live music

2023 Concerts

· January 2, 2024 · Musings · , , , , , , , · No Comments

Going to start off 2024 with a couple of 2023 reviews. Not a stupid ranking of my best or anything, just my usual concert review and, later this week, the results of the twelfth annual Camptathalon.

Unfortunately, I only attended two concerts this year, so my concert review might be a bit sparse. Fortunately, one of those concerts had three bands.

Stevie Nicks

I didn’t see Stevie Nicks this year. 

I intended to. Unfortunately, we had a couple of last minute cancellations. First on her part, then on mine.

The first aborted attempt came in March, when Stevie Nicks canceled a week or two in advance for health reasons. Wife and I had babysitting all lined up for the makeup date in December until Daughter did her best impression of the Exorcist the night before. Figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to sick (literally) the projectile vomiter on grandma, so we sold the tickets the morning of the show.

Meh. We’ll see her next time. Even if I’ve had fifty years worth of chances to see her and she already had to reschedule the majority of this tour for health reasons. Old musicians tour till the end of time.

Speaking of which, we contemplated seeing Jimmy Buffett in May, but skipped it. I’m sure we’ll catch him next time he comes through… what was that? He won’t be touring anymore?

Hmmm….

Concert #1: 990s Redux

One of my local Indian Casinos (How are we not calling them Native Casinos or Indigenous Casinos yet? Indian Casino is still the preferred nomenclature? If you say so) opened a fancy new concert venue. See if you can spot the trend in the acts they’re booking: Air Supply, Kenny Loggins, Gladys Knight, Rod Stewart. 

That’s right: Fans with Disposable Income! 

My concert lineup? The Spin Doctors, Big Head Todd & the Monsters, and Blues Traveler.

When I invited my friend, he asked if there might be better uses for the time machine I’d obviously found. An asinine statement, because if it was 1994, these guys would all be headlining, not opening for each other.

Gin Blossoms were also in town the same night, playing the state fair. Some bookie is doing a terrible job, because every single person in attendance at one of those concerts would absolutely attend the other if they weren’t on the same night. 

Before the concert started, one of the background songs was “No Rain,” by Blind Melon and I thought, “Wait, are they one of the bands we’re seeing tonight?” Turns out they weren’t making a surprise appearance. They were probably at Gin Blossoms.

Spin Doctors

Weirdly enough, this was the draw of the concert. I’ve seen Blues Traveler and Big Head Todd countless times, often performing with each other. Never seen Spin Doctors. Hell, I didn’t even know they still existed as a band or as living humans.

Turns out they are, in fact, alive. But the first thought I had when they came out on stage was, “Damn, how’d that guy get so old?”

I was kinda expecting the same shaggy hippie dude with the oragnish-brownish beard from 1992. Dude had, Gasp!, white hair. 

No, I’m not looking in the mirror, why do you ask?

They started their concert with “What Time is It?” The song answers the title question with the time 4:30 and the rejoinder, “It’s not late, nah, it’s early.” When written, that was presumed to by 4:30 in the morning after a night of partying. Now that we’re all north of 45, the lyrics seem to refer to the early bird special at Denny’s. 

They were promoting a new album, because of course they were. Doubt I’ll run out and buy it.

I learned that “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” was not about a jilted love interest, but a step-mom that his dad had finally dumped when he was a teenager. Go listen to the lyrics again. Totally makes sense.

Other than that, they were pretty standard opening band fare. Other than the fact that I knew all the songs. Minus the new songs. 

Now that I think of it, they played no songs from in between their popular album and their new album. Kinda think they might’ve taken most of the last thirty years off.

Big Head Todd and the Monsters

I’ve seen Big Head Todd many times. In fact, they might actually be the band I’ve seen the second most. At worst, they’re in third place.

I’ve never really set out to see Big Head Todd. I don’t own any of their albums. I don’t check their tour dates.

That being said, I’ve always enjoyed them. If I see they’re on to a tour, my response is usually, “Oh, hey, Big Head Todd. I like those guys.”

So as long as fandom doesn’t require something like knowing a band’s songs, I’d say I’m a Big Head Todd fan. Let’s see, there’s “Bittersweet.” Oh yeah, and “Broken Hearted Savior” (although if you were to have told me that song was the Goo Goo Dolls, I wouldn’t have argued the point). And then there’s… um, well… Did I mention “Bittersweet?”

Well no more, dammit. Since this concert, I’ve asked Alexa to play songs by Big Head Todd and the Monsters (the last word of which she says with a Boston accent) at least… seven or eight times.

Damn, they’re good. They play a variety of different styles, mostly rooted in blues but with heavy influences from other genres. And Big Head Todd himself abso-fucking-lutely shreds on guitar. His solos were not too short, not too long, and energetic to the extreme. 

By the second song of the night, I was in full, “Yeah, this is what I feel like every time I see them!” It was a cover of John Lee Hooker’s “Boom Boom.” Not much to that song, really. It’s a whole bunch of “Boom, boom, boom, boom”s and “Bang, bang, bang, bang”s in front of that one riff from every George Thorogood song. 

You wouldn’t think a guy other than John Lee Hooker, or maybe George Thorogood, could own that song, but holy crap, Big Head Todd made it his bitch. There’s something about finding fifty different ways to sing the same four words over and over. I think my favorite was when he just said “Ooooo” while rolling his finger over his adam’s apple. Right before shredding out a couple of solos. 

It probably doesn’t hurt my enjoyment that these dudes dressed exactly like me. Todd wore a Hawaiian shirt while his bass player wore a Baseballism t-shirt. It’s like they’re parallel universe versions of me, where I focused my formative years developing musical talent instead of the propensity to snark on an anonymous blog. 

I wasn’t connecting with the keyboardist, though. He never smiled. It’s not like he was frowning, not upset or concentrating. He just stared off into space a lot as if  unaware that he was showing up in the background of most of the camera shots on a huge Jumbotron. Since the concert, I’ve found other videos online where he’s got the same disinterested look. Somebody must’ve told him by now, right?

Aside from the keyboardist, however, the rest of the band seemed to be having a blast. Todd is grinning from ear to ear during most of his songs. The only time his demeanor changed was when he was singing the soulful songs, because you can’t be someone’s broken-hearted savior if you look like you just hit a walk-off grand slam.

Seriously, these guys are having way too much fun for having been at this for thirty years. I certainly don’t approach my classroom with the googly eyes of a twenty-something anymore. Meanwhile, Big Head Todd kinda stole the show. 

One minor quibble: They played a fun song about Annie Oakley’s husband called “Don’t Kill Me Tonight (over something I might’ve said this morning).” Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be recorded anywhere. Their last album came out in 2017 and their website says nothing about anything forthcoming. Meaning for the foreseeable future, the only place I can hear that song are crappy audience videos from other concerts, none of which seem to capture the fun energy I associated with it. I know bands make zilch on albums these days, but come on, people. I want high quality stuff that I will listen to for free.

Other than that, I loved these guys. 

Just like all the other times. 

Hopefully I’ll remember that this time. 

Blues Traveler

It might take some mental gymnastics through compartmentalized memories to figure out if Big Head Todd are the band I’ve seen the second most. There’s no question whatsoever about which band I’ve seen the most. I can’t say precisely how many times, but it’s for sure double digits. 

Pretty sure I’ve even written about previous concerts once or twice on this blog, so instead I’ll focus on what made this concert different than some of the others. 

Last time I saw Blues Traveler was at the state fair. At the time, I mentioned that John Popper’s harmonica, while as fast as it’s ever been, didn’t have the force and drive that it had in his (and my) youth. I opined that his losing the weight, while doing a bang-up job of keeping him alive, might have hurt his harmonica-blowing ability. 

Glad to say I stand corrected. The acoustics at the Indian Casino are substantially better than at the state fair. Who woulda guessed? The mouth harp was powerful and piercing. 

Then again, he seemed to be growing a bit of a gut back. Not an unhealthy Jabba girth like he was known for in the 1990s, but a “Dude, I’m in my sixties, what the fuck do you expect” gut. And I’ve seen him at plenty of outdoor festivals and been fine with his harmonica before. So who knows why his harmonica was a little lackluster a decade ago. But I’m happy to report it was kick-ass this past summer. 

The other thing that sounded much closer to the Blues Traveler concerts of my youth was the open-ended jams. Vegas casinos aren’t known for letting their concerts drag on. The concerts are only booked to get you on the premises. Once you’re there, they don’t want you wasting time listening to music. I guess the state fair runs a tight schedule, too. The fireworks have to go off at a certain time and that funnel cake ain’t gonna eat itself, so the bands get eighty-five minutes and not a second more. 

The Indian Casinos don’t seem to mind, though, so Blues Traveler returned to their roots as a jam band. There were two or three times throughout the concert when John Popper completely left the stage. And not just to grab a quick swig of water or anything. I mean, he left for a good five minutes while either the guitar player or keyboardist or drummer, or some amalgamation thereof, jammed by themselves. 

As such, Blues Traveler was on the stage for close to two hours but only played about ten songs. Big Head Todd, meanwhile, was on for half the time but managed to fit in 15 songs.

I kinda forgot this was even their thing in the first place. Considering how music is consumed these days, it’s not like I’m throwing a live albums into the cd player anymore. I ask Alexa or Pandora or Spotify to shuffle songs by them and similar artists. 

The crowd reactions to these extended solos has changed since all of us were twenty-five. One of my favorite concert statements ever was when some random dude walked up to me at a festival and said, “I hope these ‘shrooms last as long as that last solo.”

Now most of the attendees were fifty-somethings who finished their second beer sometime during Spin Doctors and, dammit, have to get up in the morning.  A few people left the first time Popper left the stage and a fair number more the second time. When they finished their set at damn near 11:15 pm, the exodus was on long before the encore. 

Then they started said encore with a ZZ Top cover instead of one of their own damn songs. 

Learn from Big Head Todd and play those covers early. 

Concert #2: Ed Sheeran

My second concert of the year was a little-known redhead crooner from East Anglia. 

What? The guy who sings “Thinking of You” is multi-platinum? Was Rick Astley unavailable?

Wife, back when she was still Fiancée or maybe even just Girlfriend, gave me one set of instructions: If Ed Sheeran ever toured the United States again, I must take her. It took a decade or more, but he totally made up for it by scheduling his Northern California show near our anniversary. I referred to this year as the “Ginger Anniversary.” 

As a bonus, the tickets went on sale right before Christmas last year, so I got credit for both Christmas and anniversary in one gift. 

Notice I didn’t say “for the price of one.” If you add in parking, this concert should get credit for the next five birthdays, too.

We saw him at Levi Stadium, home of the 49ers, which is next to an amusement park. Evidently they close said amusement park on the days of 49er games, but not for concerts, so we paid $70 to park at a nearby college and walk about a half-mile. You’d think the powers-that-be would know that concerts sell more tickets than football games, because you can’t sell field seats to a football game. 

It’s why I found it odd when Ed Sheeran announced that he’d set the record for most tickets ever sold to a Levi Stadium event. “Even the Super Bowl,” he said.

We all know he really meant Taylor Swift. 

Not saying Ed Sheeran’s more popular than Taylor Swift, just that he has a smaller stage. Because, much like the Super Bowl, a sell-out is a sell-out is a sell-out. It’s all just a matter of how many seats there are to sell.

Speaking of Taylor Swift, while I didn’t endure that particular grandiosity this year (fortunate for my sanity, perhaps unfortunate for my blog traffic), when I heard about the songs she sang, it was mostly songs I had heard of. Some Taylor Swift songs I might not know the name of, but when someone says “You know that song, it’s the one that goes…” I realize that yeah, I guess I do recognize them as playing in the background somewhere.

I kind of assumed Ed Sheeran would be the same. Even if I could only positively identify three or four of his songs (and only half of those by name), I assumed I’d at least be able to recognize half the concert by osmosis. 

Not so much. I knew more songs at Big Head Todd.

At least I was decked out like a true fan. Ed Sheeran sponsors one of my favorite (minor league) soccer teams. Whereas the fancy Premiere League teams have sponsors like Samsung and Adidas and various airlines, in the minor leagues, they just emblazon somebody’s tour plans on the front of their jersey. I know you’re not supposed to wear shirts from the band’s previous tour at a concert. But what are the rules regarding sports jerseys featuring the current tour? Answer: I’m still not sure, because nobody seemed to notice that I was repping Ed Sheeran’s favorite soccer team. They probably just wondered where I got the concert tee that was slightly different than all the other concert tees.

I must not’ve been the only Sheeran noob at the concert. He started the concert saying he was going to play songs off all his albums. Some for the casual fans, but a lot for the big fans. “And if you just got dragged here, you’re in for a long two and a half hours.”

At one point, he introduced a song that he wrote for another artist while he was “taking time off” between albums. Finally, I figured I wouldn’t be the only one who didn’t know the song. Nope. Everyone else was singing along. I found out later it was a Justin Bieber song, so I’m not too disappointed that I didn’t know it.

About ninety minutes into the concert, he finally played “Photograph,” the first song I could positively identify. He introduced that song with “If you don’t know this next song, you’re definitely at the wrong concert. Even your grandma knows this one.” That tells you how among my peeps I was. 

One doesn’t hear comments like that at a Blues Traveler concert, although I’ve gotta think more people get dragged to obscure bands because it’s harder to find another fan. Like last year when I accompanied my friend to Airborne Toxic Event. 

It seems to have the opposite effect, though. Paradoxically, the more obscure a band is, the greater percentage of the audience knows the ins and outs of their entire catalog. Now I wonder how many of those record Taylor Swift crowds spent the entire concert watching a ballgame on their phones.

Which is not to say that’s what I was doing. On the contrary, the music geek in me was astounded. 

One-man bands should be at a circus, not filling football stadiums. And make no mistake, Ed Sheeran is a one man band.

I didn’t realize that at first, primarily because he had a band out on stage with him. Instead, I thought him the most arrogant musician of all time. Check out the set-up of the stage. 

You’ll see he’s on the rotating stage in the middle. All of his backing musicians are on islands far removed from people’s attention. Sheesh, dude. I’ve seen Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, you name it. They all put the band on stage with them. Seemed kind of a dick move to keep the stage all to yourself. I bet even Taylor Swift acknowledges that her songs have bass lines.

After the first song, the band left their individual stages and Ed Sheeran was all by himself. But in song two, background music was still coming through. Wow, now he isn’t even letting them be seen. If I wanted to listen to some pre-recorded shit, I could’ve taken Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert. 

(Bonus points to Wife for taking Daughter to the Kidz Bop concert)

After that second song (first without the band), Ed Sheeran stopped to explain what he was doing. Everything was live. He had a series of pedals on the floor that basically worked as an 8-track machine. So he’d depress a pedal on the floor and beat his hand on his acoustic guitar for an eight-count. When he took his foot off the pedal, that recording would repeat over and over, thus becoming the drum beat for the upcoming song.

Then he’d lay down a bass riff. Not on a bass, just using the bottom two strings on his guitar. Then maybe a chord progression to fill in the rhythm guitar, although sometimes he played the rhythm guitar live. 

The most amazing tracks he laid down were the backing vocals. While I didn’t know the song at the time, I’ve since learned the name is “Don’t.” That four-part “ah, ah-ah, ah-ah-ah, ah” going through the song is all him. He’d keep playing the track over and over, adding a higher harmonic each time, until it sounded like a full choir behind him.

Look, I’m not saying I’m shocked at this technological innovation. Billy Joel sang all the parts in “For the Longest Time,” even though it sounds like he’s got a full a capella troop behind him. Bobby McFerrin recorded an entire album with no instruments other than his own body. And yes, I’m fully aware the Beatles were never in the same room at the same time while recording one of the most cohesive albums of all time. 

But here’s the difference. Bobby McFerrin wasn’t mixing that fucker on a stage in front of 70,000 fans who paid top dollar. When Billy Joel performs his song in concert, he’s got back-up singers. The Beatles stopped touring halfway into their career because they wouldn’t be able to play their new songs live. Ed Sheeran’s doing it all live.

And the mixing didn’t stop once he started playing the song. Because nobody wants to listen to a song that has the same four-note bass riff for five minutes straight. If you’re at a regular concert, some musicians drop out for part of each song, either because it’s written that way or they need to drag on a cigarette. You know that part in every concert when all the instruments except one suddenly cut out and then the tambourine player starts clapping their hands above their head to encourage the audience to try to keep the beat, even though the audience is  notoriously bad at keeping said rhythm once the band players stop their direct instruction?

Well, Ed Sheeran kept all those facets by stepping on and off the various pedals while running around the stage at full speed. He steps on two pedals and the bass and drums cut out. By the time he’s done with his guitar solo or eight bars of crooning, he’s moved to the next set of pedals and the bass comes back in. He does the “Clap along” instructions to the crowd while he’s walking to the next set of pedals and, magically, the drums come back in. Since he’s got the pedals at five different spots on the stage, he’s continually mixing in and out sounds behind his live music and singing. But, again, it’s all him.

So yeah, consider me a convert. Not that I’ve listened to a ton of his music since the concert, although there has been a time or two I’ve heard a song (like “Don’t”) and thought, “Wait, where have I heard that before?” Oh right, I saw it mixed live.

At a football stadium.

Ed Sheeran Addendum

Ed Sheeran’s opening act was a guy named Russ. He was… interesting. Couldn’t really decide if he was rap or r&b. But considering the number of f-bombs he dropped, probably the former. 

He started his act by flipping off the entire audience. Like for the whole damn song. I think he was trying to flip off “the haters” or whatever, because the name of the song was either “Fuck That” or “Fuck Them,” but the effect was that those birds were flying straight at the stands. And he left that middle finger up the whole song as he walked all the way around the circular stage. 

Ironically, after that song, he broke into a whole “So happy to be here.” At multiple times, he talked about following your dreams and believing in yourself because nobody ever believed in him and he used to play little shithole locations. “But now I’m playing at a fucking football stadium in front of 70,000 people!”

Um, dude, we’re not here to see you. Maybe you should go back to flipping people off.

My students, by the way, knew who Russ was. They were appalled that I a) had never heard of him, b) had gone to one of his concerts to see someone other than him, and c) was less than enamored with his performance.

Ed Sheeran Addendum #2

Both Ed Sheeran and Russ (and a third opening act I forgot the name of) kept referring to the stadium location as Santa Clara. Technically, this is true. 

But Santa Clara is a suburb. None of us are from Santa Clara. And nobody has ever been “so happy to be here in Santa Clara.”

Just say San Francisco. Or maybe San Jose. Hell, you could say Bay Area or Northern California and get a more accurate reflection of the attendees. None of us are going to cheer for Santa Clara. Even people not from the city proper usually consider themselves from the metro area associated with it. 

The first opening act was actually wearing a 49ers jersey. 

Guess what: They ain’t the Santa Clara 49ers.

2022 Concert Review

· January 6, 2023 · Musings · , , , , , · No Comments

‘Tis the season to review concerts
Fa la la la laaa, la la la la
It is cold, my nipples are pert
Fa la la la laa, la la la la
Billy Joel and Lake Street Dive
Fa la la, la la la, la la la
And a band I’d never heard of before.

Damn, am I supposed to rhyme the last line, too? If I swapped the music groups in the third verse, maybe I could say I saw the band in Sacramento. Does Sacramento rhyme with Billy Joel? No? Damn, music is hard. It’s a good thing I leave it to the professionals.

And for the first time since 2019, I saw some of those professionals do their thing this year. So I guess it’s time for me to write a year-end review, which was once upon a time a bit of a tradition on this here blog. Hopefully this post won’t be the equivalent of jamming myself back into work pants.

I’ve already made oblique references to all three concerts, mainly about the experience of going. First, back in April, I wrote about the strange concept of attending a concert at all, and how I was sure I’d be contracting the ‘Rona any day now. Turns out I probably caught it at a concert in June, instead. 

That concert was Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden, which I also blogged about because we got the magical Billy Joel upgrade from the nosebleeds to the front row. After that, honestly, who gives a fuck if the concert is terrible?

Not that it was terrible. Just saying that if the entire concert was him taking a giant dump at center stage, I would still give it four-and-a-half stars based on the vantage point. 

So sure, let’s start with Billy Joel. I mean, what can one say about a Billy Joel concert? I highly doubt anyone’s here to figure out what he’s like in concert. He’s been doing it for fifty years. Hel, he used to have hair when he was on stage!

I saw Billy Joel way back in college, when the River of Dreams tour came to an arena in Oakland that no longer exists. But damn, I saw some good concerts there. Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, Tom Petty. And, back in 1993, or maybe 1994, I saw one William Joel. Turns out my future wife was also there at that show. Who woulda guessed? We sat much closer to each other in 2022 than in the 1993(4?) show. 

I just checked, and it turns out the Oakland Arena is still there. But the Warriors left for San Francisco, so what’s the point?

Billy Joel is only doing one show a month, so he doesn’t have that “middle of tour” fatigue you sometimes get with the bands, having little clue what city they’re in from day to day. When I saw Joe Cocker in Oakland, he was solid, but a few years later I saw him at a winery on the last night of an eighteen month world tour. He could not WAIT to get off that stage. Living on the West Coast, we often get the tail end of tours.

The nicest thing about Billy Joel only doing one show a month is that it’s not a predictable setlist. He delves beyond his singles. The night we saw him, he went for deep cuts like “Zanzibar” and “Vienna.”

Then again, his playlist is my only, minor, gripe. The others I was with got all the songs they wanted to hear, but I didn’t get mine. Daughter’s favorite Billy Joel Song is “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song).” That came up about halfway through the concert. Wife was hoping for “Vienna,” which also came early. She doubled down on “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” which came up near the end of the concert. She threw down for the trifecta requesting “We Didn’t Start the Fire” while we were applauding for the encore (a ritual we had to explain to Daughter – “No, the concert isn’t really over. No, it’s not halftime. The assholes just hold back their best songs.”). Guess what he opened the encore with?

Daughter also got “Piano Man.” But that doesn’t count, because even if he doesn’t feel compelled to play his greatest hits, there’s no way Billy Joel doesn’t play “Piano Man.”

Still, if you’re doing the math, that’s five straight requests for the two of them. Wife also loves “Downeaster Alexa,” another deep cut he played.

But could the asshole play “Keeping the Faith” for me? Just one teeny song? Evidently that’s too much to ask.

But yeah, the concert was great. He seems happy, which I know isn’t always the case with him. His glaucoma looks pretty bad, an odd mixture of lazy eye with additional glassiness, exacerbated by being up on a Jumbotron. Hard enough to figure out which eye to look at when they aren’t twenty feet apart from each other.

I know we went to see him in New York, but I found it odd when he brought a couple Rangers out with the assumption that we’d know them. I follow hockey a bit, nut I had no friggin’ clue who these dudes were. For all I know, they ride the bench. Maybe they’re water boys. But I had to clap as if these were the love children of Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. 

It reminded me of the time I saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra. All concert long they talked about an extra special guest star joining them on stage later. A musical legend, they claimed. Someone they were awed to share a stage with. BB King, I was thinking? Stevie Wonder? Clapton? Turns out it was somebody who played in the band Yes. Sure, I like “Owner of a Lonely Heart” as much as the next ’80s kid, but as a general rule, if you have to tell us which band he played for, he ain’t a rock legend. 

Same goes for “if you have to tell us what team they play for,” Billy.  I get that he’s THE New York guy. And we traveled all the way to New York to see him. But the whole point of him playing Madison Square Garden every month is to make it a destination. He ain’t coming to see us, so we’ve gotta go see him, meaning a lot of us in the audience are from out of state. We’re fine listening to “New York State of Mind,” but if you’re going to bust out a local athlete, it better be Aaron Judge.

From one end of the spectrum, a music legend playing to a packed arena, to another. My first concert of the year was a band I’d never heard of.

Seeing bands I’ve never heard of before isn’t my normal m.o., but my friend had tickets from a canceled pandemic show. The second ticket was supposed to go to his son, who now didn’t want to see a mid-week concert on account of him now having a child and a full-time job. 

Besides, I hadn’t been to a concert in a few years. Gotta ease back into it, y’know? What if, my first concert back, it’s, like, my favorite band, but I forgot how to enjoy it? The Beatles, for one night only, but I left before the encore and never heard “Hey, Jude.”

So yeah, if you want to know what songs Airborne Toxic Event played or didn’t play, I can’t tell you. I could look up the setlist for you, but it wouldn’t do much good. I don’t know which songs sounded similar to the album versions and which ones they improved on. The only thing I can comment on is lots of violin.

Or viola, according to my friend. It looked like a damn violin to me. If it was in the south, they would’ve called it a fiddle, and I’m pretty sure they don’t call violas fiddles. Maybe next time I see Airborne Toxic Event, it should be in Texas.

My lasting impressions of the concert were the backlighting on the viola player whenever she did a solo was totally reminiscent of Poindexter doing his rock violin (yes, an actual violin) during the Revenge of the Nerds concert. And the bass player totally looked like Razor Ramon. Not bad for a band of whippersnappers to give this old guy not one, but two, 1980s references.

It almost makes up for having a standing-room-only concert. Almost, but not quite. Cause fifty-year-old calves and knees weren’t made for five hours of standing in the same spot. At least I wasn’t one of the people who passed out. Now that I mention it, those guys were youngsters. Maybe they haven’t gone through the groomsman “flex your knees” training. Then again, one of those pass-outers was just drunk. Us oldies know how to hold our booze. Or else we’re muttering, “What the hell does the beer cost? Boy, back in my day it only cost a nickel.”

(Nickel being a five-dollar bill in this case)

But yeah, in case it wasn’t clear, the concert was good. The band interacted great with the crowd, who were totally into it. But it wasn’t good enough for me to look up any of their songs in the intervening nine months.

Then there was Lake Street Dive. They’re one of my new favorite bands and, as an extra bonus, they are my Daughter’s absolute favorite band. Lots of pandemic days were wiled away with Alexa shuffling through their catalog. As a bonus, we were seeing them in Boston, home of  the actual Lake Street, where they were founded. Unfortunately, the dive bar that became the basis of their name has gone out of business. 

In retrospect, perhaps seeing them in their hometown wasn’t the best plan.

You know how fans who have been with the band since the beginning hate all those johnny-come-latelies who go to the bathroom when the classics get played? 

Well, now I’m one of those new fans. Even worse, I’m seeing them with the old fans who made them a thing. During the concert, the band talked about playing in those dives and how great it felt to come back and play the bigger venues. Many fans in the crowd nodded along. Then they turned and punched me in the face.

Okay, maybe not. But in spirt.

Right before the concert start, somebody saw my daughter, decked out (really, swimming) in her very first concert tee. She asked Daughter if she was excited to see the show. Yep. Favorite band, first concert, all the way from California, yada, yada. She left out the whole “front row at Billy Joel two nights ago,” thankfully, or the Lake Street mob might’ve tarred and feather us. 

Then the lady asked the password question. “Who’s your favorite, Rachael or a Bridget?” 

Daughter froze.

Perhaps I should explain for the uninitiated. Two women front Lake Street Dive, and it’s Blair vs Jo all over again. Rachael Price is the lead singer, while Bridget Kearney is the bass player. Sure, the others in the band write a good number of the songs and play their own instruments as well. But it seems to be, mostly, the Rachael and Bridget show. Bridget plays an upright bass, which is pretty bad-ass for a pop/rock band and Rachael has a voice that should not exist in nature, especially not in a blonde thirty-something from, am I reading that right, Australia? But raised in Tennessee. Close your eyes and you’ll think you’re listening to the love child of Idina Manzel and Macy Gray, who happened to steal the soul from Shirley Bassey on the way out of the fallopian tubes.

Lots of same-sex love children today, but you get the meaning.

The two ladies’ personalities, or perhaps their personas, match their role in the band. A lead signer is flamboyant, a bass player the steady bedrock. Rachael is every bit the diva, wearing extravagant outfits, exhibiting elegant curls that must take the better part of a day to make look so effortless. Bridget is down-to-tacks business, her hair often in a yeoman’s ponytail. Scratch that, a side pony, which is the name of one of their best songs and albums. Rachael doesn’t even sport a side pony on the cover of the album Side Pony. Bridget does. I feel like Rachael’s hair would demand a United Nations investigation if it were placed in the same general vicinity as a scrunchie. 

Daughter wasn’t sure how to respond to the Rachael or Bridget question. In the Mean Girls world of second and third grade, friendship is a zero sum game. If she chooses one, that’s tantamount to saying she hates the other. Just like the kid she played with yesterday, and will play with again tomorrow, but who is playing with someone else today. Might as well be Russia and Ukraine for the next 24 hours. 

Finally, with a little coaxing from me, she opted for Rachael. Shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out. She had a pink strip in her hair before she even turned eight years old. A lead singer if I’ve ever met one. 

I, of course, am Team Bridget all the way. And yeah, I was always a Jo-boy in Facts of Life, too. 

There’s some cool YouTube videos of people hearing the band for the first time. Everybody’s absolutely floored by Rachael’s voice. Voice coaches are at a loss to explain how she does what she does. It’s refreshing, and the refresher I sometimes need after listening to her rendition of “Rich Girl” for the 1000th time that it is anything but rote. But then I get annoyed that none of those first-timers are sufficiently in awe of Bridget’s bass playing. It fucking slaps! 

Good thing I was never around to join the McDuck part of the civil war.

Being one of those rat-bastard new fans, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about McDuck, the original guitarist, leaving. Twenty years from now, some of those old guard will bust out their McDuck shirts to shove all our faces in the fact that they were here first. Like when I throwdown with the other history teachers at my school that I remember referring to Mondale and Ferraro as “Fritz and Tits,” something that doesn’t show up in the history books.

McDuck leaving sure seems like poor timing, with the band on the verge of hitting it big. After all, I discovered them in 2020, ergo nobody had ever heard of them before then. Except maybe people in Boston.

Okay, fine, you want proof that I’m the barometer of the entire nation? “Hypotheticals,” my gateway drug song at the beginning of the pandemic, peaked at #2 for adult alternative. Then McDuck left.  

Maybe the hitting it big was the thing that made him leave. Maybe he was all in for the regional shows but didn’t want to do the forever tour that’s become standard for musicians these days. Used to be you could record a new album and live off the residuals. Nowadays musicians only make money when they go on tour. I wonder if the post-1966 Beatles could survive these days. They’d probably just sell their music to commercials a lot earlier. Mr. Socialist John Lennon was nothing if not a chaser of every dollar bill in existence. Imagine no possessions… because I have them all.

Therein lies my problem with joining this band late. I don’t know if McDuck leaving is the equivalent of (to keep the Beatles metaphor going) Stuart Sutcliffe, who left voluntarily because he didn’t want to keep playing gigs, or Pete Best, who was dumped to bring in a better musician. Maybe the concert in Boston was the new Ringo’s debut. And I had no idea.

As for the actual concert, it was great. Even better, after the Billy Joel fiasco, I got my favorite songs, but Wife didn’t. Daughter got the pick of the litter once again, with “Hypotheticals” being the second song of the concert. My number one request, “Good Kisser,” showed up near the end. Wife didn’t get “Call Off Your Dogs.” Too bad, so sad. 

At least she was prepared for this eventuality, based on the concert setlists leading up to this one. I have a love/hate relationship with those online setlists. It’s nice to have an idea of what songs they’ll be playing and, more importantly, skipping. Had I prepared myself for no “Keeping the Faith,” I wouldn’t have missed it as much. Or at least I wouldn’t have listed it as the song I wanted to hear so Wife and Daughter could mock me for its absence. 

But, I don’t know, didn’t that used to be the fun of going to concerts? It seems so formulaic when I can look at your setlist from last night and know I’m getting the same songs in the same order. I know they have to practice and it would be difficult and confusing to change up the order every night. It’s not like Billy Joel just decided the songs that morning. He just has the benefit of a month passing between each show, so he can make each one distinct.

Some artists think they’re switching up the setlist by moving two songs. It’ll be, like the second song of the night Saturday, but the second song of the encore the next night. And the other fifteen songs are all in the same spot. I guess that gives it a different flavor from night to night, but meh. 

In fact, this Lake Street Dive concert rearranged four or five songs from the night before. And honestly, I think I would’ve liked the previous night’s finale.

Much like Rachael vs Bridget, there seem to be two distinct flavors of Lake Street Dive songs. They go soulful or poppy. The soulful seems to be the basis of their YouTube fame. From at least three “first time reactions” to Rachael’s voice on “What I’m Doing Here” to the jazzy, half-speed rendition (think the difference in the two Beatles’ versions of “Revolution”) of Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back,” performed live on a random Boston sidewalk, complete with Bridget’s stand-up bass. 

And don’t get me wrong. I love the jazzy. If, after discovering the band via “Hypotheticals” and “Know That I Know,” I had looked up their catalog to find a slew of songs sounding like “Hypotheticals” and “Know That I Know,” I don’t know if they would’ve been on constant Alexa rotation, thus making them Daughter’s favorite band and an impetus for a cross-country trip. A band I’ve recently discovered, the 502s, had a similarly infectious first song. And while I like more of their songs, they have a specific style that I can only listen to for a few songs at a time. 

Shuffle a Lake Street Dive playlist, on the other hand, and you’ll go from ballads to pop to hard-edged rhythm & blues. I love it all. 

Except during an encore.

Their last two songs going into the break were “Bad Self Portraits” and “Good Kisser,” two absolute bangers, the last of which I would’ve been sweating about if I hadn’t already seen it on the previous night’s setlist. When they came back on stage, they did “You Go Down Smooth,” another one that shows off Rachael’s range and Bridget’s driving bass. Three songs in a row, riling up the crowd and building momentum. Interestingly, the night before they had played the same three songs with a swapped order, with “You Go Down Smooth” leading into “Good Kisser,” then finishing the concert with “Bad Self Portraits.”

Yes, they closed out the song with a screecher the night before. The ballad, a snoozer called “Sarah,” was the first song of the encore, not the final song. 

So when they started the encore with “You Go Down Smooth,” I was a little worried. Surely they couldn’t do the ballad last, could they? Maybe Wife will actually get “Call Off Your Dogs,” even if they haven’t played it all year. 

No such luck. Maybe they felt safe among the True Fans or maybe they thought the ballads are what we really wanted. So they left us on a low note. Turns out it wasn’t even “Sarah,” but a song called “My Speed,” which I wasn’t even aware of until I just went back and checked the setlist. The YouTube version of that song has 80,000 views, as opposed to “Good Kisser,” which has 2.6 million. “Call Off Your Dogs,” a song they don’t play anymore, has 1.5 million. Not saying video views should dictate setlists, but if you’re hoping to direct us toward one of your lesser-known songs, maybe do it in the middle of the concert. 

And yeah, I once waxed poetic about Jimmy Buffett ending his concert with an acoustic ballad. But that was a different situation. He came out with the whole band and played an energetic encore. Everyone did their bows and left the stage, but Jimmy lingered. He played the last song by himself, acoustic guitar in his lap, legs dangling off the edge of the stage. 

The concert was over, he was playing us off. A digestiv, not a dessert. 

Also, that song was “He Went to Paris.” Okay, maybe it was “A Pirate Looks at Forty.” Heck, it coulda been “Son of a Son of a Sailor.” Whichever one of his ballads it was, it’s from his greatest hits. Way more than 80,000 views.

My point is, if you’re going personal for the finale, it’s gotta be personal to all of us.

Props to them for swinging for the fences, though. 

Too bad those types of swings often result in strikeouts.

That being said, you better be damn sure I’ll be seeing them again, multiple times. Often with Daughter in tow.

Excellent fucking band.

And if they add “Call Off Your Dogs,” Wife might join me, too. 

First Concert of the 2020s

· May 14, 2022 · Musings · , , , , , · One Comment

After more than two years away, I ventured into a super-spreader event.

Sorry, I meant a concert. Damn you, autocorrect!

Trust me, I’ve been to plenty of super-spreaders. Most of them included forty-five hormonal teenagers thinking their masks are supposed to go on their chin, not live music.

Oddly enough, the hormonal teenagers are STILL wearing masks around their chins, even after the mask mandate expired. I guess it’s the new version of wearing conservative clothes when you leave the house then going full goth. Their parents think they’re wearing the masks. But if that’s the case, why not put it in your pocket when you get to school?

Sorry. Concert. Right. A friend of mine texted me on a Monday night, asking if I wanted to go to a concert two days later. Seeing as the ticket said 7:00 show, I thought that sounded like a capital idea. I should be home by, what, 9:30? 10:00 at the latest.

Midnight?!?

Turns out the doors opened at 7:00. And they had this thing called a, what was it, opening band? I guess I’m out of practice.

In addition to getting my sea legs back, this was a band I didn’t know many songs from. I had heard of them, and when I checked YouTube, I recognized a few of the songs, so it’s not like I was totally flying blind. But it turns out there’s a difference between being marginally aware of a band’s songs and knowing (and singing along to) every fucking lyric, which described roughly every other human being in the place. It felt really awkward when the lead singer pointed at us to finish the chorus and all I could do was mouth some bullshit. Reminded me of the Apostle’s Creed back in my Catholic days. Did I miss the week when Catechism covered the Airborne Toxic Event?

That was the name of the band we saw, by the way. The Airborne Toxic Event. With special guest Mondo Cozmo. In case you’ve forgotten, as I clearly had, “special guest” means opening act. That band goes on at 8:00, not the 7:00 printed on the ticket, and the band you’re there to see, or that your friend is dragging you to see, won’t be on for another ninety minutes.

My friend invited me because his son, who was the original owner of the extra ticket, had dutifully cleared a night in June of 2020, not April of 2022. He might have been able to make the makeup date March of 2021, but hat didn’t happen, either. In the intervening two years, he’d dropped out of college, had a kid, and started working construction. He (perhaps wisely) didn’t want to attend a late concert then wake up for work the next day. Instead, his twenty-year-old ass makes the two pushing-fifty guys do the late night thing. What am I missing here? Isn’t that what being twenty is all about? I remember overnight trips to Reno (without a hotel) that ended with me getting home just long enough to shower and head into work with no sleep.

Then again, I didn’t have a toddler till I was forty.

Or maybe April, 2022

The concert was almost pushed off again. The week prior to our show, they had to cancel another thrice-rescheduled show in Southern California because somebody on their bus tested positive. Fortunately, he got the negative test before the Sacramento show.

Are the 2020s maybe not the best time for a band named “The Airborne Toxic Event?” If any new Covid cases are traced back to their concert, the headlines might become confusing.

The venue they were playing was one I’d always been curious to attend, which helped counteract my reluctance to miss sleep. It caters to bands that don’t cater to people my age. Bands with names like Goth After Dark or Dub Stars or Guadalupe Hidalgo. Or Gwar.

Holy shit, Gwar is playing there Memorial Day Weekend! I’m super curious about the clientele at a Gwar show. They were already an obscure joke back in 1990. So it’s got to be a slew of fifty-somethings that never really got the joke. I’m tempted to buy a ticket for crowd watching, but the bastards would probably expect me to sing along with their choruses.

The venue is tiny. And crowded. Hopefully Whitesnake never plays there, because any errant pyrotechnics and we weren’t getting out. As it stood, I couldn’t even leave my spot to grab another beer. I might not make it back. Not that I wanted any more beer, because it would be four hours before I left the confines, and who the hell goes to the bathroom during a concert? I might miss the lyrics.

Wait, are they saying, “Like gasoline”? That’s what it sounded like on maybe the fifth iteration. I guess that’s a cool lyric. I think the line referenced making out when they were seventeen. It rhymes. And, you know, gasoline is explosive. Fire equals passion. Just ask creepy elder statesman Bruce Springsteen and his “Hey little girl, is your daddy home?” Or Whitesnake.

Maybe this band isn’t too bad.

Two people in my close vicinity passed out. We’re all out of practice.

Oddly enough, the pass outs happened not during the concert while people were jumping around, but in between the opening band and the main event. The first lady to pass out was one of the only ones wearing a mask. 

Did I mention super-spreader event? 

Not too surprising. It was stuffy as hell and people were jockeying for position, despite the fact that nobody in the entire venue was more than twenty feet from the stage. And I know we’re only supposed to mock people who claim that it’s harder to breathe while wearing a mask, but I imagine that when five hundred people are jostling around you, the mask can’t be doing wonders. It was hard enough for me to catch a full breath, and my nose and mouth were wide open. Each inhalation contained about 85% body odor. Plus 15% Covid.

Her mask fluxed in and out heavily a couple times, then her eyes fluttered and she did the standard pirouette before being caught by her companion, also wearing a mask. The crowd was nice enough to part to let him pull her out. As long as you’re going away from the stage, you’re golden. Five people moved into the spot she vacated.

I suppose I should thank this particular canary for reminding me I was in a coalmine. After she went down, I remembered to bend my knees more often. Flex those calf muscles! But after four hours of standing in more or less the same spot, my feet still felt like they’d gone 25,000 steps. You know what’s nice about seeing Classic Rockers in arenas and stadiums? Assigned seating!

The second fainter fell a couple minutes before the band came on. His pass-out was the more pedestrian, self-inflicted style. No mask near his mouth, but he did have a beer, and it clearly wasn’t his first. And “near his mouth” was the closest he came. He couldn’t quite find it. When he faceplanted toward the back of the woman’s head, somebody else grabbed him and stood him back up. At first I thought they were together, but second dude might’ve just been a good Samaritan. Drunkie then sways backward, toward said Samaritan.

When security came around, Samaritan held his hand up, signalling toward the drunkard like a plane’s flying over his deserted island for the first time in a decade. Security was already looking for the drunkard, which was impressive because as far as I knew, the guy had just shown up. Maybe they’ve got us all under strict surveillance. We didn’t have to show our vaccination card because they’re already monitoring our biorhythms from the 5g DNA sequencing that Bill Gates put into our bodies!

Sir Sways-a-Lot didn’t put up a fight. I don’t even think he knew they were ushering him away, nor whether he was at a concert in the first place. Security used the “hey buddy” approach instead of “Respect my Authori-TAY!” and dude was easily led toward the back. For good measure, he took one more sip from the IPA while following along. Not so much rebellion as inertia.

Good Samaritan immediately took two steps forward to take the vacated spot.

How was the band? Not sure. You might want to check with someone who knew what they were seeing. They had a viola player. Or maybe it was a violin. Perhaps even a fiddle. When she wasn’t on the strings, she played the keyboard. But then when she was playing violin, other members of the band stopped playing guitar and went over to play the lonely keyboards. By the end of the concert, that thing had more people tickling its ivory than your mom.

The opening act was also impressive. Much like Jethro Tull, I don’t know if Mondo Cosmo was a person or the whole band. Unlike Jethro Tull, nobody named Mondo Cosmo invented a seed drill. The guitar player was great. Drummer, too. But in looking at this guy’s/band’s videos online, it’s clear that, Mondo Cosmo or not, Mondo Cosmo is the only guy who gets camera time. 

He’s pretty hard core. Every bit the Mondo. Seemed way more comfortable on the songs he was jumping around the stage than on the songs he had to sit still and play rhythm guitar. I feel like he’s either going to make it big or flame out very, very hard. I’m rooting for the former.

The drawback of the band was that they had way too much pre-recorded backing tracks. It took me a number of songs to figure out where the hell the bass was coming from. Was he behind the curtain? Was the lead guitar busting out low notes on the thick strings when he wasn’t in solo mode. Once I realized the bass was still going while he was soloing, I realized it was all a ruse. 

Then they did a cover of “Bittersweet Symphony.” I knew for a FACT there was no string section in the three-man band.

Did you know you could jump around the stage and headbang to “Bittersweet Symphony”? Although, as a general rule, you shouldn’t get more into another band’s songs than your own. 

I don’t want to give away too much, because for the first time sine 2019, I can have a year-end concert review. I’ve got tickets bought for at least one more, with potential plans for as many as three more. When it rains, it pours.

I just had to make sure I got that “your mom” joke in before I forgot it.

2020 Virtual Concert Review

· January 5, 2021 · Blog Entries, Musings · , , , , , , , , · One Comment

Last week I wrote about the two aborted concerts that I hoped to attend in 2020. One was from Billy Joel, a tried-and-true entertainer I saw once before when I was in college. The other was Vampire Weekend, a band I wasn’t even aware of a year ago. For obvious reasons, neither concert happened.

But 2020 wasn’t completely devoid of live music. As long as you were willing to watch it on a screen.

So although I didn’t see the two concerts I intended to see, I did manage to watch two concerts in their entirety. Again, one featured old performers that I’ve already been throwing money at for decades, while the other came from a newish band that I’ve always been curious about seeing live.

Preservation Hall. 

I couldn’t make it to New Orleans to watch Vampire Weekend, but at least I could watch a streamed version of a concert for the New Orleans Jazz Preservation Hall. Or maybe it was on PBS. I can’t remember.

Seeing as New Orleans is one of my favorite cities to visit, I’ve watched a few concerts at Preservation Hall. It’s fun to stop in on an afternoon jaunt down Bourbon Street to hear jazz combos similar to my high school jazz band That’s not knock. My high school jazz band was pretty kick-ass. I love me some saxophone, trumpet, and trombone combos. Play me a simplified arrangement of a Count Basie tune, and I’ll happily put off my next hand grenade for twenty minutes or so.

At least I thought it was Preservation Hall I’d frequented on those trips down Bourbon. But now that I looked it up on Google Maps, it might actually be Maison Bourbon, a half-block away from the actual Preservation Hall. Oops.

Regardless, I was happy when they had a benefit concert online, with some really big names. I’m talking Dave Matthews, Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney. Unfortunately, it was in typical telethon fashion, where they wasted twenty minutes in between each song with interviews and “call in now” and shit. At least I could pause and skip ahead, something my grandparents could’ve only dreamed of back in the Jerry Lewis Labor Day snoozefests. 

Those big-name benefit songs had a very, very pre-recorded feel to them. There were a few, like Dave Grohl and Nathaniel Rateliff, who seemed to take it more seriously, picking their jazzier numbers and talking about the importance of either live music or of preserving olde tyme music. Others seemed to send in whatever promo song they had recorded for charity write-offs. I was looking forward to Elvis Costello and was disappointed when he just played some “songs off his newest album,” aka the part of the concert containing the Great Restroom Exodus.

Everybody on the comment box was pining away for McCartney. Where’s Paul? When will Paul be here? Clearly they haven’t sat through proper telethons. It was obvious he was going to be last, and it was obvious to be as non-specifically for Preservation Hall as it gets. He might’ve done “Hey, Jude.” I don’t remember. And he might or might not have looked two decades younger. At least Elvis had the decency to half-ass a newer song so we knew it was recorded this decade. 

I ended up liking the actual jazz band, who played an occasional song in between the big acts, better than the names that brought me there in the first place. Even so, I didn’t donate. 

I’ll drop some money at Maison Bourbon next time I’m in NOLA and we’ll call it good.

Nathaniel Rateliff. 

Later in the pandemic, Red Rocks in Colorado did an online fundraising concert, as well. Again, a place I’ve been to and enjoyed. And a band I like, as well. Tune me in.

And this was legitimately live. They were literally playing on the stage in front of an empty Red Rocks Amphitheater. You could switch cameras to watch the rocks instead, something I found myself doing when I went there, too. Although I didn’t have to switch cams then, I only had to pivot my neck.

Nathaniel Rateliff has been on my short list for some time. He wasn’t some unknown to top ten skyrocket like those Vampire Weekend upstarts. 

Of course, my first introduction to him was “S.O.B.,” the best drinking song this side of “Tubthumping.” Although neither of those songs should be considered happy drinking song. Maybe thinking enough about booze to want to write a song about it predicates a certain bipolar dependency. But then just when you’re about to commiserate with the artist, right there on the precipice of singing the blues, they bang the door down with a grandiose “fuck it, let’s get blotto.”

With a first song like that, one could understand my hesitation against full-throated bandwagon-jumping. If your initial hit is reminiscent of “Tubthumping,” you’ve gotta worry about being the next Chumbawumba. And how many other Chumbawumba songs have you ever heard? Unfortunately, I’ve heard others, and they need a drink. Holy crap, that’s a bad album.

At least Rateliff seemed to have some musical talent going for him, which was always missing from even the acceptable Chumbawumba song. Something similar could be said about Fun., which you must properly pronounce as “Fun period,” another band with a song that, at first, sounds like a fun (period) song about hanging out with your friends at the bar, something I did the majority of my twenties (and thirties). But on closer listen, it’s closer to a creepy “Every Breath You Take,” with the dude hoping to swoop in on an ex (whom he beat) when she’s drunk at the end of the night. At least Fun. had some good musical talent, but it was all based on something approaching ten-part harmony. Rateliff gets there by himself. With apologies to the Night Sweats.

But still, if you take one look at him, you don’t think rockstar. Or at least not young, eager, carpe-diem rock star. In his first music video, he looked like someone who’s been touring for forty years. Tore up from the floor up. Rode hard and put away wet. Whatever phrase you wanna use, he was no Justin Timberlake.

So somewhat gimmicky song about drinking and looking like he might be dead by the end of the week. I spent most of the last decade on the fringes of fandom. Perhaps appreciation would be the best descriptor. I heard some of his other songs and they all showed promise. What I was waiting for was the staying power. It’s so much easier when the band already has four full albums before I discover them.

Similar to Vampire Weekend, Nathaniel Rateliff’s most recent album (actually his third album, not his second as I originally believed) came out shortly before the pandemic, so I was able to hear the songs as they received copious amounts of radio play. I enjoyed “Baby It’s Alright.” Very bluesy. A ballad. Some vibrato in the voice. Polar opposite of “SOB,” although not really, because you’ve still got the mournful voice, the hurt. There’s a lot lying there underneath the surface. This was no Chumbawumba. This wasn’t even a repeat of Fun. (Am I supposed to put another period if Fun. is at the end of a sentence?).

The final hurdle I needed to pass (aside from buying his albums because that’s what YouTube is for) was to see him live. He definitely seemed to have the vibe of a good live act. I tend to like the acts whose songs are equal parts emotion and talent. Those tend to make the best shows as opposed to, say, a band that’s more concerned with choreography or pyrotechnics. In all honesty, I’m a little worried my current fascination with Vampire Weekend might wane after seeing them live. They seem a wee bit aloof, a sconce “we wrote good songs, so we don’t need to put any emphasis into it. Sing along if you must.”

So the last thing I needed to become a proper Nathaniel Rateliff fan, to finally determine if he’s talent or hack, was to see him live. And if I can see him for free, all the better. 

Oops, was I supposed to donate to Red Rocks while watching the free concert?

And yeah, the dude is solid. He feels every song. He emotes. And he’s no slouch on the guitar, either. I could see him being the kind of guy who would play for three or four hours if the crowd and venue allowed it. With “S.O.B.” it’s clear he’s got some inner demons. It feels like the stage is where he exorcizes them, and he’s all too aware of it.

One oddity was that he appeared to be playing through his entire new album, track by track. I tuned in late, so I don’t know if this was explained or if the first half of the concert was some old stuff. So he never played “S.O.B.”

I bet a lot of artists wish they could do that. After all, the new songs are the ones that mean the most to them. It’s our fault that they keep having to bust out “Freebird.” If we aren’t in the crowd then we can go fuck ourselves if we’re only tuning in for his one hit six years ago.

The weirdest part of the whole concert was that he DIDN’T come out for an encore. What the fuck? Were we not cheering loudly enough at our homes thousands of miles away? What do you want us to do? Pay to get you to…

Oh…

Oh, I think I get it now.

My bad.

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