***August Twenty
Seventh
Two
Thousand and Eight***
Outsude of the review below and a couple of posted photo journal
entries, I have absolutely nothing interesting
to say. I'm off to SF for the wedding of my main man Drew and his
lovely lady Thao, I'm sure there will be plenty
of photos from all of that to come.
(Photo of the
band in their younger days, stolen off of the internet)
Wilco
With Bon Iver
8/8/08 Koko Booth
Amphitheatre
In our quest to
fully ingratiate ourselves into complete suburban
yuppiedom, it was decided a trip to see Wilco at the
local outdoor
amphitheatre was required. Long gone are the days of getting to
see
Jeff Tweedy and company in small
clubs, or even medium-sized ones, so
if I want to enjoy their young, crisp dad-rock sound there was no way
around sub-
mersing ourselves into a sea of pressed J. Crew khakis, boat
shoes, and croakies.
To alleviate
some of the fear, we bolstered our numbers with a crew
of Wilmingtonians who drove up for the festivities.
Although greatly
outnumbered, if we "circled the wagons" as it were we would last much
longer if the former frat boys
decided to turn on us for not wearing
the requisite puka shell necklaces. Joking aside, the only real
threat
posed by
this gang of boobs was standing around talking about nonsense
and distracting from the concert, but I guess that is
true of any live
event. After a few songs, you can mostly tune it out and focus on
the
band (though the low volume of
this particular concert made it a hair
tougher).
As for the show
itself, it was what I expected: mixed bad from all
of their albums, but definitely leaning heavily on their
last couple of
records. The downside was that they only played one song from
their
best record "Summerteeth" (A
Shot in the Arm); luckily, they somewhat
made up for this by hitting "Being There" a little more heavily than I
would have
expected, and a couple of tracks from the "Mermaid Avenue"
sessions made it onto the set list as well. As for the new
songs, my
view on them performed live is about the same as my view on the last
couple of albums - pretty good, a little
too much wankery, not nearly
up to the level of their first three albums. We get it Nels
Cline,
you're a fantastic guitarist -
now let's shave about a half an hour's
worth of wonky guitar solos out of the set list and throw a few classic
songs in
there in their place.
Everything
sounded great though - I was very impressed with the
sound of the Koka Booth Amphitheatre, though my
expectations were set
pretty low as most outdoor venues sound like warm ass. The
wooded
setting was very nice,
and I'd go to more shows there if they'd be
bothered to book more worthwhile gigs.
Certainly worth
noting was local-lads-done-good Bon Iver as the
openers - I made a point to get there early enough to
see their entire
set, and I wasn't disappointed. they hit pretty heavily from
their
debut album with a few extra tracks
thrown in (a cover I didn't
recognize and at least one new song). The harmonies were amazing,
and
definitely the high-
light of their set...I'd give anything if more bands
could sing that well. Musically, they remind me of a mixture of
the
Kingsbury Manx, The Radar Bros., and Jose Gonzalez...modern folk with
tight harmonies and some sonic experiment-
ation thrown in on occasion.
I know they pretty much tour constantly, but a local gig in a decent
sized venue is in order,
and how.
I think I've found my
halloween costume for this year!!!
Les
Savy Fav 7/12/08
Duke University
– Nasher Museum of
Art
I've been to a
lot of shows, but
without question this is the only performance I have ever attended
where the lead singer of
the band I was there to see tried to display
my genitals on giant screen via a webcam camera.
It can get
dreadfully hot here in the
summer, so the prospect of an outdoor show can be an iffy
affair...luckily, it was a de-
cently cool evening, and the sweating
only started as I took to dancing my ass off once the Fav started
their show. This
was only helped as the band started close to an
hour late, marred with some manner of technical glitchery involving
their
giant display screens.
With Les Savy
Fav, you never know
exactly what is going to happen from one show to the next, and for
this event it re-
volved around giant screens where webcam-type cameras
would be displaying images. One of these cameras was
taped to lead
singer Tim Harrington's head, and the other to some random kid's
shoulder who roamed the audience. Or
at least, this is where the
cameras started – it didn't take long for Tim to remove them and go
nuts...some of these
activities included:
tying a camera to a rope and swinging it above his head;
throwing a camera into the crowd;
shoving a camera down his pants;
using the camera to get a close up of his bellybutton for an
extended period of time;
and, of course, trying to put it up the bottom of my shorts.
Here is a
picture of Tim displaying one of his krazy kameras:
Goofiness aside,
the band put on an
amazing show as they always do, drawing heavily from their more
recent release
“Let's Stay Friends”. But it was a long set, and
they played lots of older favorites like “Reprobate's Resume”,
“Who
Rocks the Party”, “Dishonest Don”...no “Blackouts”
or “Adopduction” sadly, but enough goodness to quell my
dis-
appointment. They did close out their pre-encore set with a cover
of the Superchunk classic “Precision Auto”, much to
the delight
of the whooping and hollering and singing-along crowd.
And even with
all that rock, the
shindig ended right around 10 PM so old fogies like myself could get
home at a decent
hour. Top-notch rock entertainment and an early
bedtime, if that ain't a successful night out I don't know what is.
Also: a
completely random photo of Chelsea that I forgot I had, which of course
she hates... (side note -
when it a half-frame photo and you have two shots like this, do you
refer to it in the plural as "photos", or the
singular as "photo"?)
Also
also: a completely random photo of Me, Chelsea, Christy and Tim from a
trip to Yosemite that I also forgot I
had.
The benefits of occasionally looking through your backstock of
snaps. Gotta love Tim's hair, best hair in the business.
Third: I've recently been digging back into the Teenage Fanclub back
catalog, and decided to post this gem... Teenage Fanclub - God Knows It's True
EP. 1. God
Knows It's True. 2. Weedbreak.
3. So
Far Gone. 4. Ghettoblaster.
Fourth: I made a mix. For the ladies, about the ladies.
Well, for anyone really. It is all classic rock, as is the style
of the times. Warning: this mix contains both Styx and Barry
Manilow. Download it here:
