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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
I think this has changed into people simply listing their favorite acts. How about listing acts you like or love but simply are abysmal live (in your opinion, of course). Allow me to start --
New Order (circa '88)- great, great music. The band is a black hole on stage. It may be intentional and part of the shtick, but it certainly does not engage the crowd. Maybe an outdoor venue was to blame.
Weezer - Little to no acknowledgment of the crowd. No energy. No change in songs from existing record versions. Could have been a group of guys dressed as Weezer on stage lip-synching for all I could tell.
Wilco - zzzzzzzzzzzz...wha?
Pixies (reunion tour) - Plowing through the setlist just to get off stage and cash their checks. A damn shame. Bonus points for booking completely intolerable mismatch 'The Thrills' as openers.
Sheesh! How did I forget Drive By Truckers?! AWESOME show at the now defunct Slow Bar a few years back. One of my all time favorites.
RE: the 50/50 chance one takes when seeing Dylan in concert:
I've seen Dylan five different times over the years and each concert was a disappointment. The band almost always smothers his voice, which has grown so raspy, it's hard to understand a thing he sings/says anyway. I'm a huge Dylan fan but I would not recommend that anyone pay money to see him (unless he plays a club date, solo, which is something that will probably never happen). There is no question he was once great as a concert peformer, but those days are long gone.
I don't see too many concerts, but there are a few I've really enjoyed:
Joe Jackson usually is terrific live (although I didn't like his Heaven and Hell concert, probably because I didn't like the music from that album). He's not afraid to play with his hits so they sound completely different from the studio version, yet still sound great.
I finally saw Springsteen in 1999 at the MCI Center here in DC, and boy was it worth it. Picture an encore in which Springsteen and the E Street Band troop out with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Bruce Hornsby, Shawn Colvin and a couple others I'm forgetting. No, I'm not sure why they were all at that show at the same time, but they played really well together.
Cowboy Junkies at the 9:30 Club in DC a few years back. Margo Timmins has a terrific voice, but you don't get how truly remarkable it is and how engaging she is until you see her live.
As far as what I didn't like:
I saw Paul Westerberg at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor in 1993, and all I remember from that show was him abruptly walking off the stage after an hour, if that, to the confusion of the audience.
Tori Amos a year later in Ann Arbor. She was fine, but there was a guy sitting in front of me who insisted on singing along. Someone else (or maybe that same guy) kept shouting "Take to the sky!" at every opportunity. Truly annoying.
Todd Rundgren a couple of years ago at the Warner Theater in DC -- incidentally, touring with Joe Jackson. Rundgren did give an impassioned performance of a song I didn't know, and he sang a killer version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Jackson. For the most part, though, his voice was shot, and when he wasn't performing lackluster versions of his best songs, he absolutely mutilated them.
After seeing many live bands, I realize it is many times the venue that you can most trust. Here in Minneapolis the best sound is at the Cedar Cultural Center - world music and folk music, best sound south of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Chairs. Clairity. Quiet. Extraordinary.
I saw the Drive By Truckers in the 400 Bar a few doors away, and this is a 'shit' venue... one boxy room standing room only, all echoes, no staff. Crap sound. And their lyrics got lost, and THEY sucked. I never go there. A bad venue will ruin a good band.
First Avenue, one of the top clubs in the U.S. here in MPls, has good sound and sightlines, but it is packed for big shows. Get there early! There is always a debate between my friends who want 'perfect sound' in this room and me who wants a front row or close seat to see the 'faces'. It's live, so I don't think of it as an 'audio-file' experience exactly.
I've heard about "Red Rocks" and I want to go. We want a roadtrip to Austin, but it now sounds too fucking crowded and over-discovered.
Best Live band? Of the hundreds I have seen, it was the post Jerry, "Dead" playing outside in Wisconsin twice..., at Alpine Valley (a venue that needs a little more nature...) and FloatRite Park, actually beautiful acoustics and ... mood. No band better than the Dead, 3 hours of a semi-religious experience. I saw the Dead again at the dreadful, beer-soaked, loud and echoey lakefront pavillion during "Octoberfest" in Milwaukee, and again, the venue helped denigrate the concert.
I just ran down the list of bands I've seen--yes, I try to keep a list--and I don't see one I regret going to (although there are a few I don't remember--I saw Kenny Loggins?). I gave up stadium shows about 20 years ago, and I don't know who half the acts mentioned in these letters are, and being old and having a kid I don't get out like I used to. But there aren't a lot of alternatives--you can't actually hear a band play its music live unless you go out to a concert, so what are you going to do?
Most recent, still touring, and if he comes around you should go see him: Manu Chao. With a band that can go from lazy reggae to balls-out rock--and back again, often within the same song--this was one of the most passionate, joyous shows I've ever seen.
Best performances I've ever experienced:
Pink Floyd, 1974 (Wish you were here tour)
Leonard Cohen ~1979 (same tour as the Commander Cohen CD)
Stones 2007 Dodger Stadium
Springsteen, same venue, 2005?
Donovan, every time I saw him in the 70s & 80s
Barclay James Harvest, ditto except the last time
Tina Turner, Greek Theater - Simply the Best
Dylan at Staples (tour before last)
Bob Seeger - can you believe that guy thought no one would want to see him any more (while my teenage kids are stealing all his CDs out of my car)
To my immense surprise, Dolly Parton (the wife made me come with her) I can not believe how she can play an electric 12-string and sound just like Roger McGuinn, with those fingernails.
The Chieftains
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
The Yardbirds last time they came to LA - amazingly, not just a bunch of geezers phoning it in.
Oh and I have to agree with the person who said you can't go wrong with punk/Irish Flogging Molly. A fucking grand hoolie and no mistake.
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Salon headlines in your mailbox
