What BANDS are you seeing?

Old 97s are out on tour, and they happened to come through my stretch of BFE this week.

Always a great act to see. East Coast, be aware they're heading that way.

So last Sunday we went and saw Against Me! and was blown away by how good they were. An absolutely amazing show. Laura Jane Grace is one hell of a woman and was nice enough to take a picture with us before the show.

Saturday night was Seether with Black Stone Cherry. I love BSC, one of my favorite bands. They tore it up. Seether was way too slow and we couldn't get into it after the awesome BSC set. We left early.

Thursday night is Blue October. STOKED!

stormseeker75 wrote:

Saturday night was Seether with Black Stone Cherry. I love BSC, one of my favorite bands. They tore it up. Seether was way too slow and we couldn't get into it after the awesome BSC set. We left early.

I went to Rock on the Range Friday night; my wife is a huge GnR fan, and I don't hate them, so Happy Birthday, Mrs. B! Seether and Black Stone Cherry were there that day, but because work sucks I missed everyone except for Staind and Guns n' Roses. I like Seether okay, so should I be happy or sad that I missed them?

Staind was alright if you like your rock with extra emo. There are a couple of Staind songs I really like, and the rest of their songs sound a lot like the ones I like, so I'll call that a win. I wouldn't have bought tickets for them as the main act, but I wasn't disappointed.

GnR was good. They did a 2 1/2 hour show, and no hit of theirs was left unplayed. Axl wasn't nearly as rotund as he was when I saw him back in '02 or '03 or whenever. He can still hit the high notes, but he can't hit as many of them as he used to; his voice was starting to give out at the end of the show. That's okay, though, because to me that just shows that he's trying.

This is wandering into threadjack territory, but does anyone have any hate for reconstructed rock bands? GnR isn't the GnR that did all these hits. Slash, Duff, etc have all moved on to other things. The band is really good, musically, and sounds just like the old gang. My take would be that, as a fan but not a FAN!!! I have no problem with that. But for a band I loved back when I was a teenager, I might get on my high horse and squawk about fake bands. Unless they were _really_ good.

Personally, I'd be happy I missed them. The pace of the songs they were playing was so slow. BSC had the place fired up, but Seether just cooled it right off.

I'm cool with bands changing as long as the singer doesn't. To me, you are a different band with a new singer.

My most recent show: Bob Mould (of Husker Du fame for all you hipsters of a certain age; Sugar for hipsters of a lesser age) did a very brief tour to celebrate the 25th anniversary reissue of Workbook, his first solo record and one of my favorite records of all time.

To put this in some sort of context, Workbook and its follow-up, Black Sheets of Rain, were released in 1989 and 1990, respectively. Those 2 albums, even moreso than the extended "Summer of Garth and Grunge" [to steal a line from my boss during my time reviewing concerts for Milwaukee's morning newspaper] between '89 and '92 or so, served as the definitive soundtrack of my college years.

So, yea, there's a nostalgia element to this one for me. That said, it's not like Mould is touring the State Fair/Auto Show circuit alongside maybe-1-original-member-left versions of Styx or the like. He's still writing smart, occasionally primal-to-the-point-of-visceral songs and his absolute all into performing his material.

Since I didn't turn 21 until a month after I graduated in '92, I never got to see Mould tour on either of his solo records (Milwaukee was notoriously difficult to catch "club-sized" bands thanks almost no venues below 5,000 seats that held all-ages or even 18-and-up shows). Since I really value the live music experience (thanks to a long history with the Grateful Dead, I came to believe at an early age that studio albums are, to quote my pops, "just a means for learning the words"), missing those tours was a life-long bummer. Although I have managed to catch Mould live multiple times over the last 15 years, he rarely explored his early back catalog, particularly in the post-Sugar years.

To finally have the opportunity to hear him perform most of the cuts off Workbook and a few of the better cuts off Black Sheets excited me far more than any of the great "never thought it would happen" shows (e.g., Bauhaus reunion; Peter Hook's "Unknown Pleasures" tour, etc.) I've caught.

That said, this is Bob Mould we're talking about. His voice still sounds like a jigsaw ripping through particle board and he is still not really what you might call a close friend with his guitar. In addition, the show was being billed as an "acoustic night with..." and I knew brought a violist (critical to many Workbook cuts) but no drummer out on tour. Since Mould isn't exactly a "delicate" stage presence once he gets going, I wasn't sure this was going to be a winning combo. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that, billing bedamned, he and his bass player were both plugged in and the violist was about as Punk As Fuck as you can get with an instrument mostly associated with chamber music. (She basically played the expected string bits while simultaneously providing a 2nd guitar voice as required *and* often a steady percussion-like rhythm in lieu of a drummer. Plus she could actually be heard over Mould's caterwaul. I was *most* impressed with this chick's craft)

Objectively speaking, it was an interesting night as Mould invested a goodly amount of energy and emotion into the tunes, many of which he hasn't really played in many years. At a personal level, though, I logged so many hours with these records during my college days that this particular wall of sound basically triggered a more pleasant version of PTSD as I found my head basically trapped in a montage of all the highs and lows (both, in retrospect, being far more extreme states than I ever find myself hitting these days--age is a funny thing) and personally-defining moments experienced between 1989 and the waning days of my time in Milwaukee (I moved to DC in mid-94).

For me, it couldn't have been a better use of $30. YMMV... For those with any interest at all, I recommend the Workbook reissue--the sound quality is somewhat improved [it wasn't bad to begin with] thanks to improved definition/separation and the bonus tracks are nice. The real value is the 2nd CD featuring a superb recording of a 1989 performance. Great recording, excellent setlist, and superb snapshot of a young and completely emotionally damaged Bob Mould performing some of his most visceral post-Husker Du material.

Also, I'd also recommend his 2012 Silver Age record. There was a long stretch of Mould solo records that, taken together, make up 1 very good album worth of songs hidden among 7 records worth of "meh." Silver Age, on the other hand, seems to have captured a revitalized and refocused Mould. It's a very solid set of songs and far surpasses much of his "singer-songwriterey" output over the last 10 years. I've a heard a cut or two off his upcoming (early June I think) album, and it gives me hope that it will continue to build on Silver Age's offerings.

It surely seems to me like preparing Workbook and Black Sheets material for reissue and subsequent tour injected some of the vitality and extremity/rawness of his youth back into Mould's creative output, which had, for me anyway, taken on increasingly jaded tones and felt rather too emotionally flat.

@Dogmatix: Black Sheets of Rain, Copper Blue, and File Under: Easy Listening are pretty awesome albums. But "An Acoustic Evening With Bob Mould" would have been a tough sell for me. I'm glad it worked out for you.

At work I won two 3-day passes to Austin City Limits music festival next weekend. Not super excited for any of the headliners though, as much as I like hip hop I can't stand Eminem and I'm lukewarm on Outkast.

... and I really don't like Pearl Jam.

Pearl Jam sucks.

I saw Against Me and Gaslight Anthem last week. God, Against Me is so fucking good live even though Laura had a cold.

I really, REALLY dig the first three Gaslight Anthem records.

The newest one is pretty solid. They're boring as fuck live. Just 5 dudes standing still on stage. Great sound, just boring.

And following Against Me is not an easy feat.

No one has posted in here for awhile! I guess if people are going to shows they've been posting in the "listening," thread. Whatever.

My girlfriend became obsessed with Dir En Grey during high school. I met her 11 years later, and she still loves them. Yesterday we stood in line for 4 hours outside the Bottom Lounge in Chicago (one of a bunch of pretty small venues) so that we could stand in the middle about 5 feet away from a tiny Japanese man named Kyo who looks kind of like a sorceror. He's 5'2", has a shaved head, a ton of tattoos, wore white contacts, and he was standing on a fan that blew upwards, while his black and white strips of cloth billowed around him. He would oscillate between screaming, growling, and operatic stuff with a pretty wide range, often all in the same song. I couldn't understand a word because I don't know Japanese or when he was trying to speak English. I did understand halfway through the encore when he said, "One lasto song," about 6 times, much to the excitement of the crowd.

We got out at 8:30 because there were no opening acts! Mondays! She was glad that I came with her.

Deafheaven is in town tonight...debating if I want to sneak out after everyone goes to bed!

The night before Thanksgiving I'm heading up to Detroit to see a Depeche Mode cover band, a Cure cover band, and a Smiths cover band.

I've got a few lined up:
Machine Head next week
Between the Buried and Me in December
Muse in January
Maiden x2 right after Easter

Michael Barnes wrote: Deafheaven is in town tonight...debating if I want to sneak out after everyone goes to bed!

Goddammit I miss every fuckin' show.