Music

Lou Barlow laments this summer concert season (Middle East, Cambridge)

Have a look at a generous sampling of shows coming up this summer. We are currently only booked for 2 shows, only one of which isn't a reunion. We have Bad Brains coming up on Monday, and Rodrigo Y Gabriela some time in the next couple of weeks.

Here's what it looks like:

[music | Misfits - Hollywood Babylon]

[Also-music | Elvis Presley - Blue Suede Shoes]

[music | Big Black - Grinder]

This was a whole show of constant highlights. I got to hear Jeff Beck play Train Kept A-Rollin' for fuck's sake. That's pretty high on the list of impossible things that can never happen. The show was really like watching Marty McFly invade the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance. An excellent rockabilly band, and then this monster guitar hero comes in and changes the future.

[music | Th' Legendary Shack Shakers - Bullfrog Blues]

We saw a rather short show with Wanda Jackson at the Royale last night. Unfortunately she has been playing pretty much a show a day for the last couple of weeks, and her voice was pretty well shot. The audience still loved her though, even though it was a shortened set, and it seems they're going to work out another date as a make-up show. Chances are good that whatever date they pick we'll either be out of town or have another show booked, we will see though!

[music | DEVO - I'm A Potato]
I don't have time to write much tonight, but I wanted to post some pictures

Tonight we saw the English Beat for the second time at the same venue, Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry. I've got kind of mixed feelings on the venue, since it's a pretty chill atmosphere with a BYOB policy, but they had chairs, for a dancy fun band, again.

In any case the band was great and after a couple of songs the crowd really started getting into it, as much as we could with the chairs around. They're going to be doing a couple more local shows, one at another Tupelo location in White River Jct. VT, and then back at the Londonderry location for New Years, which I may go to, depending on whether friends go.

Musically they're still really tight and really interact well with the crowd. The best quote, after Dave polished off a container of coconut milk:

"They can make wine out of it. And it's a fruit, just like the tomato. 53 years and I still can't get the fucking hang of this planet..."

Here are some photos from the show, not that great, but I was back 11 rows, and was bouncing around, click them to view at Flickr:

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