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

Saw Nathaniel Rateliff in Mpls Sunday night, outdoors. Sounded great, with great energy. Highly recommend checking out the Night Sweats if you have the chance.

 

All great shows. I've never seen Ladysmith, envy that one a bit.

Beusoleil is always a good time, and Los Lobos is reliable as hell. That's going to be a fine show, grats.

 

Last night, small venue as part of Calgary Bluesfest, Sue Foley. She’s a virtuoso in any genre of music. Her main chops are blues but she plays mean Flamenco, too. Two of her heroes are Memphis Minnie and Charo, she’s recording a covers album of blues women.
Good Canuck girl relocated to Austin playing with Jimmie Vaughan, Billy Gibbons, Buddy Guy, etc. Look for her in your area, she’s phenomenal and touring extensively.
She’s the best most versatile guitar player I’ve ever seen. You won’t be disappointed.

 

Welp, bought tickets for the Thursday and Friday Massive Nights Hold Steady shows in Brooklyn in November. The tickets are not that expensive. Staying in Williamsburg on the other hand ...

 

John 5 is the most versatile guitarist you'll ever see. His parents watched Hee Haw and he was bitten by the music bug after seeing Jimmy Henley play banjo on the show. This, of course, led him to become the lead guitarist for Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, and, now, Motley Crue. Bad metal pays the bills but a John 5 show is metal, bluegrass, shred, country, Spanish guitar, and jazz. He still goes on stage looking like a complete freakshow but he has that Dolly Parton thing going on in that everyone who meets him is blown away with how nice he is (DSD included).

 

Saw the Boss last night at Gillette. I'd seen him twice before -- 1988 as a senior in HS (13th row, Tunnel of Love tour) and about 15 years ago, also at Gillette. I'm a casual Bruce fan and wasn't that interested in going -- setlist (at least the first half dozen songs or so) seemed kind of dull and tedious. But there were still tickets available at reasonable prices and my wife loves him and we'd never seen him together so what the hell -- I bought a couple on Friday.

GREAT show. He sounded and looked incredible, the band was phenomenal and the energy was amazing. For someone who's not a fanatical Bruce fan, it hit me hard. There was a highly emotional narrative arc throughout the show about the passage of time and still being here as so many people you cared about have passed on -- that's been something I've been feeling a lot lately as my oldest kid starts college, my parents have been getting older and I've had some close friends pass away. Not something I would have related to as a teenager but I relate to it at 53. I've often found Bruce to be kind of tedious and I as I mentioned before, I thought that way about the first few songs on the setlist he's been playing the whole tour, but I actually enjoyed those a lot more last night than I otherwise do. And other songs that give me an eye-roll (like "Glory Days") were showstoppers. The video tribute to Clarence Clemons during 10th Avenue Freeze-Out as his nephew Jake Clemons was playing this sax solo was very moving too. And like both other times I've seen him "She's The One" was an absolute showstopper. And though I'd never heard the solo acoustic song Bruce closed with, I'll See You In My Dreams, it hit me so hard -- his singing and the lyrics -- that I don't think I would be able to listen to it again. It crushed me.

One thing that I observed that I have to mention -- not as criticism, but just as pure observation -- is that the crowd was the absolute whitest crowd I've ever seen at any large event in my life. It was like every golf course or boat launch from Lake Winnepesaukee to Wellfleet emptied out into Gillette. I don't think I saw a single person of color who wasn't either working there or performing on stage. I found it fascinating, given how much of Bruce's catalog is inspired by Motown and Stax R&B and soul. Classic rock is a pretty white-dominated genre, and I expected the crowd to skew old, but I've never seen anything quite like that. I felt like a kid.

 

The whiteness of a Bruce concert is frustrating because he’s really an R&B bandleader at heart. If I remember correctly, Leonard Pitts wrote an article about that.

But the old joke is that there are more black people on stage than in the crowd at a Springsteen concert.

 

I swear I used to see more black people in the stands for Thrashers games than I did for his Atlanta show.

 

I had seen him twice before. I had never noticed or thought about it, though I'm sure the crowds were as white back then as they are now. I think I've just developed more awareness of that over time (back then I was more likely to notice if I was the only Jew in a particular place).

 

Not sure where I read it - might have been Dave Marsh's second book, Glory Days - but when Springsteen played in Africa as part of the Human Rights Now tour Clarence Clemons was quoted as saying he thought he'd died and gone to heaven when he looked out at all the black faces in the crowd.

 

And then he did.

/toosoon?

 

Saw Bruce last night at Met Life. It was great because it was Bruce, but very little audience interaction.