Song Spotlight: Fifth Lucky Dragon's I Killed My Friend?

I was planning (and did) head off to catch Bruvvy at Good Times at Davey Wayne's on this particular Tuesday night. They were doing an April residency and I had yet to catch one of those sets. I pinged one of the band members and was told they were going on somewhere between 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. I figured I would start my night off at WFNM's night at Hotel Ziggy and then take off at around 9:30 p.m. to get to Good Times at Davey Wayne's to catch Bruvvy. 

Fifth Lucky Dragon at Hotel Ziggy

I will admit I was hoping to catch a specific artist, but they happened to go on after my 9:30 p.m. cut-off. Does part of me sort of wish I had caught that particular performer? Of course, but I also had fun catching Bruvvy's set. Unfortunately, teleportation is not possible so I couldn't just hang out at Hotel Ziggy until the very last moment before teleporting to catch Bruvvy just as their set was starting.  

I will say that the fun thing about deciding to start off my night at Hotel Ziggy (first artist up at 7:30 p.m. and so I ended up seeing three performances) was that I crossed paths with Fifth Lucky Dragon. 

The immediate thought that hit me was: what's up with that name. I had to do a some Internet snooping. I found this via Wikipedia:

Daigo Fukuryu Maru (aka F/V Lucky Dragon 5) was a Japanese tuna fishing boat with a crew of 23 men which was contaminated by nuclear fallout from the United States Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954.

The band name is the moniker for Louis Imperiale. I immediately was enthralled with the band from the very start when they kicked off "I Killed My Friend?" That song immediate had me thinking of the synthwave music of Essenger who I listed as one of my favorite new to me bands of 2024. 

Fifth Lucky Dragon at Hotel Ziggy

I killed my friend
In a dream
What does that even mean

I've personally never killed a friend in my dreams, but I've gotten into plenty of shouting matches with co-workers. 

There was a large crowd for the set, but initially they were all hanging out at the edge of the venue part of the hotel and flowing out into the lobby. No one seemed to want to take the initiative to come closer to the stage so a little encourage from the band helped things along. With that as an ice breaker, everyone started to have fun dancing to the music. 

Fifth Lucky Dragon at Hotel Ziggy

The band made an announcement that there EP Headless Barbies was coming out the following day, which also so happened to be Imperiale's birthday. The song hooks you with it's pop melodies. 

The most unexpected moment of the set occurred during the unreleased "Microplastics." Initially, Imperiale started to jump around like a DJ pumping up a dance club. Then . . . two lightsabers (there was a reason why I went with the SciFi theme of teleportation -- though admittedly a different SciFi movie / television fan base) were drawn and Imperiale and his keyboardist went for a stylish fight. Of course, me being a critic, I sort of thought that fight would have worked better a couple songs later when the band played a song called "Fight Me (or call me if you want to)."   

Setlist: I Killed My Friend?, Mango, Sunday Scaries, White Lies & Purple Elephants, Headless Barbies, Microplastics, I Keep Seeing People I Don't Want To See (In My Dreams), Fight Me (or call me if you want to), Waste Your Time