Photos

OH: "Nick Cave is my second favorite Australian."

— Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) March 25, 2013

That was a Plate o' Shrimp, as it was on top of my feed as I was uploading tonight's photos.

It's too late for me to think and write well, so this is the Short Version today. This is the third time we've seen Nick Cave, and I have to say it was definitely his best sounding show. Not to say that he ever sounds bad, but he was off the wall tonight. Even he said it's the first time in a while he did Red Right Hand in tune, and The Weeping Song was dead on accurate.

Just to think that only four years ago I never thought I'd ever get to see him, and here we are three shows in, and excellent every time. Cave is full-on constant energy from start to finish all the time, these are consistently among my favorite shows, and I'm very glad I finally was in a position to take some photos.

Sharon Van Etten opened, and she was great. Reminded me of Hope Sandoval a lot, or Beth Orton, Juliana Hatfield maybe? Anyway she was good, go buy her record.

I hope that whoever lost the iPhone I handed in gets it back quickly. People really need to PIN lock this shit, I'm constantly surprised by those who don't.

Sampling of photos from the Flickr set:

Sharon Van Etten opened:

Go Here:Read an interview with Boots Riley, by old friend and excellent writer Tom Andes. -- @The Rumpus

A very happy confluence of events led me to lie to Chris Portugal at The Coup / People Under the Stairs show. The first thing that had to happen was that the original venue for People Under the Stairs had to be unprepared to open. That venue is the Sinclair in Cambridge. It's apparently still not open as they're shuffling shows to TT's and the Royale.

We just walked in from seeing Mike Watt & The Missingmen at the Brighton Music Hall. The latest in our unintentional Punk Rock Legends series, so this is brief.

This blistering set was all of the album Hyphenated-man, which we do not yet own, but will tomorrow. It was pretty much beat poety, jazzy, hardcore rolled up in 2 minute songs.

Watt was looking a little worse for wear from his 2010 knee injury. I'm not surprised, because when we saw him with Iggy Pop (and The Neighborhoods!), just a few weeks after he hurt it, he was in a full immobilizer, and had to get on stage with crutches. Once on stage with a bass in his hands, he proceeded to run around and jump all over the place as if it hadn't happened. He looks like he's feeling it more now, which I know from experience really sucks.

One of the best bits was this cover of Machine Gun by Jimi Hendrix during the encore. This version has better vocal audio than we heard, if I find video of tonight's show, I'll replace this Iowa footage:

Here are the photos, they're not great, because the Brighton Music Hall isn't the brightest lit place in the world, but got some good ones:

The Jesus and Mary Chain were a somewhat disappointing and listless live show. They really, for the most part, just seemed like they wished they were somewhere else. I don't know if that means "In front of a different crowd, on a better day", or "At home not having to slog it out on the road 20 years later in front of a middle-aged crowd of people who don't choke down pills anymore".

Overall it sounded all right, though there were many false starts that I would not have expected at this point in their tour and careers. I guess there are some times bands just don't gel with their audience, and this was one. Hopefully other cities had a better experience.

These guys really are a favorite band of mine and I hope they were more together for other crowds, don't like, not go see them, it's probably worth the gamble.

We really did both enjoy The Vandelles as an opener. They were pretty much super fun, wardrobe malfunctions not withstanding :-) Their name and style aside, they really were more of an early '90s band than Another Rockabilly Band, check them out.

I did get some photos, here they are:

I really do like a good zip tie job: