I do everything about a year after everyone else–except Myspace. I was all over that when it first came out. But I didn’t get a cell phone until 2003. I still technically don’t have the internet or cable at my house. I’m a little behind when it comes to all things tech, and so that would explain why this is the first blog I’ve ever written in my whole life. (Well, that’s not true. I wrote a blog for the newspaper I work for about how the Tucson music scene is so much better than the one in Phoenix, but that’s it. I swear.)

Anyway, this blog is about live music right? This post in particular–so I was told–should be about the best shows we saw in 2007. The only show that really sticks out in my mind is Gogol Bordello. My family is Ukrainian and I think mustaches are hot, so I admit I have a bit of a bias on this one. But their live show really does kick ass. There’s something inherently intriguing about charismatic lead singers who prance around half-naked on stage in bright clothes and long scarves…I guess we can thank Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop for that. But in this case, I’m referring to Eugene Hutz.

I knew about Gogol Bordello a while ago, because my Yugoslavian (I know there’s no Yugoslavia anymore, okay? But he still calls it that, so I still call it that.) friend Sonny gave me a copy of their first CD. I never saw any west coast dates and thought of them only nostalgically, since I had to listen to ethnic Ukrainian music as a child. Part of me thought that the whole gypsy punk thing was just too weird and Eastern European for Americans to understand and it would never catch on. I slowly became a fan, acquiring more of their material and appreciating their musical evolution.

A few years later, when I saw “Everything is Illuminated,” I was immediately enraptured by the character of Alex, who I discovered later was played by, you guessed it, Eugene Hutz! Now I had a face, personality, history to the man in the band. It all came together in a perfect little harmony, but it would still be a while before I saw them live.

When I finally saw their show this year, I became even more entranced with this band. They were wild and witty, funny and entertaining. They had silly dancers and giant bass drums, epic driving renditions of their most popular songs. The diverse audience was actually dancing and chanting and pumping their fists to the beats. It was an overall experience, not just a show.

There’s one other show that really sticks out in my mind…Oxbow opening for Isis, where I saw the creepy lead singer of Oxbox shoving his hands down his pants and playing with his ox bow a bunch of times. But that’s a whole other story…

We packed up our piping hot, fresh out of the oven, cheeseburger puffs to eat in the car so we wouldn’t miss Regina Spektor at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Phoenix. When we arrived we had a few burgers left we gave to a friendly homeless fellow adjacent to our parking spot.

I haven’t been to the Orpheum before. It is quite a place, not the standard beer splattered dark club I am used to.

Regina Spektor is a singer/songwriter/pianist born in Moscow and now resides in NYC. She came on stage and sang the first song A Capella, then went and tucked the piano bench under her dress and began to play.

She has an incredibly wide vocal range which produces many eclectic sounds such as clicks, growls and moans that I didn’t pick up on from listening to her album. She also mixed in some Russian sounding lyrics into a couple the songs she performed, unless I had too much to drink and was just imagining it. She even used a drumstick to tap on an adjacent chair at one point.

Regina had a great energy and mannerism. She sounded extremely courteous with a soft “thank you” after each song. I have only heard her most recent album so I didn’t recognize some of the songs she performed but they were all entertaining. Regina certainly doesn’t need the studio to sound good. She blew us away with her amazing live performance. This was an incredible show, always good to see something a little different.

Jump over to nyctaper for a quality recording of Regina’s entire October 16 stop at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC.