Live Music

My wife and I saw Fleetwood Mac last night...turns out it was the last show in the USA of their current tour. Buckingham, Nicks, and Mc Vie's voices were surprisingly strong; they faltered a little at times but not nearly as much as I was afraid they would. Buckingham was feeding off the crowd like crazy...at times he reminded me of someone half his age. Christine was low-key but consistently solid, and Nicks covered everything in her bag of tricks although it was clear that she couldn't move as well as she used to be able to. My wife mentioned about halfway through that Nicks' back was bothering her and at times you could see her standing with a fist pressed to her lower back, but it didn't affect her singing. Mick was Mick, of course. He saved his drum solo for the encore and had a headset mike so he could jibber-jabber and do call-response with the crowd while he was playing.

All in all, it was a fantastic performance and I'm very glad that we were able to catch them with the classic lineup.

So last night I saw Apocalyptica and Art of Dying, but I was really just going to see AOD. I did stay for Apocalyptica, who I don't own any albums of, and I thought they were pretty interesting (their rendition of Creeping Death and One was entertaining). They're easily the heaviest cello band I've ever heard.

As for AOD, they played this new EP they just released about a month ago in its entirety, which I happened to have bought on iTunes that afternoon. The only song I knew well on it was the title track, Rise Up (which is a pretty great song if I might say). Listening to it more and more, I can safely say it's basically straight-up Alt Metal (besides Everything, which is more of a Post-Grunge Power Ballad). They've been touring with quite a few metal bands over the last few years, so I guess they were bound to get heavier.

Anyway, it's been around 7 years since they played their home town, and Jonny's stage-presence is a lot more mobile and they generally seem to be exuding a lot more confidence. I like that, and I look forward to seeing them again.

I also got to shake hands with Cale Gontier when the band was meeting with the fans later on, and Jonny seemed to notice I knew most of the words. No one's ever noticed how I do that.

Highlights include Get Through This, Rise Up, and Die Trying (which finished their set).

edited 31st May '15 12:15:07 PM by Alucard

I saw The Pixies at the club I've talked about interning at - said club is closing down, and they played some of their earliest shows there, so it was arranged to have them play there one more time. It was really cool to see one of my favorite bands in a much smaller venue, even without Kim Deal (the current lineup has Paz Lenchantin on bass and backing vocals instead). There was maybe a little too much of the just-okay Indie Cindy material, but otherwise they played pretty much everything you'd anticipate hearing other than "Gigantic" (for obvious reasons), and their set lasted a couple hours with no openers. They still pull off a really good performance. Due to it being a small, sold out venue, the crowd situation was very cramped and sweaty, but in a way that added to the excitement - Also, a mosh pit opened up for some of the faster numbers {e.g. "Vamos") - no one got hurt or had to get thrown out, but I felt the floor shaking ominously a few times. Someone put the set list up, if you're curious.

edited 19th Jun '15 6:26:00 PM by MikeK

I've got a couple more shows to go to this week, so I might take over this thread for a while. Tonight was Petty Morals, CJ Ramone, and Shonen Knife.

Petty Morals were the local opener, who I've seen previously: They're an all-female band who describe their style as "dance rock" - to me they kind of come off as a cross between Garage Rock and New Wave, with an emphasis on danceable rhythms. They closed out their otherwise all-original set with a cover of "We Got The Beat" and it fit in perfectly. Extra bit of trivia: Their name is a Keith Richards Shout-Out. Richards once said The Rolling Stones were "not worried about petty morals".

CJ Ramone is, as you might have guessed, a former Ramones member, albeit a relatively late addition to the band: He took over bass and backing vocal duties when Dee Dee left the band, being a full-time member for the last 7 years or so of their career. He played a mix of original material from his two solo albums and Ramones covers, backed by members of The Aquabats!. The originals were pretty decent, but of course the Ramones material tended to get the audience going more, and CJ was aware of it: About halfway through, he announced the rest of the set was going to be entirely Ramones songs, and so it was.

Shonen Knife had a very good, high energy set that seemed to go by too fast. Ramones were the primary impetus behind them starting a band, so it was sort of interesting to hear them right after a Ramones-heavy set from a former Ramones member. I actually don't know that much of their material, but I was glad to hear "I Am A Cat".

I like Alucard's shtick of taking note of band shirts in the audience, so I'm borrowing it: Plenty of Ramones shirts (and I think maybe I saw a single CJ one from a past tour), a couple of Shonen Knife shirts, and no Petty Morals shirts... Though that's not surprising because they were the least known act on the bill - Since I'm a fan, I was at least glad that a few who had showed up early enough to catch their set stepped up to the merch booth. Oh, and CJ himself had a shirt with the logo for the current tour: Does it really count as wearing your own band's shirt if your tour coheadliner gets equal billing in the logo?

edited 25th Jun '15 12:36:58 PM by MikeK

Got to see Rush pass through on their R40 tour. My seat was in the upper balconies, but I still had a great view of everything.

They chose from a pretty nice selection of hits and deeper cuts. Right at the start of the show during Headlong Flight, Geddy held this long note just like in the album recording, and Neil broke out into a drum solo too, which buzzed the crowd immediately. Geddy's voice has obviously aged, but what he does with his experience is what keeps that from being too noticeable (well, except when he had to start playing separate characters during 2112, which happened to skip over the Discovery, Oracle and Soliloquy segments). Overall it probably had one of the most relaxed atmospheres I've ever seen at a concert; loud and intense as it got, it still fundamentally felt like an intimate rock show, despite being in an arena. But I guess that's the band's charm.

Speaking of charm, those goofy interludes were full of charm. Seeing all these celebrity fans showing up on the screen to mouth lyrics or perform skits were a great way to break things up from the all the Epic Rocking going on (the last skit features the band getting kicked out of their dressing room by most of the characters on their albums). As for those long runners, the light show that accompanied them was probably the most impressive I've seen yet (perfectly timed and amazingly appropriate for whatever was happening during the song).

Not much weight in that statement, since the bands I usually see rarely rely on just lights for their stage show, but it made those rare moments that included fireworks and pyrotechnics that much more special.

There wasn't an opener, and the band had an intermission half-way through. Hence, the whole crowd was nothing but Rush shirts (my Farewell to Kings shirt managed to be the only of its kind I spotted though).

Highlights include YYZ, Anthem, Xanadu, Spirit of Radio and Subdivisions. Wish I could've gotten to hear The Trees or Limelight, but I listened to both as I got home. Would definitely see this band again.

Funny note: Some old guy two seats away seemed to be a super fan that knew every song by the first few notes. I usually pride myself on being that guy, but tonight I was outdone (that and my throat's a little too sore to sing along).

edited 18th Jul '15 2:26:27 AM by Alucard

Saw this small local band live. Got a setlist and the autograph from the singer. She was absolutely adorable in how awkward and baffled she was about the fact that anyone could want her autograph.

edited 19th Jul '15 11:40:18 AM by Xeroop

Saw the Bloodletting Tour last night. The Kennedy Veil fucking killed it; they flew right out of the gate with "Ad Noctum" and didn't let up for their entire set; hell, they even managed to keep it together after Casey broke a string. After them, I basically ignored Ovid's Withering, who sounded WAY too much like Born of Osiris for my liking and played irritating music (nice dudes, though). Arkaik, meanwhile, got off to a slow-ish start as the audience was trying to figure them out, but once the third song hit, everyone went NUTS. Shame that their set was so short. Finally, Psycroptic put on a great show, but their setlist was basically nothing but material from (Ob)Servant onward ("The Colour of Sleep" being the sole old song), and I have no love for their new material and thus watched from a distance. Still, TKV and Arkaik were worth the price of admission alone.

edited 23rd Jul '15 7:50:27 PM by HasturHasturHastur

Returned from my week-and-a-half festival trip last night. Man, was it an experience.

The weather was roughly twenty degrees higher than what I've accustomed to, and I own no clothes for that weather, so heat stroke was a omnipresent threat. On the later nights it rained, and on the final night it was a full-blown storm (For reference, I used to have a tent before attending the festival. I don't any more). I was already sick before I left, and soaking in the rain didn't certainly help.

But the good things outweight the bad by so, so much; I saw some of the most wonderful performances of my life, inluding but not limited to Florence + the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Paloma Faith, Robbie Williams, Major Lazer, Marina and the Diamonds, Awolnation, Kasabian, Dropkick Murphys, Hollywood Undead, MØ, Jungle, Foals, The Ting Tings, SBTRKT, Interpol, Gogol Bordello, Enter Shikari, Future Islands, Foxes, The Subways and many more. It is impossible to pick the best one, though Florence was the most emotional one.

I also got a pic of me and Paloma Faith which is extraordinary in that neither of us is recognizable in the picture.

I have tickets for Judas Priest and Disturbed.

Oh my god.

I got tickets to see The Dead Milkmen in October - it'll be my first time. I'll be updating you on that when the show comes up.

The Dead Milkmen with Walter Sickert And The Army of Broken Toys. This was a pretty fun night. Walter Sickert & The Army Of Broken Toys were the local opener, who I've seen a few times before over the years - they have kind of an unusual style, but I'd basically sum them up as "cabaret goth folk": On the surface that's sort of an odd fit with the Dead Milkmen, but 1) they've got an irreverent streak in their performing style and some of their lyrical content that fits in spirit, and 2) despite the Take Thats to goths in "Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance To Anything)", Rodney Anonymous turns out to be into Gothic and Industrial music - he threw in a spontaneous Shout-Out to Angelspit during a song, told a story about meeting The Damned where the punchline was him telling their drummer his favorite albums were Strawberries and Phantasmagoria and being called a "gothic fuck" for it, and the hand-picked house music was an album by martial folk performer Rome, which he plugged at the end of the set. The Milkmen themselves put on a pretty good set, bringing a lot of manic energy to songs from throughout their career. Setlist.

Just got back from Judas Priest. Floor tickets. And man am I tired.

But seriously, they sounded even better than the last time I saw them, and unlike the Epitaph tour which had so many cuts from across the discography that it almost felt like a quiz, this show pretty much stuck to nothing but classics (I think it drew from across 8 albums, and I loved Redeemer of Souls enough to be quite pleased with it taking up four spaces on the setlist). There was no opening act, and therefore no waiting, which just made things all the better.

As expected, that lack of an opening act left little variety in the T-shirt department, but that allowed for quite the showcase in awesome Priest artwork (my Screaming for Vengeance shirt got a few compliments for its uniqueness). Can't remember the last time I saw so much denim, leather, studs and patches in one place. These non-stadium venues can be some of the best shows even for a stadium band like Priest. Richie Faulkner is a great showman and Halford seems to have an even better handle on his screams than the last time I saw them (Painkiller went over great, and he transitioned from that low growl in Halls of Valhalla perfectly). I can't really pick a highlight song, because the whole set was basically all of their best-known stuff. Would've liked to have seen something from Defenders of the Faith in light of its recent reissue, and Dessert Plains and The Rage wouldn't have been my first choice from those respective albums, but it's basically all still good.

All in all, my legs are tired from standing/being squished against the crowd, my neck and voice hurts from screaming/headbanging, and I'm fairly certain I got beer spilt on me thrice, but that was still one of the best shows I've ever been to.

P.S: I did see AC/DC recently too, but I was underwhelmed enough by their aging ability that I decided to forgo writing a review.

edited 27th Oct '15 11:55:00 PM by Alucard

Jonathan Richman. I don't know if I would have come to this show were it not taking place a block away from work and immediately after my shift ended, but I'm glad I did. I mostly know The Modern Lovers, alongside some stuff from one Greatest Hits Album and "I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar" via They Might Be Giants... So the only things I recognized were "Egyptian Reggae" and "Lesbian Bar"... But I was just charmed by the casual impromptu vibe of it all - he was only backed up by a drummer (with a small kit) and his own acoustic guitar, which meant he could (and frequently did) go off on tangents mid-song, or suddenly put down his guitar and dance or play a maraca, or just walk away from the microphone entirely while still singing or speaking.

I got to see Kamelot in Tampa, Florida Saturday night with Dragonforce. It was pretty awesome, given that I've been a fan of Kamelot since 2004. Some other shows I've been to:

• Godsmack and Metallica in San Francisco, 2003
• Ayria and Project Pitchfork in San Francisco in 2013
• System of a Down in Yerevan, Armenia on April 23 this year (that concert was magical, and happened to coincide with me volunteering in Armenia for six months)
• Voltaire, in Orlando, Florida, on Halloween of this year.

edited 14th Dec '15 10:58:41 PM by Surenity

I actually saw Kamelot live back in 2010 during their tour for Poetry For the Poisoned, back when Khan was still the vocalist. And I'm glad I had the chance, even though I have nothing against Karevik.

Wow, being at that Soa D concert must've been amazing! I saw them at the Amsterdam date of that same tour and was blown away by how good they were. And the setlist was brilliant.

edited 19th Dec '15 1:55:12 PM by Rvdz

The Go! Team. I was thinking about what bizarre Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly style description I would have to come up with if someone asked me what this band sounded like - something like "hip hop girl group noise pop cop show theme music". A really fun show - their albums seem to be all about exerting positive energy, and that definitely came across in their performance too. I missed too much of the first opener for them to make an impression... But the second opener, who goes by Glockabelle, had the perfect kind of eccentric style to fit in: Her facebook page has her genre listed as "i blast tiny casios // i wear thimbles // en français s'il vous plaît", and she did indeed play surf rock/new wave influenced music on Casio keyboards (backed only by drums), sing in French, and also performed a few instrumental numbers on glockenspiel with thimbles on her fingers. She also apparently brings a different giant stuffed tiger on stage every night as a "bassist", gives it a catchy, often-rhyming name (ours was Charlemagne Champagne), and raffles it off to those who buy her merch.

edited 22nd Jan '16 11:40:59 PM by MikeK

Checked out Glockabelle on Spotify, and I like what I'm hearing. Kind of a mixture of Battles and The Go! Team.

I went to see a duo a friend of mine belongs to, called Mplus.

It was allright. There were a couple of tunes which didn't mesh well with the rest of the set (then again, they've only released 1 EP and played a couple of songs which need to be finished properly), but they had the vocals and bass thing going. They remind me of certain Ladytron stuff, with a bit more emphasis on the 'erotic' side and a rock-y guitar sound on certain tunes, so to speak.

edited 20th Feb '16 6:12:48 PM by Quag15

Tomorrow I'm seeing The Duke Spirit for the third time, preparing for some rocking tunes. I ought to catch up on their latest stuff really...

In about a month I'm seeing The Raveonettes for the 2nd time, I do like them live but they tend to have so much distortion you lose some of the feeling of the songs. And in April I'm seeing Wolfmother, who I'd given up all hope of seeing so I'm very happy with that.

edited 23rd Feb '16 6:30:31 AM by Ulysses21

Coming in to post two reviews. Yes, two: I didn't expect Black Sabbath to reschedule to the same week that Disturbed was playing, but great weeks happen.

First Black Sabbath. What can I say about Sabbath after my last post on them back on Page 6? Maybe that sense of finality with the tour being called 'The End' managed to make things feel that much more epic.So 'epic' is a good word.

I started things by rushing to the merch booth after finding out they had a rarities CD called "The End" with 8 unreleased songs, only to find out it was signed by the band members and cost over $100 as a result of that fact (the collector in me weeps). Not to be discouraged from waiting in that line for that long, I grabbed an expensive shirt (and now I'm probably gonna starve this month). The Rival Sons opened, which was presumably appreciated by all the old men in the audience; I'm happy to see them get this much exposure. I thought they delivered well enough and I loved how well they did on Pressure and Time, Torture and Keep On Swinging, but I can't say the crowd was all that willing to expend much energy for them by standing up (they still got some great applause, from me included).

As for Sabbath, yes, they rocked the house. I feel maybe they could have pulled fewer songs from Paranoid, but I was enthralled by Fairies Wear Boots, so I guess those two things contradict each other (still would have been nice to hear something from Sabotage, Never Say Die or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath). Regarding setlist choice, I think 13 stands among their best works, and it bothered me to find out that for this tour the only song they included from it was God is Dead, which they didn't play here. But when you have a band with a catalogue like theirs, you're bound to have some setlist regrets.

The highlights included the aforementioned Fairies Wear Boots, their title song, Children of Grave, Into The Void, Paranoid, War Pigs, Iron Man, and N.I.B. The crowd went nuts for when Geezer played Bassically, and Tommy Clufetos transitioning from Rat Salad into his drum solo went over well (I've heard enough drum solos in my life, but I can safely say he did his job of not being Bill rather well). If this is truly the farewell concert, then it was plenty worthy of being the final time I ever see them.

Onto Disturbed.

I'm still sore/bruised from the mosh pit, but it was worth it. I'm still tired from standing first in line for about 4 hours in the rain, but it was worth it. My voice is still shot and I'm probably about to catch a cold, but holy hell was this worth it. I've never seen them play a venue that can't even fit 1,000 people, and from a perspective of pleasing as many people as possible they probably could have filled out a concert hall at least, but I don't think I'll ever get a show as intimate as this one with a band of their level at ticket prices this cheap. And that is irreplaceable.

Of course I knew all the songs: about 4 from The Sickness, 3 from Believe, 3 from Ten Thousand Fists, 2 from Indestructible, 1 from Asylum and 3 from Immortalized. I could live without hearing The Game for the umpteenth time, and I'd rather have seen Remnants and the title track represent Asylum over The Infection, but everything else fired on all cylinders. They transitioned from Darkness into The Sound of Silence to give people a break, and that went over really well. Their medley of Closer, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Baba O'Rily and Killing in the Name went great too, because seemingly everybody knew all the words to those songs too; for the last one, they got Elias Soriano from Nonpoint (who opened the show) to duet (and from his reaction, I'd guess a few people walked out of there Nonpoint fans). It's funny how that medley, in context with Land of Confusion and Sound of Silence might have made about 1/3 of the set into covers.

I suppose the song that got the smallest reaction was probably The Light, but I can't help loving how quirky that song is in terms of their discography (and I still find the lyrics uplifting). Highlights included Stupify, Prayer, Ten Thousand Fists, Inside the Fire, The Vengeful One, and of course Down with the Sickness (David noted there was one guy diagonally behind me who kept screaming DWTS the entire show, and simply said 'good things come to those who wait'... kinda like a metaphor for the concert itself).

You can imagine how pushy this particular crowd was: you don't play a city at a stadium level 6 years earlier and then come back from hiatus to play a small club without some restless fans waiting for you. Frankly I'm still amazed I kept my spot in the center of the crowd barrier the entire time (one of the security guys even told me that was impressive). I had Dan and John look my in the eye from how well I knew all the words, and at the end of the show Mike threw a signed drum skin like a Frisbee, that I somehow managed to catch.

So yeah. Totally worth it.

On another note, seeing two concerts in one week allowed me to prove something to myself: I have the vocal stamina to tour, because I followed both lead singers almost to a tee, and I can still sing passably well right now in my natural voice. I'm happy to know that.

edited 12th Mar '16 7:03:33 PM by Alucard

I recently saw Mac Sabbath, the fast-food-themed Black Sabbath parody/tribute band. My thoughts, pasted directly from my facebook status about it:

- The stage persona of "Ronald Osbourne" was somewhere between Ozzy and a bad standup comedian - In particular, he kept listing other, nonexistent food-themed bands (e.g. Cinnabon Jovi, Gwarby's, Dead Kennedenny's, International Bauhaus Of Pancakes).

- Intentionally or otherwise, his vocals kind of sound more like a fake-British Jello Biafra than Ozzy, which kind of works with the parody lyrics: They aren't just adding McDonald's references to Black Sabbath songs, they're satirizing consumerism and genetically modified food in a way Jello probably would approve of.

- Those McDonaldland mascots are trippy enough to begin with that it was kind of inevitable that someone would eventually come up with a Gwar-ish theatrical rock group based around them.

- Along with my burger tie, I was also given a Burger King crown by a random audience member, which I wore throughout the show. As a result a couple people wanted to take pictures with me. There was a Colonel Sanders in the crowd too, so I was not the only fast food traitor around.

edited 26th Mar '16 11:46:40 AM by MikeK

Saw Metal Church last night at their CD release show up in my neck of the woods (kinda, Manchester is about an hour from me). It was a free show because their label is based out of New Hampshire, and as a result, the place was PACKED. Can't really remember the opener; they weren't offensive or anything, just there. Hatchet was the touring support, and my feelings regarding them have not changed since I last saw them: a pedestrian Exodus clone with decent leadwork in the studio, pretty tight and energetic live. Metal Church, on the other hand... DAMN. Mike Howe is fifty years old but still sounds pretty much the same as he did back during his original run; those high notes gave him absolutely no problems and he was spot-on in general. Also of note was Chris Caffery filling in for Rick van Zandt; dude was nailing his parts and was even cool enough to launch into an impromptu solo while Kurdt was working out some technical issues. The band as a whole put on an absolutely fantastic show; my only real gripe stems from the omission of "Metal Church", "Gods of Wrath", and "Ton of Bricks", but it's understandable that they'd want to focus on Howe-era output. All in all, it was honestly the best show that I've seen this year so far (especially after all the shit that went down at Cannibal Corpse), and I really hope that they tour the US again sooner rather than later. Also, it must have been interesting for Caffery and Jeff Plate to be playing literally right down the hill (not even joking, it's pretty much a straight walk) from the Verizon Wireless Arena, which Trans-Siberian Orchestra hits almost every year.

edited 26th Mar '16 3:18:11 PM by HasturHasturHastur

I just saw Radiohead live, for the second time in two days. They were incredible. They played a lot of AMSP stuff live for the first time and a lot of old favorites. Plus, they played a different set each night, I love it when bands do that.

Here's the set for night 1 and for night 2

Duran Duran with Tokimonsta and Chic. This was a lot of fun - I was there for Duran Duran, but I probably had just as much fun watching Chic's set: As performers, Chic kind of only had a couple of hits someone who isn't a big disco fan could recognize ("Freak Out" and "Good Times"), but they managed to have a set packed with hits by including songs produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards or by Rodgers alone: Thus alongside material directly associated with the Chic name, they played things like "I'm Coming Out", "Let's Dance", and even "Get Lucky". Duran Duran themselves had an entertaining set that was mostly a mix of the hits and a few songs from their newest album, Paper Gods. The most surprising set choice for me was their 1995 Cover Version of "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" by Melle Mel - I was glad they included that one because it was the first song of theirs I heard and at the time it had completely given me the wrong impression of them being some sort of EMF-esque alternative rock/dance/hip hop group. Tokimonsta was enjoyable but maybe not the right fit for this lineup, being a DJ with a laptop rather than a full band - the audience was sitting the whole time for her set and afterwards I overheard an audience member saying "I could do that"... Which struck me as kind of a funny attitude to have at this of all shows, as I'm sure at the height of their popularity Duran Duran had people dismissing them as "not real musicians" because they used synthesizers. Lots of Duran Duran shirts, no Chic shirts and definitely no Tokimonsta shirts (which may not even exist anyway).

edited 18th Jul '16 8:23:16 PM by MikeK