Here's a rhetorical situation: if a person is going to a crowded venue where a band (let's pretend this band is Stereolab, for argument's sake) is performing, and said person wants to stand near the front (or, really, anywhere a significant number of other people are bound to be standing behind them, also attempting to pay attenion), does it then make sense for this person to decide, only minutes after this band has begun their burbling, roiling melange of gooey syntho-euro confection, that they absolutely must have more beer; they have sized up the rest of the evening from the opening bars of "Space Moth", and have realized at this early stage that there is no way they'll be able to enjoy "French Disko" or "Lo Boob Oscillator" without at least one more beer, in fact, it appears that the people this person has come with also need more beer, thinking, "all that could possibly make this moment better would be me, squeezing past all these people to go back to the bar, and then, inevitably, squeezing back past them one more time, to regain my rightful spot near the front, while holding at least four beers, which will make this show so much more blurry and beautiful"...what is it that propells the kind of logic that dictates, "well, I'll need to be at the bar, a lot, probably multiple times over the next hour, but I also need to be able to see, because Laetitia is so cute, so, rather than standing midway between the stage and the bar, I'll just stand as far away from the bar as possible and annoy dozens of other people by pushing past them every ten minutes, forcing this fellow in particular to have to keep stepping back far enough so that he can hear the conversation he absolutely doesn't want to hear, the one he knew he would hear, the one in which the coworkers of the guy who brought them remark, 'they have a good sound' and 'I like the one with the guitar, very sexy!' and 'this is so nice, to hear something new, very exotic!' and 'is this the crowd you usually hang out with' and the guy who brought these coworkers says, 'no, I'm usually hanging out with you!' and even more inanities, so that the fellow has to move, finally, to the back, where the sound sucks."
Despite all that, the Stereolab show was great, helped in large part because the new album is so good, and there was a fair helping of older material.
The Papa M/Charles Atlas show was also great, but Pajo played a much more Palace derived set than anyone expected, which meant no haunting instrumentals, meaning that CA filled that quota admirably, giving the crowd, I think, the more satifactory set. Pajo did close with a great cover of "You Ain't Going Nowhere" though.