Sound-checked, plugged in, and ready to rock (bands you saw)

[davy]

Another thing about Japandroids: their more groove/riff-based songs--especially "Crazy/Forever"--really translated well to the stage, as they were excellent excuses to bang heads.

[monkeypants]

I, on the other hand, was not at the Japandroids show, but I did see Shonen Knife last night.   I'd say I was surprised that there weren't more people there (far less than 100, probably no more than 50), but then again I was surprised to learn that they were even still together (albeit with only one original member) and touring, so what do I know.   Suffice it to say, though, that Shonen Knife still bring the rock and looked like they were having a great time.  I left with a big goofy grin on my face, in a much better mood than when I walked in.  Long live the Knife.

[davy]

Last night's show could have used more heckling.

I wouldn't have wanted to hurt their feelings! I already felt bad enough for failing to come through for Brian when his guitar strap came undone. I can't believe those chodes in the front just stood there watching him struggle with it for 3+ minutes. I eventually started making my way up on stage, but I got like a dozen evil eyes and then it looked like he was on top of it, so I retreated. But then he couldn't quite fix it and I was really ashamed after the song when he said "Next time that happens, somebody help me!"

[Maaik]

Oh yeah, I rarely think mean-spirited heckling is called for, but I really think that funny heckling that gets a banter going back and forth between band and audience is usually a boon.  And yes: always help the musicians if you can (picking mic stands back up, reattaching cymbal hardware etc.)

[YojimboMonkey]

I think the best heckling I ever saw was when this local band pinebender was playing and the lead singer was talking after the first song and a guy in the audience loudly said "You guys are really handsome!!" and the singer kind of blushed, it was pretty hilarious.

[Maaik]

I like making a band introduce themselves if they've forgotten to do so.  Like if there's been no "Hi, we're ______ from ______" by the third song, just asking loudly "hey, who are you guys?"

[donblood]

I already felt bad enough for failing to come through for Brian when his guitar strap came undone.

Dude, between this and the wingnut-reattaching you're the best kind of audience member.  That rules.

[davy]

But I could dance more.

[mountmccabe]

So I saw Bob Dylan Saturday night at the Arizona State Fair.  The show started at 7 pm sharp, with no openers. 

Dylan didn't talk too much other than introducing the band before the final song of the main set.

The crowd was rather ridiculous, as was expected.  The sound actually was fairly good, which was not expected.

These're the songs he played.

1. Cat's In The Well
2. Lay, Lady, Lay
3. I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
4. Beyond Here Lies Nothin'
5. Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
6. Love Sick
7. If You Ever Go To Houston
8. Highway 61 Revisited
9. Workingman's Blues #2
10. Thunder On The Mountain
11. Ballad Of A Thin Man
12. Like A Rolling Stone
13. Jolene
14. All Along The Watchtower

And, here's the thing: I fully enjoyed the show (subtracting out the crowd influence.)  I did not expect this, really. 

I had not seen Dylan before but I had heard many stories.  He doesn't play his hits.  He doesn't play enough of his old songs in general.  When he does they are unrecognizable, with different melodies and rhythms.  His voice is awful.

I was expecting an almost Jandekesque performance.  I was expecting impressionistic portraits of his songs that were challenging and fresh.  I was an idiot.  I was projecting. If I had made those complaints I would be making them from an entirely different point of view... I was attaching serious weight when in fact nothing beyond standard every concert complaints were meant.

His band sounded really good.  Dylan's voice started out a little craggy (I was asked "when did Dylan become Tom Waits?") but he settled down a little and sounded perfectly Dylanesque.

Also "Workingman Blues #2" may've been the highlight of the show, from a musical standpoint, even if "Highway 61 Revisited" would've won on a "ooh, songs I know and love" standpoint.

So yeah.  Dylan live is, really, like anybody else live.  Except that it is Bob Dylan up there and he and his band play songs recorded by Bob Dylan.  Highly recommended.

[narlus]

did he play any guitar?

[mountmccabe]

On a couple songs.

[edison]

Thanks for the report! Jealous about "Love Sick" and "Ballad Of A Thin Man" - he's had some great setlists this leg of the tour and even played "Not Dark Yet" and "Cold Irons Bound" a few times, which I would kill to see.
As far as I can tell from seeing him three times in the past few years Dylan is always great live but 80% of people leave going "boo-hoo, he didn't play any acoustic guitar", or "I didn't recognize any of the songs" or something like that.

[edison]

I should point out that you got some of the old/famous songs that he plays more or less straight, but others are regularly more radically reworked (case in point: the version of "Blowin' In The Wind" he played on the European leg of the tour).

My short report on the Strasbourg show's here, btw: http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com/forums/index.php/topic,11475.msg582777.html#msg582777

[narlus]

review/photos from Sunday's Echo and the Bunnymen show @ a ~200 ppl capacity club:
http://www.onafriday.com/archives/2009/10/photos-echo-and-the-bunnymen-great-scott-set-2-setlist.html






other photos taken from my friend Julian:
http://www.onafriday.com/archives/2009/10/photos-echo-and-the-bunnymen-great-scott.html

[Andrew_TSKS]

Wow, those dudes look old.

[narlus]

they are old. 

Echo & the Bunnymen are an English post-punk group, formed in Liverpool in 1978

hell, that's over 30 years ago. 


youth is wasted on the young.  or those w/o access to HGH.

[Andrew_TSKS]

I mean, on some level I understand that Echo And The Bunnymen are 50 year old dudes now, but the difference between my mental picture of how they look and how they actually look is a bit jarring.

[narlus]

I mean, on some level I understand that Echo And The Bunnymen are 50 year old dudes now, but the difference between my mental picture of how they look and how they actually look is a bit jarring.

which is why a lot of older bands specify photos taken from the soundboard.

[Nick Ink]

I think they look cool. McCulloch is a bit fat, but that's just nature's way of paying him back for being such an arse. Will always looked about 50 anyway. At least Defreitas is forever young.

More to the point, that's a fanfuckingtastic setlist - such a lot of early material.

[Maaik]

the one-two punch of Hawks and Future of the Left may have just destroyed me, y'all.

Hawks' singer stole liberally from Iggy Pop and David Yow's frontman playbook, complete with audience molestation, set-climbing and brief nudity.  And it was one of the most exciting shows I've seen in a long long time.  And I think I hurt my neck.  They recorded the whole thing, presumably for some album or somesuch.  There were also a few videocameras going too, so hopefully soon that mayhem will start making the rounds.  Show climax was the singer, long since down to his little black briefs, clambering atop the drummers shoulders to cling to the pipes and beams above the stage.  Oh yeah, my neck is definitely hurt.

Future of the Left were almost immediately confronted with Super Drunk Mclusky Fangirl in front of me, whose pestering for the old songs was just a prologue.  She waited a few songs before stumbling onstage during "Manchasm," dancing, groping at the mic and tangling Falcous' pedal setup.  Some pretty funny banter followed, and we in the front attempted to tug her back for the rest of the set.  Still, she managed to knock over a monitor a couple times.  All in good fun, and she wasn't as vocal as the dude next to me, who got into kind of a slurred yelping match with the bassist as they tried begin "adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood."  Reason: he was yelling for them to play "'adeadenemyalwayssmellsgood' motherfuckers".

All good-natured and the band seemed to have a good (or at least interesting) time up there.  The end of the set devolved (evolved?) into fucking noise as the bassist handed his instrument off to some guy in the crowd before being hoisted above our heads as Falcous took a drumstick contemplatively to his guitar and the drummer dismantled his kit even as he played.  Deposited back onstage, the bassist leapt to the keyboard and joined in the noisemaking, handing me (!!!) a mic for a chorus of "Mamma-say-mamma-saw-ma-maafsdldfkljdfkljnusas."

I've got a hot towel on my neck and a cat in my lap and I'm going to bed now.

[davy]

Well, that was the first time I've seen Erin McKeown, and I've gotta say it was an absolute pleasure. I wasn't in the best frame of mind for show-going--I've been sick, I was thinking it was tomorrow, I was ready to watch The Wire all night, etc etc--but within a few songs she'd won me over entirely and I found myself grinning ear to ear and loving the fact that I'd decided to come, and that she'd decided to stop in Athens.

The show didn't get off to all that promising a start, though. She was playing at The Melting Point, perhaps Athens' nicest venue, a big cavernous brick-walled room with a balcony and a patio and a restaurant, and there were only about two dozen people there. I was shocked. I knew something was wrong when I was able to get a parking spot right outside the doors. I thought she must've canceled or something. But nope, fifteen minutes to ten, there she is, hopping up on stage and picking up her guitar. Empty tables and chairs everywhere. I felt so bad for her! It didn't help matters that she was so insistent on crowd participation--there was no one to hide behind, so everyone felt exposed and nervous. She also seemed somewhat vulnerable at first, up there all by herself.

But then, miraculously, about three or four songs into her set, the uneasiness melted away into something close and intimate and joyous. Her manner on stage was impeccable--clever, cute, friendly, talkative, totally comfortable. Her voice was clear as a bell, a gorgeous sound, and her guitar playing was far more impressive than I've ever given her credit for. (She even cranked out a 1-string bass solo at one point that had the crowd hooting.) She's just a hell of a performer and that's all there is to it. Eventually, the give-and-take with the audience got a little easier, a little more robust, and the crowd swelled to about 30 folks. Erin switched from guitar to keyboard and played a lot from the new record. It sounded great. Playing the tunes all by herself really set the music free--she was able to stretch the pauses and play with the timing and personalize her delivery. She was in total control of the songs, in total control of her audience. I was sitting at a table by myself, but I felt like I was part of something. She had me laughing, she had me mesmerized, she had me with a lump in my throat. At one point, she asked if there was anything she could play for anybody. About four or five people (including me) shouted out song titles. She played all of them. I asked for "Beautiful (I Guess)" and she played it first, basically sang the entire song just to me. Normally, I'd guess I would be unnerved by all that eye-contact, but this was something special. She played the song with a slinky little groove that's absent from the studio version, and it was just wonderful. A couple of the other requests were for songs on We Will Become Like Birds, which really pleased me. "You Were Right About Everything" was a particular highlight.

On a few of the songs, she asked her opening act, Trina Hamlin, to come on stage and play keys or harmonica. It was always improvised, but they sounded great together.



Guys, damn, it was just a great, great time. I'm sure she wished the crowd was bigger, but she never let on that she was disappointed. She took the opportunity to connect.

You know, every once in a while you see a show that reminds you why you go see shows in the first place.

[mountmccabe]

That sounds just wonderful.

I feel like there should be hugging

[narlus]

Metalocalypse tour (

my review

[narlus]

i saw Wooden Shjips last week...caught a bit of the opening band too, Ghost Box Observatory.  kind of a crap name, but their sound was excellent, slightly woozy shoegazish w/ enough backbone to rock when it had two.  twin fenders (either jags or jazzmasters), SG bass, keyboards and a great drummer.  he used to be in Lockgroove.  i will be on the lookout for songs from them...nothing yet but the bass player said they are recording in a couple of months.

this was the Shjips 1st visit to boston...i saw a few of their songs @ ATP/NY 2008 and i've always dug their SF via Köln variation on psych/kraut rock.  they played in near absolute darkness (PA's has crap lighting to begin with, but they killed all the stage lighting and just had a single ~15W orange ceiling light overheard going, and i didn't feel that using flash was the right decision, so i kept my gear in my bag and enjoyed the show.

they opened w/ an older song (it might have been 'we ask you to ride'), the one where the drummer plays maracas w/ one hand and hits his ultra-minimal kit (no toms) w/ his other.  the bass player really drove the drone/trance with his insistent cyclical riffage; very little variation but that's ok...that's what the keyboard and guitar are for. 

though i love the song, their cover of 'vampire blues' is just ok at best.  i'd have preferred to have them cover/record 'revolution blues.'

i didn't stick around to watch Sunburned since i'll be seeing them tonight w/ Corsano/Flowers.

[mountmccabe]

though i love the song, their cover of 'vampire blues' is just ok at best.  i'd have preferred to have them cover/record 'revolution blues.'

I saw the Waco Brothers play their cover of "Revolution Blues" a couple Saturdays ago.  I had not heard their recorded (or live for that matter) take on it - way faster, mostly - before and it took me by surprise.  Took me a bit to even realize what they were doing.  Their "20th Century Boy" was more fitting, I think.