The hardest you ever saw someone rock in a onesie: new 'live shows' thread

[ellaguru]

Off to see El-P/Killer Mike right this minute.

[fishjim]

Ooooooooooooooohhhhh

[edison]

I saw Bonnie "Prince" Billy in a house next to a lake and a small sandy beach in the Swiss countryside a couple of days ago; pretty much one of the nicest venues ever, I mean how nice is it to be able to drink beers in a lake ten minutes before the show? Speaking of which, when we made it back to the venue we noticed that an opener was announced and that the actual BPB show was pushed back to 10pm, which was a bit of a bummer. Except the opener turned out to be Bonnie "Prince" Billy and his band wearing sunglasses and matching outfits and playing an excellent, loose set of what I later understood to be Mekons covers. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs6vpedNRK0 (the band name was different the other day)

The actual Bonnie show was a complete triumph, starting with the new "I See A Darkness" and finishing with a wonderful encore of "Troublesome Houses" and "Three Questions". They played lots of recent stuff, mainly from Wonder Show - highlights included a rocking version of "Beware My Only Friend" and "One With The Birds", a song I had not even thought about in a few years.

Last week, I also went to see Bob Dylan in a German village in the middle of nowhere pretty much on a whim. That was the most wildly uneven of the shows of his I've seen, ranging between turgid auto-pilot ("Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" doesn't work at all as an opener) and sublime brilliance ("Tangled Up In Blue" (!), an unusually energetic "High Water"). Dylan now plays the grand piano on most of the songs; he was often very animated and looked positively giddy about half of the time, like a really happy kid.

[narlus]

Speaking of which, when we made it back to the venue we noticed that an opener was announced and that the actual BPB show was pushed back to 10pm, which was a bit of a bummer. Except the opener turned out to be Bonnie "Prince" Billy and his band wearing sunglasses and matching outfits and playing an excellent, loose set of what I later understood to be Mekons covers. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs6vpedNRK0 (the band name was different the other day)

that totally rules.

[edison]

Saw Giant Giant Sand on a hot and sweaty German night. My friend and I continued what appears to be a tradition of having dinner next to the band (not on purpose, I swear!) before the show in that city - it took me two minutes to realize that Howe Gelb and co. were sitting at the table right next to us on the terrace when I ordered pizza in a restaurant about 500m away from the venue (the same thing happened with Centro-Matic last time around, albeit in a completely different restaurant).

The sound for opener Brian Lopez and his band (which consisted in half of Giant Giant Sand) was pretty worryingly bad, but even though there was no tweaking whatsoever between sets, things got better during the main part of the evening, a 2-hour showcase of a 12-piece Danish-American version of the band, including a baby(!) strapped to his violonist mother for almost the entire duration - she even contributed comically well-timed screams to "We Don't Play Tonight". The set consisted for the most part in almost the entire new album in a different order, plus a few covers ("Porque Te Vas", "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis) and a few newer songs - nothing from the back catalogue at all - and the proceedings rolled along nicely, with things getting more and more intense until they ended the main set with "Carinito", at which point you couldn't say the atmosphere was very different from a Calexico concert. It was a very joyful, celebratory sound overall, with instrumental prowess galore, but I especially liked the amount of singing and vocal harmonizing that was going on, since all the different singers involved in the record were there.

[howardfinkel]

that BPB show seems so awesome 

[fishjim]

Speaking of which, when we made it back to the venue we noticed that an opener was announced and that the actual BPB show was pushed back to 10pm, which was a bit of a bummer. Except the opener turned out to be Bonnie "Prince" Billy and his band wearing sunglasses and matching outfits and playing an excellent, loose set of what I later understood to be Mekons covers. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs6vpedNRK0 (the band name was different the other day)

that totally rules.

edison, I'm FB friends with Jon Langford so I posted this graf to his wall (didn't credit you, just said it was from a friend in a music forum) and he loved it. Shared it himself and got about 20 likes.

[edison]

Excellent! I'm pretty sure they know each other, since BPB talks about singing with the Mekons once in his recent book of interviews with Alan Licht...

[narlus]

and Will's written a song called "For The Mekons Et Al"


i wish Giant Giant Sand would play near me. hell, I'll take Giant Sand, or even a solo Howe show.

[narlus]

the other night, i saw Madonna and Sunn O))).

talk about extremes.

[fishjim]

the other night, i saw Madonna and Sunn O))).

talk about extremes.

OOOOOOO    !!!!!!!!!!

[narlus]

the other night, i saw Madonna and Sunn O))).

talk about extremes.

OOOOOOO    !!!!!!!!!!

 

[lucky strike]

the other night, i saw Madonna and Sunn O))).

talk about extremes.

what the fuck? same show?

[lucky strike]

no, lucky strike, the world is not perfect

[narlus]

although the Quietus wanted us to believe that
http://thequietus.com/articles/02104-madonna-collaborates-with-sunn-o-in-manchester

[distance]

show's from 3 months ago, but i finally got around to transferring/uploading the tape

http://archive.org/details/mogwai2012-06-10.ccm4.flac16

probably one of my best mogwai recordings.

[davy]

So...the Fiona Apple show in Houston should be interesting tonight, seeing as how she's been in a bordertown jail cell for about 36 hours.

[Captain]

So...the Fiona Apple show in Houston should be interesting tonight, seeing as how she's been in a bordertown jail cell for about 36 hours.

Yeah, why did this even happen anyways? Given Ms. Apple's caliber of star power, shouldn't it be someone else's job to be carrying?

[davy]

She voluntarily claimed responsibility, is what I read.

[Captain]

No shit. Fiona Apple: not afraid to take the fall for the team.

[narlus]

put these people in the 'slayed all who were watching' camp, from ATP this past weekend:

The Magic Band
The Roots
Thee Oh Sees
Lee Ranaldo
Godspeed You Black Emperor (put that ! wherever the fuck you want to)
Hot Snakes
Emeralds
The Psychic Paramount


but especially, The Dirty Three



good in doses were:
Charles Bradley
Frank Ocean
Lightning Bolt
Afghan Whigs
Endless Boogie
Scrawl
The Make-Up

[jebreject]

Okay so I highly recommend seeing Lil' B perform live if you get the chance