The Live Music Thread

[Voltron]

You know I hate the band, right? I worked with them on and off for 5 years and collected a sizable amount of junk, but was never a fan.

Nope, but that does make the cake funnier to me

[thrice]

Just got back from the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss concert. In a word: superb.

It was great to get a chance to hear Robert Plant since I'm not old enough to have been around for Zeppelin.

The duets were awesome and the Raising Sand stuff was so good. Really fantastic.

But then.... a slow bluegrassy version of Black Dog. That's right, fucking Black Dog.... I damn near shit my pants until....

dudez...............

they sang the Battle of Evermore.

A small tear ran down our cheeks. Awesome show.

[ojnihs]

just got back from seeing Feist

[ojnihs]

and? i missed out on feist and st. vincent

sorry, had to take a shower first because it was so fucking hot.

great show. her live show was completely different from what i expected. every aspect of the show was extremely artistic. she had this projector, you know the ones your high school teachers used to use, that was projected on the screen behind her, and these two girls would use paint, puppets, and lights to basically act out several of the songs. they also used a black and white camera to show the hammers of the pianos striking the strings to some of the songs and also the bass drum pedal rhythmically hitting the drum. basically drew you into the music by showing you aspects of it that you wouldn't normally expect from a concert.

feist sounds the same live as she does on her albums, which was a treat. would have been better if people knew more of her songs than just the singles, but oh well, it was a really good show.

[Contrastique]

Neil Young @ Bospop Weert.

Wow, that was amazing! He's like a grandpa rockin' real hard (unbelievable the guy is 62 ) ! The way he hops around the stage is awesome to look at.

He played a lot of old stuff like from Harvest and it was not that he played a huge amount of tracks but they took soooo long..Each time you think it ended he threw in a solo followed by lyrics again followed by another solo. He just kept on going, absolutely brilliant!

My dad had the time of his life too. Cool to share that with him.

It was a long stand though..he had 3 support acts which started at 6 with Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses <---- pretty boring actually.. Followed by Everest <---it kept getting better and the last one were The Waterboys who were actually pretty cool. Neil started at 22:30 and played till 00:30, I hit the pillow at around 3.

During the support acts it rained pretty heavily, luckily we had raincoats and during Neil Young the sky opened up and we could see the stars

All in all, a really awesome day!!

[Voltron]

That sounds amazing, Indra. Nice day/night, indeed, especially if your dad is a Neil fan.

[Contrastique]

That sounds amazing, Indra. Nice day/night, indeed, especially if your dad is a Neil fan.

Yeah thanx, it was. My dad is a huge Neil fan; this was his first Young-live-gig, pretty cool. He showed me their music (C,S,N&Y) about 1 1/2 yrs ago and I didn't like it at first till I listened longer. I'm glad he has a good taste in music

[aerius]

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss. Alison is cute, really cute, and Plant looked like a vagrant off the streets.

[ilikebananafudge]

I saw Between The Buried & Me, Opeth, and Dream Theater play in Boston. It was an awesome show! I actually left halfway through Dream Theater, not such a big fan of them.

[tyrion]

Zappa Plays Zappa - great show! Highlights were Cosmik Debris, Joe's Garage and Fembot in a Wet T Shirt.

[humanflyz]

Saw Spiritualized last night at the 9:30 Club.

NPR has the complete set here.

[postjack]

Willie Nelson and BB King at The Wharf.

Willie was great of course because he's an amazing soul and impossible not to like. As far as BB goes: I'm not the biggest fan of straight blues, but when he hit those first notes, I knew immediately that this shit was real. Pure, honest, beautiful. He is of course a hell of a showman, and tells lots of stories. If anything I would like for him to have told LESS stories about ED medication and played MORE music. but he's 82 years old and is going to do whatever the hell he wants. At the end him and Willie did a couple of songs together (thrill is gone and nightlife) which was fun.

[humanflyz]

Aimee Mann last Saturday at the 9:30 club.

[guzziguy]

John Mellencamp last Wednesday at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

[hungrych]

Rock The Bells in Jones Beach NY.

Pharoahe Monch, Black Sheep, EPMD, Talib Kweli, Biz Markie, Consequence, Slick Rick, DJ Scratch, Busta Rhymes, and Jay-Z. And those were just the surprise guests.

Seriously, seeing Murs (and his hair), Dead Prez, De La Soul, Black Star, Rae & Ghost, Method Man & Redman, Nas (with fucking Jay-Z coming out of nowhere for a song),The Pharcyde, and A Tribe Called Quest (with Busta Rhymes making a surpise appearance for his furious verse on Scenario) all in one day was pretty fucking amazing.

[Absorbine_Sr]

Saw King Crimson on Friday night at Park West in Chicago. It was the final show of a three day stand, and it may have been one of the best Crimso shows I've ever seen. The new 5 piece configuration plays to the strengths of the old double-trio lineup without slipping into its excesses.

Also a very memorable night as we got to meet Sid Smith in front of the venue. Sid is the de facto chronicler of Crimson and his book "In the Court of King Crimson" is an excellent history of the band. He is traveling with them this tour and it was great to talk to him. Here's me on the left and Sid on the right. Spot the bald guy!!

And by the way, to show how badly folks want to see this band, the guys sitting down midway in the background were from Texas, and the guy standing right behind me flew in from Sao Paulo Brazil!!

So the music - awesome as usual. Stage set was Fripp on the left, Belew in the center, Levin on the right with Mastelotto and Harrison side by side on drum risers behind. And those two guys were the key to the sound. In the double-trio days when Pat & Bruford played it was good, but these two on this night were so powerful it was amazing. Several times during the night they were allowed to play on their own and it was just stunning. What seemed to be the case was that Gavin would play the intricate fill material while Pat was allowed to be just a total fucking animal. And the physical assault felt from the drumming was just great.

As for the others, Belew, as always was great - precise when called for but screaming feedback monster as well. Levin seemed to be a bit under-amped, at least from our balcony perch, but when I could hear him it was good old Tony. Welcome back mate!

And Fripp - well, what can you say? Fripp is Fripp. But he seems to be mellowing these days a bit. After an awesome "Talking Drum/Lark's Tongues Pt II" he was even seen to smile and cheer along with Belew. Very cool. They did one thing with Fripp's sound - small speakers were placed around the venue so during some of his playing it would actually surround the audience and move across the background. In some stuff it was interesting but for the most part distracting. May have been because we were close to a set of speakers so they tended to overshadow the playing of the others. Luckily it was used sparingly.

Also played were "Red", "Dinosaur", "ConstruKction of Light", "Thela Hun Ginjeet", "Discipline" and many others. All in all they played for two hours.

And afterward, Belew popped out to the back of the venue and I got to shake his hand and thank him for the years of great music. Finished off with an excellent meal in Chicago's Old Town district after the show, it was a night to remember.

[humanflyz]

Just came back from seeing Grizzly Bear at the Historic Sixth & I Synagogue in Downtown DC.

The band itself was pretty good live, and the sound is nice: it's a fairly "live" sounding environment, but the sound guy managed to take off a lot of the edge that you would normally get from a live room (so no sharp sibilants and too much reverb), but managed to make the band sound bigger than it actually is.

Now, the bad part: the set is fucking short! It started at 8:05 and ended at 8:40, with no encores! And to top it off, TicketMaster's surchages were about 70% of the original ticket.

[postjack]

Thanks for sharing Absorbine, sounds like an awesome night.

This past Saturday I saw Analog Missionary in Ocean Springs, MS. Show was at an old high school theatre, neat. Maybe a couple dozen folks in attendance. AM has lots of attractive attributes: cool redhead female lead singer with a theremin, amazing drummer who at one point played with his barehands, bassist constantly has two instruments strapped to himself, one of them is some kind of "bass sitar" (I don't know how else to describe it), and the guitarist also plays this weird clear banjo. Post-goth, progressive, early 90s alternative, whatever: the chick can fucking wail, the band can rock, and there were lots of belly dancers. Pure win, I'm happy to find this band playing in the South.

MySpace.com - Analog Missionary - NOLA/ATL/MOBILE - Progressive / Shoegaze / Gothic - www.myspace.com/analogmissionary

[hungrych]

Metal Masters Tour on sunday at the pnc bank whatever arena stadium thing.

Saw Motorhead, who suffered from pretty crappy sound (I'm not a huge fan so it wasn't a big deal), Heaven & Hell (which was pretty ridiculous, even more energetic than last year! But the set was too short!) and Judas Priest, who closed. Judas Priest is pretty high up there on my least favorite bands in the universe, but they do put on a good show. And I do like Electric Eye at least. Obviously I went for a dose of Dio, but I was really surprised by the sound quality of their set. I could actually hear the bass notes clearly!

[humanflyz]

The Hold Steady at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

Man, that was a fucking great show, one of the best I've ever attended: the band was energetic, and it was rocking all night long.

[ingwe]

Last Friday, Los Lonely Guys and Los Lobos at Ravinia in Winnetka, Illinois. Great show. Dave Mason joined Los Lobos for one song--All Along the Watchtower.

[Voltron]

JP#s and I attended Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi at the Masonic Auditorium, a couple weeks ago, and then tonight we saw Kenny Burrell and his octet at Yoshi's San Francisco. Derek was awesome, Susan played well and sang great, and Carlos Santana came out for a long jam in which he was weak and Derek smoked him unbelievably. Kenny Burrell has still got his chops and played some sweet guitar. His band was tight and had some standouts on drums, trombone, alto sax and bass. The 90 minute set was impinged upon by a washed up singer named Ernie Andrews who hammed it up for three way too long songs. It was great to see this legend but I would have liked some more focus on him and none of the ham-bone.

[Voltron]

Waiting for Weird Al Yankovich to start here at the county fair. My son and nephew -- aka White and Nerdy -- are stoked. Should be funny if nothing else.

[GPH]

I saw Judas Priest live this week at the Bell Centre. It was a pretty good show, but you can see they're getting older and more tired. Halford voice is far from what it used to be and the guy barely moves on stage anymore. Still, the visual effects were neat and the choice of tracks was good. The sound quality sucked hard, but it's always the same with arena shows. Overall, I enjoyed the night, and I'm happy to have seen them live for the first time, but I have to say the Metal Gods are approaching their end as far as I'm concerned.

[grawk]

Arena sound isnt' always bad, it's just always bad with incompetent sound engineers. Go to a Roger Waters concert to see how good arenas can sound.