A little over a year and a half ago, my girlfriend convinced me to go see Belle and Sebastian at the Wiltern. It didn’t take too much convincing. She’d made me a really good Belle and Sebastian mix a few months earlier and she offered to pay for my ticket. I was sold.
Sadly, the concert was sub-par. It wasn’t awful, but the live experience, just wasn’t a catalyst for any of the various emotions I hope to experience at a show. I wasn’t excited, energized, inspired, astounded, educated, or even amused. I didn’t gain a deeper appreciation for the band, wasn’t left wanting more, wasn’t even happy when they played an encore. I wrote Belle and Sebastian off as one of those very talented bands, that just sounds better on my car stereo then live in person.
Naturally, when my girlfriend asked me if I wanted to see them again a month later, I declined. They were playing at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, but never having been to the Bowl or seen the Phil, those weren’t really selling points. She went without me and came back RAVING about the show. Apparently, all the verbs that I crave at a live show, the ones that were so readily absent at the Wiltern, were there in spades with the addition of one of the nation’s best orchestras. I kicked myself and vowed to catch the next rock band who teamed with The Phil, regardless of who they were. That band happened to be The Decemberists.
It was my first show at the Bowl and an experience I’ll never forget. I staggered up from the Hollywood and Highland parking structure (the cheapest and easiest place to park if you don’t mind walking a bit), past a sea of camera toting tourists hoping to be “discovered” as they took posed photos on Cuba Gooding Jr.’s urine soaked star on the Walk of Fame. I walked past fleabag hotels and $20 parking lots. Eventually, the tourists and cars and smog subsided, and as I entered the Bowl, I was surrounded by honest-to-god trees. The Bowl was an oasis of solitude in a desert of tourists and materialism. It’s also an amphitheater that seats 40,000 plus, one that lets you bring in picnic dinners and bottles of wine without any hassle.
And so we sat, eating our fancy cheeses and drinking our wine, and happily enjoying an average performance by Band of Horses and a truly inspired one from Andrew Bird. The latter was so good, I was convinced The Decemberists would have a tough time following. I was wrong.
They opened with, “The Crane Wife, Parts 1 and 2,” and when the Phil’s string section all hit one of the opening chords in unison and the big bassy French horn kicked in, I started laughing hysterically. I suddenly found myself experiencing all of the aforementioned verbs, all at once, in unison, coupled with another wonderful emotion: surprise.
It was surprising just how tight the band and orchestra were together, how full and layered a sound they could create. The energy sixty plus musicians could create on stage, coupled with the enthusiasm of the 40,000 or so in attendance, was a unique live musical experience for me. I’ve seen orchestras and been part of massive rock band audiences, but never at the same time. It’s a special combination.
So a few weeks later when Bright Eyes teamed up with the LA Phil, of course I was going to be there. And once again, I was anything but disappointed. That thick, complex, vibrant sound, tickled my ears and left me in hysterics a few more times. Even with lofty expectations and a similar experience recently under my belt, the sound constantly delighted and surprised me.
The discovery of the Hollywood Bowl and the LA Philharmonic (especially when teamed with a kick-ass rock band) was probably my greatest musical discovery of 2007—a year in which I was exposed to dozens of new bands and a handful of new genres. I consider myself a connoisseur of fine live music, one who’s not easily impressed. That being said, I have no trouble laying down a prediction for 2008: any band teamed with the LA Phil at the Hollywood Bowl will certainly evoke all the wonderful verbs that good life music should.
The world is severely lacking in the department of Rock and Roll at the moment. If only there was some sort of Rock power force that could return from deep within the Earth to restore balance and order in the world.
The same guys that unleashed the thunder of More than Words in the 90’s are reuniting as a sort of League of Super Heroes — Super RAWK Heroes. You remember Pornograffitti, right?
They are working on a brand new album and an extensive multi-national tour to support this new genius album. And they mean seriously tour. None of this half-ass, messing around touring that they’ve dabbled with over the past ten years.
Extreme is bringing back a funky booming flavor that isn’t available anywhere else in today’s market of tired blah. Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt explained the burden that is weighing on Extreme’s shoulders to Rolling Stone:
“Rock and Roll Famine … I know it might sound crazy, but there is a massive shortage of rock and roll on this planet. It’s almost extinct. I mean the true spirit of quality rock and roll — you know, Musicianship, when you would give up every moment of your day to master your instrument and create your own identity and sound so as to respectfully outdo all your past heroes whilst proudly wearing the badge of their influences.”
Lead singer Gary Cherone’s personal web site embodies the gravity of the situation here.
Futuristic animations, an artsy black and white Michael Bolton looking photo of Cherone staring down into the abyss, and a headline highlighted in bright blue: “EXTREME Rejoin Forces”
Holy Crap! This is for realz, yo.
Now all we can do is wait. Wait for Extreme to resurrect Funk Rock and deliver it to a nearby small-town municipal amphitheater.
Those lyrics open up the first track on The Else, the twelfth album from They Might Be Giants released over the summer.
TMBG did not fail to impress on Saturday at the TLA in Philly where they played the last show of a two month tour in support of the album. The guys put on a two set show, bringing out a three man horn section for the second set.
The opening act, Oppenheimer, was entertaining. A barebones duo, they have sort of a Rentals meets the Postal Service synth/homemade feel. They talked a bit too much between songs, but they made up for that, at least to me, by blasting an air horn once or twice during their music.
A team of cleanroom roadies setup the stage before TMBG’s first set dressed in full body zip-up white jumpsuits complete with hoodies. The roadies tossed out red foam fingers and glow sticks into the crowd. I angered a middle aged woman standing nearby when I snatched one of the foamie fingers above the hands of what must have been her teenage son. “You just stole that from a 14 year old!” she yelled at me. I felt like a dick, a dick with a giant red foam finger.
The band made it clear that they would be playing two sets with signs all around the venue and an announcement at the start. The first set lasted about an hour, with a mix of tracks from the new album (the Cap’m, Take Out the Trash, The Mesopotamiams) and old favorites (Puppet Head, Particle Man, Ana Ng). That set alone would’ve made for a fun show.
But after a short break, the second set kicked off with the Triceratops horn section joining the mix. The three man team featured a trumpet, a trombone, and a saxophone. They really beefed up the sound on songs like Birdhouse in Your Soul, the Guitar, and Doctor Worm.
The Johns returned to the stage alone for the encore and played Maybe I Know, a very mellow cover of a mellow 60’s song originally sung by Lesley Gore. Guitarist Dan Miller reappeared and rocked an amazing classical guitar intro to Instanbul (Not Constantinople). The rest of the band appeared and tore through the actual song with the crowd in a frenzy.
They closed out the night with a musical introduction of the band members. The intros ended with the drummer smashing violently on his kit while Flansburgh demanded that the crowd worship him. “He’s destroying his shit… just for you people!”
TMBG seemed comfortable at the TLA, a venue they’ve played plenty of times over the years. Flansburgh commented at one point on a recent name change for the venue which has been purchased by the Fillmore venue chain.
“We’re thrilled to be back the Theater of the Living Arts, also known as the Fillmore to people who have absolutely no idea where they are.”
Maybe it was the excitement of wrapping up a tour, or maybe strong doses of happy pills, but the two Johns were in high spirits. Of course, John Flansburgh kept the crowd pumped throughout with corny jokes and face to face guitar shredding battles with guitarist Dan Miller. But even the normally subdued John Linnell was all smiles and chatty.
Two years later, when my first real girlfriend broke up with me, I spent a lot of time blasting Rage’s self-titled album as I bounced around my room, heart pounding, fisticuffs flying, anger swelling, until the mental agony I was battling was replaced by a more manageable fury.
A few months after I moved to LA, I watched Tom Morello lead Audioslave in “Killing In The Name Of” from the roof of the El Capitan Theatre as thousands of mosh-pitters broke through police barricades on Hollywood Boulevard and the riot police were called in order to restore order.
And so it seemed fitting, that two days after I was laid off from a television job that I loved and cherished, (lead singer) Zack de la Rocha and (guitarist) Morello were once again at the forefront of my pain and passion.
The crowd at the State Theatre was transformed from reserved to rowdy over the course of the Drive-By Truckers show on October 25. Despite the venue, an old-fashioned movie theater, the atmosphere more resembled a Southern roadhouse before the show was over, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Drive-By Truckers - Puttin People on the Moon
Drive-By Truckers - World of Hurt
This was the final leg of Drive-By Truckers’ “The Dirt Underneath” tour, a string of shows in more intimate venues that aimed to showcase the band’s acoustic material. The Truckers are known for their Southern-fried rocking and this was a surprising change of pace. Frontman Patterson Hood assured me that the show would still kick ass, but I still wasn’t prepared for the amount of ass-kicking the band doled out over the course of two and a half hours.
Ryan Bingham and Dead Horses opened for DBT, playing to a sparse and sedate crowd. Bingham’s a west Texan, evident in the twang of both his accent and his acoustic guitar. As people filtered in he strummed and sang in a smoky voice of Dylanesque Americana, with the Horses keeping time. His urgings to the audience to get up and dance went mostly unheeded until his electric guitarist tore into “Bread & Water,” a screaming slide-guitar Texas blues meltdown. The house was full of whooping and hollering that wouldn’t stop until the Truckers took their final bow.
By this point the crowd had filled in. The guys in front of me took Bingham’s advice and danced between swigs from a flask. As Bingham left the stage, he thanked the Truckers for letting him accompany them on tour and lamented the damage it had done to his liver. Roadies lugged a cooler onto the stage and placed a bottle of whiskey by each chair to prove his point. When I went downstairs to get gum from the backpack I had checked at the front desk, the woman standing guard gave me a stern look. “Go ahead, but leave the beer in there.” The State Theatre doesn’t serve alcohol. I assured her that I would.
Drive-By Truckers took the stage to hearty applause. Their stories of Southern life may at times have seemed foreign to the central Pennsylvanians in the crowd but the meaning was lost on no one. Guitarist Mike Cooley sang with the voice Mick Jagger wishes he had and Hood spoke of tornadoes and unemployment over the hypnotizing ring of John Neff’s pedal steel. Everyone shouted requests at the stage and reacted to Hood’s between-song banter.
“He had never even been to Georgia before he met me,” Hood said about Neff. “He was conceived in Ohio.”
“Is that some kind of football thing? I don’t know shit about football,” Hood said. “All I know is don’t bet against Joe Paterno. I bet on an Alabama-Penn State game one time and Paterno crushed us.”
The entire theater had cheered at the legendary Paterno’s name, myself included. With the audience back in the fold, the band launched into another song. Bottles of Jack Daniel’s were passed from band member to band member. Bottles of beer from the cooler littered the floor. At one point, Hood circled the stage, pouring whiskey the other Truckers’ mouths as they played. The guys in front of me were dancing wildly, having finished their flask.
The show culminated in a rocking rendition of one of DBT’s oldest songs, delicately titled “Buttholeville.” “I’m tired of living in Buttholeville,” Hood sang. “Tired of my job and my wife Lucille.” The guitars, now overdriven, were roaring and the place was jumping. Hood himself was clutching the mic stand, swinging it around and rolling on the floor. As the band thundered to a close, Hood collapsed onstage. He picked himself up and promised the crowd that the Truckers would be playing in a bar and really rocking the next time they came to town.
If this was Drive-By Truckers’ idea of a laid-back acoustic show, I can only imagine what they have in store next.
I never know what to do with my body at indie rock shows. Usually I just stand around and kind of nod my head along to the music. My arms desperately wish they could find shelter in my pockets, along with my hands. I tap out the beat with my right foot, but half-way through a set my legs start to cramp up. It’s a constant problem. Turn your noses up at “jam bands” (and their concert-goers) if you wish, but all that crazy drug-induced spinning and grooving seems much more natural than the stiff swaying you’ll find at a typical indie rock show.
Fortunately, Beirut is not your typical indie rock band.
For a band that’s been known to go several years (and multiple successful albums) without a tour, maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that R.E.M. waited 27 years to drop a live album. But as R.E.M. fans have come to learn, good things come to those wait… and wait… and wait a little more. I’ve seen R.E.M. at least a few times over the past 11 or 12 years, and R.E.M. Live, released today at long last, has all the best elements of a the band’s live gig (almost).
#1 - Micheal Stipe. Stipey brings the energy from the very first track “I Took Your Name.” From there, he and the boys rock into “So fast, so numb” and there showcase one of my favorite features of any live show, but a R.E.M. show in particular: when Stipey breaks out of the vocal routine so familiar from the album and lets loose, holler-singing the chorus — “LISTEN! This is NOW! This is HERE! This is ME!” — as if there’s a specific someone at the back of the auditorium he’s trying to convince. Later in the album, there’s some cool, kind of surprising (however brief) harmonizing on “What’s the Frequency Kenneth?” Then, of course, there’s the banter — a little shy, a little political, a little ironic, never overbearing or intrusive. It’s all here, so it’s just like being there.
#2 - Variety variety variety. With 13-ish albums out in the world, you never get to hear all your favorites at an R.E.M. show, but they always do their best to jump around in history, play the number ones, and test their diehard fans and tease the crowd with a few lesser known tracks. So Live’s got “Losing My Religion,” “Man on the Moon,” and “Everybody Hurts” for the radio fans. And for those who didn’t check out after about 2000, there are several tracks from Around the Sun, a few from Reveal and Up, and an unreleased track called “I’m gonna DJ.”
#3 - Still more variety. Another great thing about R.E.M. is the sheer musical genius of Mike Mills… and with that comes an amazing variety instrumentation, which sounds pretty cool on an album — and damn amazing in a live show. I don’t have a great ear for knowing exactly what instrument is playing when, but there are some well placed harmonicas and accordions and a most excellent section of psychedelic keyboard/guitar jamming at the beginning of “Walk Unafraid.”
#4 - The crowd. One of the best things about R.E.M. Live is that it almost encapsulates the energy of being at a live show — the energy that comes from the crowd just as much, if not more, than from the band. In every song, you can hear the crowd wooting, clapping, and cheering. And on songs like “Losing My Religion” and “Man on the Moon” you can hear the full voice of the crowd singing along in unison (”Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”). Just like being there. As I listened, I found myself singing along, stopping my fingers from typing so I could throw my arms into the hair, and start dancing along.
Even as I rocked out, there were definitely a few places where I noticed the album falls short. Being cued in to Stipey’s lead vocals the whole time is great (ironically, you can understand all the lyrics better here than on any studio album!), but I would have liked if they could have mixed in more of Millsy’s mic. I really miss the richness of his backing vocals and the layers of harmonizing and alternating lyrics, which are really only hinted at.
But I think my biggest disappointment is the absence of “Its the End of the World as We Know It.” The album ends rather anti-climactically with “Man on the Moon.” Maybe that’s lame to say, but whatever. Every time I’ve seen R.E.M., they’ve ended with “End of the World…” so for me that’s part of the quintessiantial live experience. Maybe they didn’t want it to seem kitschy or cheesy… maybe they didn’t want to do the thing you would expect them to do… maybe they really didn’t play “End of the World” as an encore in Dublin (although I doubt it)… But, I mean, c’mon, if they’re gonna make one live album in 27 years, they could at least throw out that much-anticipated bone.
Otherwise, for a live album, I think this one might be close to perfect. Of course, don’t go thinking you can just buy the album in place of actually going to an R.E.M. show. No purely aural experience can recreate the visual magic of Mike Mills’ notoriously colorful concert garb or Stipey’s wild hip-gyrating arm-flailing dance moves. No way. No how.
The Melvins are all about making noise. Their songs flow like thrash jam sessions. Their lyrics are total nonsense. And they’re taking the stage these days with two full drum kits flanked on either side of a giant gong cymbal. On Monday they brought the noise to Philly.
The show opened up without a band on the stage. Instead there was just a projector screen. A series of linked animated movies played on the screen in the darkened room while booming music blasted from the house sound system. Each clip, prefaced with a vaguely political title screen, featured an odd looking mouse.
The mouse would do goofy things like stab itself with a knife repeatedly sprouting streams of blood into the air while hands appeared from the ground with funnels to transform the blood into droplets of magical water. It was as weird as it sounds. After four or so of these shorts people in the crowd were groaning. After eight, people were howling for Buzzo to come out. Ok, maybe that was just me.
After the films finished, the guys from Big Business took the stage alone. The music sounded crisp, but the vocals sounded like someone clearing their throat. They broke most of the cardinal rules of an opening act. They stretched out some songs into an all out jam. They brought out a guest bassist. And they played for over an hour.
But my primary complaint about Big Business is that they sound a lot like a Melvins cover band. The singer talked up the crowd between songs with something about the Philadelphia Phillies and Van Halen. The crowd chanted “USA - USA - USA - USA”. The weirdness of the night was increasing.
The BB guys left the stage for a while and then returned with Buzz Osbourne. A roadie set up a fan directly behind the Buzz to blow through his poofy hair. Buzz is weird but he’s skilled at melding crashing noise with groove. They stayed away from all out jam sessions though, sticking to a mix of songs from their older albums and the latest Big Business/Melvins release.
The dueling drummers were interesting at times when they riffed off each other and changed tempo on a dime. But at other times they played completely in-sync. An impressive feat, but it felt like a bit of a waste.
I went for the noise. And Buzzo brought it, even if there was some weirdness to wade through to get to it.
For a long time, I assumed it was dead, that the music industry had finally choked it to death, leaving only bands like Nickeback and Hinder as a cruel form of punishment like an obese stripper who has convinced you to pay for a lap dance.
Minutes before the Kings of Leon took the stage, the smell of cannabis floated through the air, as if it were introducing and welcoming the band at the same time.
But the buzz from the cannabis and $9 Harpoons (seriously, $9? WTF??) was soon replaced by the Kings’ brand of seductive and penetrating rock that inspires women to lose their morals, convinces men to buy $40 t-shirts, and incites random violence in Bank of America ATM vestibules after the show.
If your surprised to hear this much praise, it probably means you haven’t heard the Kings latest album “Because of the Times,” a stark departure from their other work. How do I know? Because I was once like you, passing on the Kings, thinking they weren’t anything special. Now I know better.
What other band can write a song about seeing a girl in a Camero and eye-fucking her at the intersection as you rev up your bike? (”Camero”) Or a song about waking up on the ground with your faced busted in, seeing a girl glance at you and be convinced that, from that small interaction, that she suddenly wants you? (”Arizona”)
Yes, they sound like silly premises for songs, but when played with the right combination of guitars, bass, drums and deliberate bravado, you have a dangerous mixture of awesomeness that can’t be contained, controlled or properly described.
In an effort to dispense with the inane babble, I’ve incorporated videos from the concert so you’ll somewhat understand what I’m talking about. Watch them and just pretend that there’s skinny, stripper-esque women around you dancing to get the full effect. Also, check out out Flickr photo group where I posted pics from the show.
Here is an interesting take on a “live” performance. It is a highly choreographed “backwards” performance from the band MuteMath on Jimmy Kimmel Live. It’s the band’s attempt to duplicate their music video for “Typical” in a live setting- sort of an interesting experiment- definitely entertaining. Check out the video of their performance on Kimmel & the Actual Video. If you haven’t checked out MuteMath’s self titled release- do so- very solid- reminds me of The Police.
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