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

All the issues in the concert business these days - larcenous ticket and venue prices, scalpers, bots, idiots with phones etc. - and THIS is this person's biggest concern?

 

Way better show than I expected. Really good, really positive energy. Go Canada.

 

Paul McCartney played a couple new songs last summer, and even joked about it.

"I'm going to play you a couple of our new songs now whether you like it or not ... because I can."

It's a fine line, and sometimes it seems a band had to know its audience. I used to see the Black Crowes a lot. Within a few weeks, I saw them play a club show, and roar through a lot of newer material. Then I saw them at "Taste of Chicago," on the main stage playing a free show for tens of thousands, and I don't think they played anything recorded after 1995.

 

I was thinking about this a couple weeks back watching a PBS special (basically an infomercial) for a new Jimmy Buffett CD of songs from his earliest days called Buried Treasures.

In addition to interviews with Buffett and people around him in those days they showed him doing three songs, "Margaritaville", "Fins" and "Changes in Latitudes", at a show in Vegas. Buffett was obviously the centre of attention and seemed to be having a great time but the band looked bored to death. Being in his band looked like nothing more than a gig, probably a well-paying one but a gig none the less.

I have never seen Buffett and I know he has The Big 8 or 10 songs he always does but does he ever mess with those songs, radically rearrange them, do them acoustically maybe add some rarities or deep cuts or is it all parrots and beach balls all night?

 

I also wonder what artists think about their older material once they have altered direction. Like, does post-“Kid A” Radiohead actively hate the music recorded by “The Bends” Radiohead? Does it consider it a mere step on the journey to “Kid A,” something not worthy of playing any longer now that it has reached enlightenment?

 

I listened to a bunch of Radiohead shows from the last tour on Youtube and they played stuff from the Bends and OK Computer. I think I heard them play 'Creep' at one show. They don't mess around with the songs much and their setlists seemed very similar. I was surprised and bored by it.

 

Interesting. I recall critics swooning when Radiohead shelved the guitars and started recording noise instead of songs - They are saving rock 'n' roll! Now that Jack White has put out an album that should have been titled, "Stupid Weird Shit," does he think that "Hotel Yorba" was kid's stuff? Does he think Son House isn't so great after all? I realize artists have to move in fresh new directions. In their heart of hearts, I wonder what they think about the stuff that made them famous. I understand that they probably get bored playing the songs show after show, year after year. But, given the chance to go back in time, would they write it again?

 

I'm enjoying watching Generation X age even faster than their parents.

 

You can set your watch by this in Rolling Stone's annual summer concert issue: Veteran rock act hitting the road and in addition to the album they are flogging will play classic hits and deep cuts, rarities and stuff they haven't played since their club days. Then you check their set lists and it's the same show they have always done every night.

Springsteen and Pearl Jam fans go to multiple shows because they never know what they will get and come to expect the unexpected. As much as some acts envied Prince's approach near the end of his career of playing what he wanted, how he wanted and not giving a fuck, most of them are too married to the big bucks that come with giving their crowd what it wants and expects.

 

I'm mostly finished with the recent Lou Reed bio (looking forward to the Metallica part) and DW's issue came up. Lou changed frequently, album to album, tour to tour. It seems like for live shows he kept his old stuff, just performed it in whatever style he was playing at that time. Starting out with Velvet Underground, there isn't much for Lou Reed to look back on and feel like it was pop shit.

The book mentioned Dylan and Neil Young as other performers who change styles during their careers. Don't know how it plays out in live shows.

 

Tom Petty and Van Morrison both caught a lot of flak for getting into some deeper cuts at earlier appearances at Jazzfest. Morrison responded on his next time through by playing "Brown-Eyed Girl," as the second or third song in his set. Petty, too, stuck pretty much to the formula at his show last year.

I'd personally like to see Aerosmoth delve into the blues stuff they were doing a few years ago, and I'd like to see Steve Miller plumb the depths of his superior early (pre-Joker) material. But I'm betting Tyler and the boys will provide a heavy dose of "Sweet Emotion" and "Dream On," and Stevie will offer a lot of "Jet Airliner" and "Take the Money and Run."