Upcoming/Recent Shows

Big musical weekend!

Saw The Mars Volta on Saturday night who crushed it. I was pretty amazed at how good their show was.

Last night, I saw Thundercat and The Strokes open for RHCP. Stellar show! Thundercat rips. The Strokes aren't the greatest live band, but are one of my all time fav bands. RHCP brought it as usual.

Great weekend for music. Next week, I'm going to see Ringo!
 
Twilight Sad / The Cure - NIFCU Ampitheater, Chula Vista 5/20

Last time I saw the Cure was at the same venue 7 years ago, traffic was so bad I missed at least 1/3 of the Cure's set. Didn't make that mistake this time and got there way early. Really enjoyed the Twilight Sad's set, and the Cure were just amazing. We opted for Lawn tix, and were at the back of the lawn. As much as I hate the venue in terms of getting in / out, the acoustics are really good even from far back.

Robert Smith is a (inter)national treasure. Low ticket prices, low fees, low merch prices, and 29 song show? Can't get any better than that. Surprised my daughter and her gothy-bff with tickets to the show at the last minute too which was a blast to experience it with them. So good.

Billy Strings tonight!
 
Billy Strings - Open Air Theater San Diego 5/21

2nd time seeing Billy Strings, Unbelievable talent and cohesion in this band, the way they effortlessly pass focus and play off one another made for a really enjoyable show. Nice cover of Shady Grove thrown in. While I knew that he's played with various Grateful Dead members, I had no idea just how loved by the Jamband scene Billy was, the scene was reminiscent of a Dead show for sure.

www.setlist.fm

Billy Strings Setlist at Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, San Diego

Get the Billy Strings Setlist of the concert at Cal Coast Credit Union Open Air Theatre, San Diego, CA, USA on May 21, 2023 from the Spring Tour 2023 Tour and other Billy Strings Setlists for free on setlist.fm!
www.setlist.fm www.setlist.fm
 
I saw the Cure again last night for the second time in a week. Fingers crossed that they tour again once the new album drops - all of the new songs sound fantastic.

Upcoming shows for me include:

Toad the Wet Sprocket x 2
Taylor Swift @ Levi's Stadium
Beck w Phoenix and Jenny Lewis @ Concord Pavilion
The Swell Season @ Masonic SF
U2 @ the Sphere Las Vegas x 2
The National @ Bill Graham Civic SF
 
Sierra Ferrell @ The Culture Room, Fort Lauderdale, May 31

Opener for the show was Two Runner. Some nice fiddle songs, and a great start to the night.

Sierra was absolutely fantastic. Her voice is so strong and distinct. She was filming parts of the show for a documentary as well.
A lot of fun banter, and of course great songs for just shy of 2 hours.
I would definitely recommend seeing her if she is in your area.
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I probably stood in line for way too long to see Paramore at Madison Square Garden last night:

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Just a brief catch-up post on 4 great shows (all at the 9:30 club) since I've been MIA from this thread:

May 12 - Feist was fantastic. Amazing vocal control. Not sure how similar this was to other shows on this tour but it was a very interactive performance. I'll put the rest behind a spoiler in case anyone is planning to see her and doesn't want to know any details. It was a very satisfying show, though.
she had a circular stage set up in the middle of the floor with just room enough for herself and a mic stand. She just played acoustic guitar and sang, which for quite a lot of her songs, is all you really need. After each song she'd move the mic stand to a different side of the tiny little stage so she could face a different part of the crowd. There was a just a big white screen covering the stage but they had a projector hooked up to her cell phone in such a way that she could wave her phone around and you'd see what her camera saw on the screen. For the first couple of songs, she didn't make much use of it and the phone would just sit somewhere on a music stand or just on the floor of the stage facing upwards at her while she played the song. But then she asked if anyone in the audience wanted to take the phone and do some filming. Some guy volunteered and started moving through the crowd, filming peoples shoes or tattoos or whatever people wanted to show off. It was kind of distracting because sometimes you'd see something funny and everyone would laugh and Feist would have to spin around to see what was going on on the screen that people were laughing at and it kind of disrupted her songs but after a while people stopped laughing quite so loudly and the camera guy behaved himself a little more. Then he started playing around with the slowmotion and blurring effects on the camera and getting really into making really abstract patterns on the screen. Later, he disappeared down some hallway and found someone's purse and started looking through it [eliciting gasps from the crowd] and found a journal and removed it from the purse and brought it back to Feist on the stage. To me, this seemed obviously planned, but a lot of people didn't get that this was kind of staged, so they got upset when Feist picked up the journal and asked "should I read it?" She read some poetry out of it that sounded nice, and then put it down. After a few more songs, she hopped off the stage and started wandering through the crowd while singing, with her cellphone cameraman following her and she eventually crawled under the screen on the stage and then the screen went dark for a second...before it dropped to reveal a full band that was in place and ready to join in and play with Feist for the rest of the songs in the show. It was quite a fun surprise. They sounded great and played through several more songs. For the encore, they put the screen back up and they showed the journal again and the cameraman flipped through the pages of the journal, which just so happened to have all the lyrics to the last song written on the pages. It was kind of cool how it all came together like that, but yeah, definitely a different concert experience.

May 20 - The New Pornographers. I'm not a huge fan of their most recent album, but I love seeing them live. I was worried because the logo in the ticketmaster app for the ticket initially showed Neko Case with them, but then it updated several weeks before the show and she was no longer in the little logo, and I thought maybe she'd dropped out of the tour. But, I was pleasantly surprised to see her there at the show on stage. Unfortunately the people around me in the crowd were all talking really loudly through nearly the entire show and some other dudes started yelling at certain people to shut up and almost started a fight - the energy in the crowd was weirdly toxic for a band that seems endlessly generous and kind-hearted. I was getting frustrated and started writing a manifesto in my head for appropriate audience etiquette at concerts which I told myself I'd type up when I got home and e-mail to the club owners. But by the end of the show I was beaming a radiant smile with my heart full of sunshine because that's what the New Pornographers do!

May 23 - The Walkmen, 9:30 Club. I've never really been that into them but they were doing 4 nights at the 9:30 and a friend talked me into going. It was fun - didn't realize that they were all from the DC area, so there were lots of friends and family there. It was really effing loud, though. After the frustrations of the last show, I was kind of glad that there was just zero possibility that I'd be able to hear anyone in the audience even if they tried to scream, haha.

June 1 - Hot Chip, 9:30 Club. This was just last night! I'd seen Hot Chip once before at Echostage on the tour for Why Make Sense? back in 2015. I thought they sounded a lot better this time around. The setlist was also better this time, and hit all of my faves except "Started Right" (but I heard that at the 2015 show at least). Even the songs that I was less familiar with were just such fun vibes and the crowd was really into it. Weirdly, most of the people didn't seem to know the songs from "One Life Stand" and I was literally the only person who seemed to be excited for "Boy From School" but at least people weren't yelling over the music or trying to fight each other. It was also a good reminder that I need to turn the volume up when I listen to Hot Chip because there are lots of parts to their songs that I just hadn't heard and fully appreciated until hearing them live. So damn good. After the 2015 show, I was kind of on the fence about seeing them live again because it didn't seem like they really had figured out how to translate their songs from the studio to a live show all that well, but they sold me last night.
 
Lawn Pass Night #1 at Blossom Music Center was Dierks Bentley. I really know nothing about mainstream country, and honestly I mostly went because Molly Tuttle was opening, but Dierks was actually pretty entertaining.

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Jordan Davis was the second opener and was pretty much what you'd expect, but I will admit he did a pretty cool mash up with Coldplay's "Fix You" that I don't think many in the crowd even got the reference to, but I definitely appreciated.

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Like I said, Dierks was fun. I was surprised with how many songs I recognized. Very much enjoyed when Molly came out for two songs. They did this post encore Back to the Future spoof to do something called "Hot Country Knights" and played a medley of classic 90's country tunes whilst dressed up in costumes that left us all a little confused, but it was for sure, uh, unique.

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Saw Dead and Company at Jiffy Lube Live last night in VA. I’d never been to that venue before and neither had my friend. He picked me up at 4:45pm in Rosslyn. He had cued up a live recording of the Radiohead show in DC from June 3, 2012 [11 years ago, to the day], which both of us attended as our first Radiohead show, but separately, because we didn’t know each other until a year later, haha. It was only an hour drive to the venue, so I figured that we’d listen to about half of that show on the way and then finish the other half on the ride home. I was wrong.

We got in a line of cars around 5:45ish to get into the parking lot for the venue. We were barely moving. The show started at 7 so we figured that we’d still have plenty of time to get to the show. We were very, very wrong.

We sat in that damn line of cars for more than 2 hours (in addition to the hour that it took to drive out there). We finished not just that whole radiohead live show from june 2012 but also made it halfway through the nov 2003 live at earls court radiohead show (and we finished the rest of that show during the drive home). We sat in the car refreshing setlist.fm as people at the show posted the each of the first eight songs from the show that we missed. When we finally parked and got into the venue, the band wasn’t even playing because their first set had already ended.

It seemed like the venue had massively oversold tickets and far exceeded the capacity of both its parking lots and the actual venue. We were directed to parallel park up on the curb on a grassy hill that was at like a 30 degree angle, like from left to right. Once we’d walked the quarter mile from our “parking spot” to the venue, it took us about an hour to find an unoccupied scrap of grass on the lawn to stand on.

But my single most important hope for the show was that they’d play “One More Saturday Night” - and it was, in fact, Saturday night. And once we’d worked our way down the lawn through the crowd to a spot with a decent sightline of the stage, they did close their second set with “One More Saturday Night”. They ended the whole show with a singalong of “Ripple” which was another one that I was hoping to experience. They sounded incredible throughout the show, too. Really wish we’d been able to experience it at literally any other venue on earth, but closing with those two songs evened things out for me and made it all worth it.

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P.S. I’d seen people walking around with a cool looking poster from the show but they were sold out of it when i got to the merch tent. I considered buying one of the other posters for $65 or a tshirt for $50 but they didn’t even have my size for the shirt so I just gave up. But then today I did some googling and found a site selling prints of the poster I wanted for $25! Huzzah!
 
Ericj32 said:
Saw Dead and Company at Jiffy Lube Live last night in VA. I’d never been to that venue before and neither had my friend. He picked me up at 4:45pm in Rosslyn. He had cued up a live recording of the Radiohead show in DC from June 3, 2012 [11 years ago, to the day], which both of us attended as our first Radiohead show, but separately, because we didn’t know each other until a year later, haha. It was only an hour drive to the venue, so I figured that we’d listen to about half of that show on the way and then finish the other half on the ride home. I was wrong.

We got in a line of cars around 5:45ish to get into the parking lot for the venue. We were barely moving. The show started at 7 so we figured that we’d still have plenty of time to get to the show. We were very, very wrong.

We sat in that damn line of cars for more than 2 hours (in addition to the hour that it took to drive out there). We finished not just that whole radiohead live show from june 2012 but also made it halfway through the nov 2003 live at earls court radiohead show (and we finished the rest of that show during the drive home). We sat in the car refreshing setlist.fm as people at the show posted the each of the first eight songs from the show that we missed. When we finally parked and got into the venue, the band wasn’t even playing because their first set had already ended.

It seemed like the venue had massively oversold tickets and far exceeded the capacity of both its parking lots and the actual venue. We were directed to parallel park up on the curb on a grassy hill that was at like a 30 degree angle, like from left to right. Once we’d walked the quarter mile from our “parking spot” to the venue, it took us about an hour to find an unoccupied scrap of grass on the lawn to stand on.

But my single most important hope for the show was that they’d play “One More Saturday Night” - and it was, in fact, Saturday night. And once we’d worked our way down the lawn through the crowd to a spot with a decent sightline of the stage, they did close their second set with “One More Saturday Night”. They ended the whole show with a singalong of “Ripple” which was another one that I was hoping to experience. They sounded incredible throughout the show, too. Really wish we’d been able to experience it at literally any other venue on earth, but closing with those two songs evened things out for me and made it all worth it.

View attachment 174441

P.S. I’d seen people walking around with a cool looking poster from the show but they were sold out of it when i got to the merch tent. I considered buying one of the other posters for $65 or a tshirt for $50 but they didn’t even have my size for the shirt so I just gave up. But then today I did some googling and found a site selling prints of the poster I wanted for $25! Huzzah!
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Bristow sucks. Every major show there is like that with traffic. It’s a place where you need to get there 2 hours before the show starts.
 
Matt M said:
Caught Blitzen Trapper at The Ruins in Hood River last night. Finally had a band that I wanted to see playing at this venue I've been wanting to check out. Old shell of a warehouse style building near the railroad. Was perfect for a mild evening show in the Oregon gorge area.

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Such a great venue. I've seen Built to Spill and a number of other random bands play there over the years. How did Blitzen Trapper sound?
 
Ericj32 said:
June 1 - Hot Chip, 9:30 Club. This was just last night! I'd seen Hot Chip once before at Echostage on the tour for Why Make Sense? back in 2015. I thought they sounded a lot better this time around. The setlist was also better this time, and hit all of my faves except "Started Right" (but I heard that at the 2015 show at least). Even the songs that I was less familiar with were just such fun vibes and the crowd was really into it. Weirdly, most of the people didn't seem to know the songs from "One Life Stand" and I was literally the only person who seemed to be excited for "Boy From School" but at least people weren't yelling over the music or trying to fight each other. It was also a good reminder that I need to turn the volume up when I listen to Hot Chip because there are lots of parts to their songs that I just hadn't heard and fully appreciated until hearing them live. So damn good. After the 2015 show, I was kind of on the fence about seeing them live again because it didn't seem like they really had figured out how to translate their songs from the studio to a live show all that well, but they sold me last night.
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I was at that same Hot Chip show last week. I also saw the band on the Bath Full of Ecstasy Tour in 2019 at the 9:30 Club. The setlists for both shows were pretty similar. The band basically sticks to their most popular songs and adds in new songs from each album. I'm not complaining, though, as it results in a really fun show. A lot of their songs play a lot better live than on the album, too. Especially I Feel Better and Over and Over. Hot Chip is one of those bands, now, that I plan to see whenever they are in D.C. touring a new album.
 
Last Dead & Company show.

Left my house around 1:30 and arrived in a line of traffic waiting to get into the venue about 2 miles away at about 3:30. By 5:30, we were still 1.5 miles away and there was no way we were gonna be able to park at the venue in time for the 1st set, maybe even the full show at that rate. I bailed on the car to walk to the venue and see what the situation was to report back to my dad who was driving. Oh what a cluster it was, and I couldn't get cell signal to text him back. Eventually my dad ditched the car in an abandoned lot and walked as well. We made it in 15 minutes before the show started, and we were LUCKY. Didn't even make it to Shakedown, which is an absolute bummer.

Show was great. Probably the best they've sounded at a show I've been in attendance for. It really hit me during China Doll (of all songs) that it was my last show and I started crying. Crazy how special this band has become in the 8 years that I've been following. Tons of firsts for me from Dead & Co - Alabama Getaway, Bertha, Big Boss Man, China Rider, China Doll, Don't Ease Me In, Jack Straw, Peggy-O, The Weight, Truckin'.

Leaving the venue, I think there were just as many cars lining the streets outside the venue, in random parking lots, and in the median on the highway (!!!) than were in the actual parking lot. Ok, that's an exaggeration, but there was a huge wave of people that walked along with us back to the area we parked, again 1.5 miles away. Looking at the Instagram comments, sounded like a lot of people didn't even make it in at all and I guess they closed the parking lot to new cars at some point. Can't help but remember the groups of people looking for miracles around the gate and wonder how many of their cars took up spots in the lot.

 
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