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Such a good album/band to listen to when coding… Read More...
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A couple of weeks ago I started my sabbatical - 3 months of anything but work :) I've been hoping to see alot more live music (as well as get a chance to play more), and in keeping with that spirit, I flew down to Berkeley last week to see Sonic Youth performing the Daydream Nation album at the Berkeley Community Theater. Daydream was my favorite album for the better part of a decade, so flying to the bay area was a small price to pay. And seeing it with my best mate Dave, from the second row - priceless. We were literally right beneath Thurston (literally 5 feet away), and 15 feet from Kim. Worth every penny we paid StubHub :) There's a great article on Pitchfork about how hard it was for the band to figure out how to play an album they made so long ago (it's been almost two decades..) Thurston plays almost every song in a custom tuning, so he had to go back and look at pictures of himself playing to figure it out.. I have to say, they totally nailed it. Here are some photos I took, and here is my YouTube video of Teen Age Riot . The sound quality isn't good because we're mostly picking up Thurston's amp and not much else, but the proximity is unbeatable :-) Read More...
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Last night, I went to see the Police again (this time, with Don , his son Max, and Shy ). The tickets were twice as expensive as for the "dress rehearsal" show in Vancouver, we sat twice as far from the stage, and there were four times the number of people (the ~20K capacity Key Arena was sold out). Near as I could tell, the set was identical (although the songs were in a different order). Even the jokes were the same (e.g. the one about Jimmy Swaggart calling "Murder by Numbers" as having been written by the devil himself). And it was still a great show - well worth going to again... That said, I'm not looking for tickets for tonight's repeat show :-) The main difference for me was that Andy Summers looked much more comfortable on stage this time - he really ripped out some solos, played around with different fills, and in general just looked like he was enjoying himself. The band felt tighter - more in tune with each other. Looks like they may survive the 2007 tour without breaking up or killing each other :-) Read More...
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Last night Sheri and I drove up to Vancouver, BC to see the Police "fanclub-only" dress rehearsal show at GM Place, which unofficially kicks off the Police reunion tour. The only thing that sniffed "dress reheasal" was the price ($50/ticket for 5th-row seats (!), compared to about $200 for equivalent seats at the "real show"), and the fact that there were only 4000 people there (compared to upcoming sell-out crowds of about 20K per show). They played all the great stuff - all told, almost 2 hours of vintage Police, including 2 encores. Sting and Andy had what looked like some reaaaally old gear (Sting's bass and Andy's red strat looked like they could be original Police equipment), contrasting with Stewart's gear which looked brand spanking new. Stewart also had an amazing setup for songs like "Wrapped Around Your Finger" - a big gong, a bunch of mini-cymbals, a nice set of vibes. They all seemed cordial with each other and Sting started the show by cracking a joke about hoping not to get into any on-stage disagreements :-) at the end of the show, all three exchanged spontaneous hugs (Andy kind of tried to avoid Sting at first but Sting was persistent...) Overall, an amazing show. I can't wait to see them again in Seattle next week. The only downside is that my seats aren't as good and the show is much less intimate. But they are simply that good... hopefully they won't break up again before then :-) Read More...
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This has been concert week for Sheri and I. After not having seen a "mega-concert" in a few years, we saw two in one week - Coldplay at the White River Amphitheater and Dave Matthews at the Gorge. Both venues are enormous - the capacity is around 20K for the Gorge and the WRA isn't small either. Coldplay was a pretty good show - not inspired but you can tell they try hard. Chris Martin prances around the stage like a mountain goat and does a good Bono impersonation, and their camera guys do a great job capturing live video of the band from multiple cameras, doing real-time automated splicing of all that footage, and projecting it onto the WRA's 2 massive screens. They played all their hits and the crowd went home happy. Of course it wasn't all that happy getting there - there was miles and miles of standstill traffic - took us 2.5 hours to get there, and only one hour to get back, thanks to the premiere parking. Even the band was late to their own show... putting a big music venue in the middle of nowhere only works if you have the highway infrastructure to support it. Dave Matthews was a better show but unfortunately didn't live up to my expectations. Part of it was the fact that my expectation was to be sitting in the seated section (I thought I bought the premium tickets), only to discover that we were actually sitting on the lawn - bummer. So there wasn't a whole lot of "seeing" to do. But the nice thing about the Gorge is that they have another set of speakers for the folks who are sitting on the lawn, and the music quality was still very good. As for the band, they still have alot of fun out there and make every song into a 10-15min improvisation clinic - that part was enjoyable. But Dave Matthews himself didn't seem like his vintage form - he hardly said a word to the audience between songs, and didn't seem to have the energy of old. Finally, I got to see the Dinosaur Jr "reunion" show at the Showbox last night. Now that was an amazing show. Lou Barlow and J Mascis somehow managed to bury the hatchet and the band seemed to be tighter and have more vitality than the last time I saw them for the Green Mind tour (without Lou), some 15 years ago. In fact, that was probably the loudest show I've ever seen. Most of their set came from their seminal album You're Living All over Me, with a few songs from their debut "Dinosaur". The only bummer about the show was they played nothing at all from Green Mind - I guess Lou only wants to play the stuff they all wrote Read More...
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