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English Beat @ Tupelo 12-15-2010

[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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Infected Mushroom, Paradise Boston

Infected Mushroom just lied to my face, and made me walk out. I just paid $50 to watch people pretend to make music. It was insulting to the audience, and I can only hope they feel like complete frauds, though I doubt it.

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Joe Buck Yourself - 4/14/2010

Tonight we got to see Joe Buck Yourself at the Brick House in Dover, NH. This show was the biggest coincidence ever. We first saw Joe Buck playing bass with Hank III at the Roxy, and it killed us, and cost me a toenail. I have been waiting to see him solo ever since.

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Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

[music | Killing Joke - Tension]

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Gutter's Redemption

-- Update: Seeing the reaction this has generated is driving me to demand one of these for all upcoming concerts, get ready Natalie.

Last week we got to see George Clinton at the House of Blues. Thanks to HoB policy of a rectal exam for every male customer, I have no photos of this event, which is why Natalie whipped out the following illustration:

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Dinosaur Jr at the Middle East

An evening with the Anti-Edge

I've seen The Edge from U2 saying that notes are sacred, and that they should not be wasted, and he certainly takes that philosophy to the hoop. J Mascis takes the contrary view. Prior to tonight's show, people were telling me it will be the loudest thing I've ever been to. Definitely not, but it is up there. My boots are still tied though, and that was in the same room, standing in the same place in front of the same stack of loudspeakers...

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U2 at Gillette Stadium, Foxboro MA, 9/21/2009

It's probably about time Natalie and I went to a big arena show, and so we did...

The reason I never was that into arena shows is the distance and lack of intimacy, never mind the multi-hundred dollar seats. However Natalie scored at the last minute by noticing $50 general adm. tix opened up and snatched them up on the spot. Apparently, there are a few "levels" of GA. There's "on the field", then "Red Zone", which I gather you pay a lot more for, and then there was some inner circle deal.

The trick with the inner circle was that it was guarded by a bunch of security passing people through. Had we not gotten the scoop that anyone with GA is allowed in, we never would have approached, because it looked "Exclusive". The Inner Circle held like a couple thousand fans and got you to within a couple of feet of the stage.

At that point, the only difference between this and any other show was that the stage was like 8' high. We took our spots 3 rows from the stage and laid in wait.

All in all, the show was great. We were close enough we didn't feel like we were watching TV from the stands. This was easily the biggest show I'd ever been to, previously it was probably "anything in a hockey arena", so NIN, Tool, that kind of thing. I think I'll take stadium shows much more seriously now, assuming we can get down close in and not spend a fortune to do it. Thanks U2 for making a show I wanted to see, even with 80,000 other fans.

Here are some of my favorite pictures, here's the Flickr set:

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Alice in Chains, Paradise Boston 9/7/2009

[music | Leonard Cohen - Don't Go Home With Your Hardon]

Yep, Alice in Chains (!) at the Paradise (!!)

I can't believe how incredibly lucky we were with this show! I'll get to the show, the luck actually started earlier. We rolled down Comm. Ave around 6:10 or so, and apparently, seems like this was move-in weekend at BU, at least, there was lots of "moving in" looking activity. AND there was a show at the Agganis Arena as well. Luckily they opened up the lot to general parking for the low low price of $25 (generally street parking is pretty easy to find, but with this triple hit, it wasn't to be).

So we slid into Brown Sugar for some of the fastest Thai food ever. Love that place, needs to be hotter :-)

We ended up making it in line just before doors, but wow was it a line. We didn't get in until 7:30, and by that time I thought I was fucked, with no good photo spots left available. Getting inside, that looked like the case, until we went all the way stage-left where there were some road cases and not much else. They had taken over the whole area at stage right for mixing desk and guitar tech stuff, so you couldn't reach the balcony from there, it was a bit of an odd setup. This is when I noticed there was also a barrier 3' out from the stage, which was unexpected. Maybe this was the better spot after all? I remembered from the Lupo's show a few years ago that Jerry was at stage-left for that one, so that's why I wanted to angle that way to begin with.

Turned out I was in the absolute perfect spot to shoot from tonight. The sound was fantastic, the crowd was perfect. Way better than most any Boston audience you get I guess. I've never lived anywhere else, but from what I understand, artists roll through Boston and the audiences are all too jaded and hanging around and not seeming into shows. Not tonight, not even a little. Everyone sang every word to every song, it was great.

At one point, Jerry Cantrell tried to hand a pick to someone and took a mean header off the stage into the 3' gated security area dealy. Got back up, miraculously, found a mike, and just said "Bitch cursed us this morning" (it might have been Duvall that said this, I don't think so). Evidently Mistress Carrie (Mistress Yoko?) jinxed the band by asking them if they'd fallen off stage in an interview this morning, they said it hadn't happened in some time, now BAM. Har.

I have to say I enjoyed this even more than the Lupo's show, if that's even possible, probably just due to my proximity. I got more energy from the band, and crowd, than I have in a long time.

Toward the end, the road cases I was camped out on became stage runway, so suddenly I was gathering up my stuff and joining the staff in holding the cases tight for Jerry and William so no one else took a spill. They were incredibly interactive with the audience and it was great to see how happy a band can look when they seem to be really having fun.

Here's the setlist as it was handed to me, looks totally accurate:

Rain When I Die
Again
Check My Brain
Them Bones
Dam That River
A Looking In View
We Die Young
Nutshell
Down in a Hole
God Am
Acid Bubble
Angry Chair
Man in the Box
Would?

Encores:
Sludge Factory
No Excuses
Rooster

And here's some of my favorites out of the dozens and dozens of pictures I got. Many more at Flickr, many more than that on my machine. Clicky Biggy:

PICTURES!

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Pretenders, Cat Power and Jackie Jorp-Jomp, Hampton Beach Casino - 8/8/2009

--There were no cameras allowed tonight, so instead I live-blogged the first two sets from my phone, and kept a setlist for the Pretenders set--

Unnatural Born Singer
Why do I keep going places when I know Juliette Lewis is going to be there?

Just because someone can act like Janis Joplin and be a screaming disheveled trainwreck on stage does not give one the artistic cache to make people buy you as a musician. Juliette Lewis just strikes me as an actor acting like a musician they like.

Jackie Jorp-Jomp indeed

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Depeche Mode - Mansfield, MA 7/31/2009

[music | Eddie Murphy & Rick James - Party all the Time]

Twenty years ago, my boss saw Depeche Mode at Great Woods, with Nitzer Ebb opening. Last night I thought that that must have been the show to see. An archived Globe article tells me I'm wrong. Nitzer Ebb would have made a much better opener than Peter, Bjorn and John, though. PB&J just pretty much annoyed us. The best part of their set was my SMS conversation about it. ("they're playing "Party all the Time", swear to god". "Hey, they're doing the Jitterbug into my brain". "PB&J (HAH) are doing Erasure covers".) before it devolved into Scandinavian bands that should have been on the stage instead. "Hey, at least the Ace of Base girl was stacked, the PB&J guy is kind of doughy, but it's just not the same".

Update: My copypasta review at Last.fm has gotten a couple of comments which made a really good point. Looking back it looks like we didn't enjoy or somehow regretted this show. Negative, it was awesome, it could have sounded better, and I'm willing to accept that it might have been our position in the venue. Let me know if you were in the middle and it sounded great to you. I still have high hopes for the CD!

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