Live Music

I saw Korpiklaani live in Chicago last night. My brothers and I showed up early enough to snag front row seats for the entire show. Korp had a good setlist (aside from the obligatory crowd-pleasing songs about alcohol, they played "Paat Pois Tai Hirteen" and "Lonkaluut", two of my faves from the last album), and they put on a bloody good performance.

"Vodka" is a great Audience Participation Song. Speaking of which, they had vodka in a water bottle, and we totally called that before Jarvela told the crowd.

But the best surprise of the show was how freaking awesome Arkona is. There's a band that needs more love.

I finally saw Agalloch live this Friday.

I'm currently in the process of finishing an overly long review of the show, which I may or may not post to my Last.fm journal. Regardless of the outcome, I can tell you this: I doubt I'll ever be to another show that will be able manage to match the level of what I've experienced.

Also I had to miss out on the signing session they did, partly because The Mantle never did arrive in time. And they played their longest show yet - two hours and forty minutes of music net.

edited 29th Nov '11 3:21:12 PM by Litis

Omg I am so jealous of milesrose it isn't even funny.

edited 29th Nov '11 3:39:02 PM by Erock

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Might be seeing Symphony X and Iced Earth in February. "Might" because the stupid venue site won't say if it's all-ages or not. >_>

I guess it is.

Just got back from Guns N' Roses. Amazing performance. They played tons and tons of songs (somewhere around 33-35). Axl's vocals are top-notch. Duff Mckagan joined them for two songs (I think they were You Could Be Mine and Civil War).

I don't care what people say about the "hired guns", Bumblefoot, Richard Fortus and DJ Ashba are very skilled players (I was surprised by Fortus' talent). And since I'm one of the few people who liked Chinese Democracy, the whole show was a non-stop, high-quality performance.

P.S: Axl kicked a guy out that was trying to fight in the moshpit. That was amusing.

edited 18th Dec '11 6:49:26 AM by Alucard

I was at a rap battle earlier today. Very small venue with lots of local guys, most were not that good. Most entertaining battle was between two guys named Quiz Show and Flunk.

go ahead and do every stupid thing you can imagine

Greatest live band I've seen? Slayer, hands down. Seen them three times, and definitely going to see them many times more in my life.

Also have to mention Wacken Open Air 2011. That was an awesome experience. Of all shows there, I enjoyed Ensiferum and Kreator the most.

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

I'm going down to Dublin to see Duran Duran on Tuesday.

Going to see Meshuggah and Animals As Leaders next April. Will be obscenely heavy. Wish me luck.

Because I choose to.

Duran were really, really good. It was pretty much a sellout crowd, which is always great to see; there was a really good atmosphere (even though I did seem to be the youngest person there who hadn't been brought by there parents).

I judged it based on their Live in London DVD, which was recorded in 2004 (when all five original members got back to together). They were far better in comparison; Simon Le Bon's voice was sounding much better than I honestly expected it to, the band was sounding really tight. They didn't just rely on their old hits (though they obviously made an appearance), and they did a great job of integrating songs from the new album into the set. Furthermore, they really integrated their backing musicians this time round; previously they'd have brought out a female backing singer to do the parts in "Come Undone" and a saxophonist to do the solo in "Rio", but they had them out for more or less every song this time (one thing I liked was this instrumental interlude in the middle, where they featured the saxophonist playing soprano).

During "Notorious" (probably the best song of the night) they also interpolated the chorus of "Relax", which I thought was quite amusing.

Summarily, it challenges the Thin Lizzy/Alice Cooper/Def Leppard show as the best concert I've been to.

edited 30th Dec '11 6:09:52 AM by TheGloomer

I met up with friends *

and saw The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who have a yearly tradition of playing a few nights in a row in the same venue in Boston pre-New Years, except when they don't. This time it was the House Of Blues. Pretty fun show - I don't know everything they've done, but I have a few albums and they played basically everything I'd want to hear off those, and they just played a really tight, high energy set with very few stops. There was also this cool backdrop where the stage was set up like the outside of a house decorated for Christmas, with lights that went off and on in time with the music. Said backdrop let to a somewhat funny moment where a horn section were introduced by a doorbell sound effect before they walked through the door of the "house", and Dickie Barrett immediately pointed out how it didn't make any sense for someone to ring a doorbell before they go outside. Still not huge on the House Of Blues as a venue (the only other time I've been was Mastodon a few years ago), but the atmosphere was nice if only because there was a big crowd who were dancing and having fun.

Opening acts: Every night of this had a different pair of openers, the ones I saw were Have Nots and The Slackers. I probably caught about half of the Have Nots set, but they were pretty good - melodic punk with a few twists of ska once in a while, basically the sort of thing I could imagine being slotted into a mid-90's Punk-O-Rama compilation, but I mean that in a nice way. They're a Boston band, and I think if I happened to see that they're playing anywhere near me again I'd be inclined enough to check it out. The Slackers, who are more of a straight ska revival band and have been around since 1990, impressed me a bit more though - though this was at least partially because I enjoy out-of-genre covers and they played versions of The Misfits' "Attitude" and u2's "New Year's Day".

edited 29th Dec '11 11:17:35 PM by MikeK

Do the Bosstones still have that manic dancing guy who goes on stage with them? I've never seen them live but I often think I'd like to.

Yep he was there - he contributed backing vocals a few times actually, but yeah, he mainly just dances crazily around the stage.

edited 30th Dec '11 11:13:19 AM by MikeK

I saw Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven co-headline for the second time, at the same place no less. The thing is, both bands have two of the same members (David Lowery fronts both, and currently both bands have the same drummer), so they naturally have a lot of the same fans, and there's not a huge amount of setup time between sets. Both sets were really good and they did a good job of playing a lot of the fan favorites without being a repeat of last time. The Cracker set sort of had the more noticeable change though - they had a keyboard player \ accordionist on board this time, so it seemed like they sort of went out of their way to do more of their Alternative Country type stuff, whereas last time felt like more of a "rock show" - maybe it also had to do with the fact that last time they were promoting Sunrise In The Land Of Milk And Honey, which was sort of one of their louder albums. Also, CVB played a couple new songs - they were both kind of prog-influenced and had all these different sections, which makes me think the next album could shape up to be pretty interesting.

FUCK. WACKEN.

edited 16th Jan '12 11:04:28 AM by Litis

Umm, Wacken is a 3-day festival held in one place for 80,000 people. Paganfest (which I've attended 4 times) is a one-night show which tours the world. I don't think you can really compare the two.

Anyway, we Dutch people are getting trolled hard by Paganfest this year: 'Korpiklaani - guest stars at all extended shows, except Tilburg!'

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

Sure as hell I can compare between them. Does Wacken have Primordial and Negura Bunget in its lineup? Out of Wacken's sizable lineup there's four-five bands I'd actually want to see at best - Coroner, MH, maybe Ministry and Nasum. So Paganfest kicks Wacken's ass in terms of want-skip ratio for me. Not that I really care - I can't get out of the country for at least the next two years.

And I don't know how Korpiklaani sound like in general, but "Vodka" makes me sick, so...

edited 18th Jan '12 2:58:33 AM by Litis

OK, so Wacken has a low want-skip ratio. Although I have to say last year's line-up was exceptionally awesome, with Sodom, Kreator, Sepultura, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Ensiferum, Helloween and CoB.

But that's beside the point. When you compare the "want-skip ratios" of Paganfest and Wacken, you have to consider that the latter simply has more acts - 10 to 20 times as many, in fact. Of course you don't know and like all those bands! Also, Wacken has bands from all different subgenres of metal, including a lot which you may not care about at all (e.g. I don't like death metal, so every death metal band at Wacken will drag the want-skip ratio down for me), whereas Paganfest is focused on folk metal.

This is what I mean by 'you can't really compare the two'. In Dutch, we have a nice expression for this: appels met peren vergelijken (comparing apples to pears). I don't know if it has an English equivalent...

As for Korpiklaani, I'm a fan of theirs, and I didn't like "Vodka", either. Maybe this song will be more to your liking?

edited 19th Jan '12 3:28:18 PM by MidnightRambler

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

In the US it's comparing apples to oranges.

Ah, neat! I knew there would be something similar in English.

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...

It sees like every language has an equivalent, but with different things.

My guess it's from Latin, where the phrase is "Like apples to eggs" IIRC.

The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.

If anything, this situation would be like comparing clementines and oranges or something.

Saw a revue of the works of George Crumb at the Curtis Institute of Music yesterday. To say that it was a great experience would be understating the fact. Also, the composer was in attendance that evening; he played percussion on Mundis Canis, my favourite movement of which being "Heidel":

The only disappointing part was the fact that after the concert, any time I tried to even congratulate the man, at least two other people would appear in front of me. This happened for ten straight minutes, even though nearly everyone had left the hall...

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Saw Symphony X and Iced Earth last night. (And opening act Warbringer, but they didn't really make much of an impression.) Symphony X were awesome; Iced Earth were also awesome although the awesomeness was hampered by the fact that I was kinda tired by the time they started playing and the fact that I'm just not as familiar with their material.

I've seen a lot of people criticizing Symphony X for playing too much from Iconoclast on this tour, and I can't really deny that. They played one song ("Of Sins and Shadows") from The Divine Wings of Tragedy, one song ("Inferno (Unleash the Fire)") from The Odyssey, and for the encore they did some songs from Paradise Lost, but the rest was all from the new album. Which I didn't mind, really, being that Iconoclast has become one of my favourite albums of theirs, but it would've been nice to hear some of the older stuff.

edited 8th Feb '12 6:51:19 PM by Nyktos

I guess it is.

Got to go to Gigantour last night. It was pretty awesome, with Lacuna Coil, Volbeat, Motorhead and Megadeth, but mostly Megadeth. Since my brother is quite a Megadeth fan, we went together. Having to stand for 4-5 hours straight can be pretty tiring, but we managed to make it out alive and well.

Someone wake me from this nightmare, I've become my darkest fear...