‘06-’07 Concert Musings

2006 was the best year in my life-to-date in terms of concert attendance; I caught Steely Dan, Aerosmith, The Strokes, and NIN, among others. Since I didn’t blog about it then, I’ll describe each quickly:

• Steely Dan - $10 tickets for lawn tix at Nissan Pavilion, AWESOME show, amazing musicianship. There was a trumpet/trombone “duel” of sorts, Donald Fagen is amazing, and they played every song I wanted, including an encore of “My Old School,” which is prolly my favorite SD cut.
• The Strokes - Biased: I love them to death. Outdoor venue, VERY small, no seats, but I was standing dead center not fifteen feet from Julian Casablancas. I lost a $90 pair of Raybans in the crowd and there was the gratuitous drunk asshole to my right, but it was still as close to a religious experience as a secular humanist can manage.
• Aerosmith - Dig the band, but in this case the lawn seating was detrimental, as it was difficult to make out what was going on. Also, they stuck to a set that was far more 70s than 80s or 90s, with “Janie’s got a gun” and other tracks that I love being unfortunately AWOL… still some great guitar solos and music, but I paid seven times what I did for Steely Dan, with identical seating, and vastly preferred that concert.
• NIN - Great, but no “Sanctified” (with its lovably synthetic slap bass) meant that I was a little let down. By far the best lightning and pyrotechnics of any concert I’ve seen. I’m not really into their newer stuff; to me, everything since Downward Spiral has been… a downward spiral. Nevertheless, like Portishead, this is a band that defines a genre and sounds unlike anything else.

Thus far in 2007 I’ve seen CAKE (Pier 6, Baltimore) and Live (Celebrate Fairfax), both of which rocked. I’m a huge fan of the former, and appreciate the latter enough to dig a full set, which they played. Appropriately, there was lightning crashing - almost in sync with the lyrics - during “Lightning Crashes”; don’t know how often that’s happened for them, but the weather-imitating-art-imitating-life shtick never loses its novelty. CAKE were great save for the grown-up-physically-not-mentally-ex-frat group of absolute losers that were intent on discrediting the male of the species behind us. I seem to have bad luck in concert seating when it comes to these folk; it’s a damn shame I’m not an ominpotent demigod with the ability to control life and death at my whim, is all I’m saying. They played a number of songs I wasn’t familiar with, as I’ve mostly stuck with listening to their singles, so it was a great mix of familiar sing-alongable material and new stuff I went back home and checked out.

Going to Video Games Live! again at the Kennedy Center at the end of this month, and in July will be catching Gogol Bordello at the 9:30. Also planning on seeing the Joey DeFrancesco Trio at Blues Alley this Thursday; never seen B3 jazz organ done right in person, so that should be rather awesome.

I’ve always preferred studio cuts to live recordings as I feel they more accurately represent the specific wishes of the composer; it’s similar to preferring the director’s cut of a film, in my opinion. However, in recent years I’ve learned to appreciate more that it’s not a question of better or worse: seeing someone live is just… different. A different way of experiencing their music. For the purposes of historical record, any sort of “academic” appreciation of music, and focused, critical listening, I still hold true to my preference for polished, perfected tracks, but I’ve learned to appreciate the live/concert experience as well.