Concerts thread: Best/Worst/Next/Last one you attended?

Saw Seinfeld at the Beacon on Thursday night. He was pretty good, and awfully torqued up out of the gate.

He had a few senior moments. If you squinted just right, he at times seemed to riff the styles of Carlin and C.K. and Kinnison and a few others.

And he told the "symbol for Boron" joke to satisfy the TV show fans.

 

This show was a lot of fun, especially for Mrs. Coco, who's been a Prince fan since 1999 (the album, not the year!) For a bunch of people in their 40s and 50s, the crowd in the 1,500-seat theater was on its feet the whole time and we were too old/drunk to care how bad we looked dancing.

With Prince gone, Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin and bassist Brown Mark stepped to the front and did about half the vocals, with a younger guest singer named Stokley (not sure who he is) handling Prince's more energetic and falsetto vocals (Kiss, Baby I'm a Star, DMSR, etc.) Other deep cuts included "Sometimes it Snows in April," which Wendy and Lisa Coleman performed by themselves, and exactly one new song that The Revolution has worked up.

Let's face it, for most Prince fans, the height of his career was the songs he wrote and performed with The Revolution, and they delivered the goods in a show that was a celebration of the man and his music.

 

Wife and I are seeing Will Kimbrough and Rodney Crowell at a 250-seat opera house in Telluride on Saturday night.

 

Back-to-back concerts last weekend for your correspondent: Tom Petty at Air Canada Cewbntre on Saturday, Metallica the next night at the venue formerly known as SkyDome. First time I have done back-to-back shows since seeing both nights of Springsteen's visit to Toronto in 1985.

I saw Petty many times in the mid-to-late 80s but hadn't seen him since. This show never really caught fire for me. The band faithfully recreated the songs but Petty is no front man and some of the song choices left me puzzled: a song from Hypnotic Eye - admittedly a very good album - and stuff like "It's Good to be King" but not "The Waiting", "I Need to Know", "Don't Do Me Like That" or "Breakdown"? A guy celebrating a 40-year career playing the same, two-hour set every night? Meh. Peter Wolf opened - now that guy is a front man - and he wasn't bad.

I know Metallica plays a pretty static set these days but they were fucking great, even in a horrific venue. Met show No. 3 for me, first since 2003. New songs were great and it was awesome for an old-timer like me to hear "Hit the Lights". Nothing like those guys live.

 

Was supposed to see Sugar Ray in Stamford, Conn, last night. Luckily it was so damn hot that my gf agreed it'd be better to go to a Mexican restaurant and drink margaritas. Close one.

 

Did Wolf do the mic stand vault/plant?

I need / want to dig into his newer stuff, as with so many other. Time won't let me..

 

Going to Red Rocks in a bit.

Never been, but looking forward to it.

 

Lucky you have a gf at all given your shitty taste in music.

 

Saw J. Geils open for Seger a couple of years ago and Wolf reprised all his famed stage moves and his awesome stage patter.

 

I was drinking in the concourse during Avenged Sevenfold's set before Metallica but Volbeat, which started the show, was terrific. They'd be awesome in a much smaller venue.

 

I love Tom Petty's stuff, but he has never developed any kind of frontman persona.

He always seems to be great as a sideman/ guest performer. Hell, he even defers to Jeff Lynne, who isn't exactly Mick Jagger as a frontman.

Funny, in this new age where everybody has to tour: in the Seventies, when Pink Floyd was at its absolute popular apex, Roger Waters was the epitome of faceless front man. If anything Gilmour was more the public focus of the band.

Now 40 years later, Waters is fronting his own tours quite comfortably.

 

Show was remarkable. Kimbrough, who has played with Jimmy Buffett and others and is a big-time Nashville session guy, is legitimately one of the best acoustic guitar players breathing.

(As luck would have it, we have a mutual friend, who was able to forward my compliments to the chef today.)