorts of music. Surprisingly, we both still have decent hearing. I reserved some prime real estate right in front of the stage, so we could capture the whole experience. Good thing I did because this band has quite a following. The front of the stage area was packed with their fans. I don't know if their followers are called "Hatties," but quite a few of them were sporting hats. Gorden and I were surrounded by thousands of these young adults, or maybe twenty of them. It was hard to count with all of them moving around. It seemed kind of funny to me that the only person there that night that was close to our age was the owner of the place. It is times like these when I realize that I am still cutting edge.
The leader of the band is Patrik Gochez. He sings, writes the songs, plays guitar and piano, then cashes you out, calls a cab for you if needed, and then looks for more to do. He does it all. The Hats cannot be discredited however. They are all ultra-talented and make this band top-notch. The poor guys in the band may get overshadowed by their charismatic frontman. These guys put on a fantastic show and were exciting to watch. I guess you could call them Alternative-Pop if that is a category? They can play many styles and would be hard to pigeonhole into one category (I don't get to use "pigeonhole"enough in my writing).
After their first set, I went up to the "Merch table" (that's what I called it to fit in with the hipsters) and scooped up the band's first CD which just came out in June 2014. Patrik released a solo CD in 2012. The name of the disc is "fake it 'till you make a hit." They didn't use capital letters in the title, so neither did I. The songs on the disc are phenomenal. I have not heard song variety like this since the Beatles released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" back in 1967. Ironically, that album was also released in the month of June. Coincidence, or a musical milestone that will be discussed by future generations?
Okay, hold on, let me calm down. The Beatles stuff may have been over the top, but I was trying to show that these guys are good. You should check them out for yourself. If you go to their website you can see a list of where they will be performing. There were no high-quality videos of the band to share, but if you scroll down to bottom of their website you can hear some songs by clicking on the Play arrow on little Soundcloud thing. Hopefully that makes more sense when you get to website.
http://www.patandthehats.com/
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