SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING OLD

The hangover weekend after the Van Halen concert, that event still swirling in my mind.  The craving for more pushed me into making new arrangements to get a second dose of their on stage party.  I tried drowning out the sound with new music this Firday and Saturday night.

Beastie Boys
Paradiso Amsterdam June 21, 1994

And now for something totally diffeent...in recognition of a) Adam Yauch's recent passing and b) Tony having gotten a tattoo on his arm noting the band and their second studio album, Paul's Boutique, I looked for and found the excellent soundboard recording of the Beastie boys performing in Amsterdam. The Beastie Boys are an American hip hop band from New York City, that originally formed as a four-piece hardcore punk band in 1979. For the majority of its career, the group has consisted of three MCs and musicians Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass) and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar). 

Download it here:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/c0282a3/n/Beastie_Boys_1994-06-21_Paradiso_2C_Amsterdam_2C_NL__5BSBD_5D.zip

Blur
Roskilde Festival Denmark June 28, 2003

Continuing my exploration of the mid 1990's Britpop scene, brought on by reading John Harris' book "Britpop, Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock", I downloaded Blur's live show at the roskilde Festival in Demark, another excellent soundboard recording.

Wikipedia writes:

Blur are an English alternative rock band. Formed in London in 1988 as Seymour, the group consists of singer Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James and drummer Dave Rowntree. Blur's debut album Leisure (1991) incorporated the sounds of Madchester and shoegazing. Following a stylistic change—influenced by English guitar pop groups such as The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles and XTC—Blur released Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife (1994) and The Great Escape (1995). As a result, the band helped to popularise the Britpop genre and achieved mass popularity in the UK, aided by a famous chart battle with rival band Oasis dubbed "The Battle of Britpop".

Frontman Damon Albarn went on to form the virtual band Gorillaz, composed of four animated band members created in 1998.  Love their music too.

Download it here:
https://www.rapidshare.com/files/512123223/betruwuwru1.rar
https://www.rapidshare.com/files/3873127674/betruwuwru2.rar

The Ramones
Winterland San Francisco CA December 28, 1978

I was wanting another hit of fast guitars and picked up The Ramones performing live in San Francisco back in 1978 when the punk music scene was in decline after blosseming for just a brief few years .  "One, two , there, four" and off they go!

Download it here:
https://rapidshare.com/#!download|684|3613259337|RamlandSFDec281978.rar|111055

The Doors
Live In New York, January 18, 1970

This is show three, performed on the second day of their two day stint in New Your City.  Excellent performance and sound.  Nothing more to say.

"Other highlights abound throughout the set such as “Moonlight Drive” from the third show which is hypnotically perfect in every way. The band is dead-on in backing up one of Morrison’s finest vocal performances complete with the “Horse Latitudes” poem – when the band lays back and let’s Morrison do his thing the performance becomes pure Doors magic, a perfect blend of heavy groove and exotic mysticism."

Read it here:
http://www.musicmookreview.com/2011/05/the-doors-live-in-new-york-1970/

Echo and the Bunnymen
Bologna Teatro Tenda May 17, 1984

The Bunnymen in a decent live recording from a show in northern Italy.  Classic performance.

Download it here:
https://rapidshare.com/#!download|776|2517085833|EATB170584.rar|76453

VAN HALEN ROCKS DENVER

When they announced the tour I knew immediately I'd be going to their show if they ever made it to Denver.  And once those tickets went on sale, I had four in hand, one for me and three for everyone else in the family.  The question I always wondered about was whether, like the 2007-2008 tour, I'd go see them in other cities as they made their way across the country.  Even after listening to several of the bootleg recordings from this tour I was still not convinced, unwilling to shell out big money chasing their party from city to city.  This show was what I was waiting for.

We had dinner at Earl's in Cherry Creek after work, the kids meeting us part way to the office.  From there it was straight to the Pepsi Center and into our seats on the third level balcony with a clear, guaranteed unobstructed, row 1 view of the stage.  By the time we sat down Kool and the Gang were already making a good impression on what eventually turned out to be a full house.

Once Van Halen took the stage I was well no my way to nirvana, their show pushing me into that voodoo trance state of mind where nothing but the music mattered.  After taking a few pictures, I said screw this and just went for the music.  The kids got to see their dad get a little crazy: dancing in the aisle; defying security; screaming at the top of his lungs; challanging a female security staff person to show her nipple (after she said she could see mine); standing on the armrests of the seat on the edge of the balcony; and eventually passing out in the car on the way home from the overdose of excitement.  Dave miss a few lyrics?  Changed some words?  What's new?  He made it more entertaining than any of the shows I went to on the last tour.  I loved it!  What a show!! 

I was reminded why I love this band so much.  And it was the catalyst I needed to convince me to buy a ticket for another show in early June, paying good money for an up front seat close to the stage.  The party will continue!

“It’s like a time machine where nothing ever changes,” said original Van Halen frontman David Lee Roth about halfway through their set in front of a mostly enthusiastic crowd at the Pepsi Center on Thursday night. There was a hint of iciness in his tone, perhaps leading one to believe the recent rumors (of the band hating each other) that spread following the announcement of many cancelled dates for the remainder of their summer reunion tour.

The band ran through a setlist that matched nostalgic faves (“Everybody Wants Some!”, “Jump”, “Dance The Night Away”) with select tunes from their recently released “A Different Kind Of Truth”, some of which worked (the rocking “She’s The Woman”) and some which didn’t (the heinously awful “Tattoo” and dull “The Trouble With Never”).

A high point: the band (i.e. the Van Halen family) — drummer Alex, guitar god Eddie and his young son Wolfgang, who handled himself admirably as replacement for original four-stringer Michael Anthony on bass and high harmony vocals — played mercilessly tight. A master of his instrument, Eddie clearly still has his chops, and it was a thrill to witness his fretboard fireworks in person.

However, Roth was an embarrassment.

The once lionesque front man came off like a slightly creepy fourth wheel who’d forgotten to take his meds for the past several months. Throughout the set, Diamond Dave dropped words, changed melodies and even forgot lyrics to the simplest of songs (“Oh, Pretty Woman”). Thankfully, the crowd knew the songs well enough to really amp up the energy and do them justice by happily singing along (especially on “Runnin’ With The Devil” and “Hot For Teacher”).

In his defense, it didn’t help that Roth’s vocals were buried in a murky mix. And really, it could have been worse — it could have been Sammy Hagar up there singing.

Setlist:

“Unchained”
“Runnin With The Devil”
“She’s the Woman”
“Romeo Delight”
“Tattoo”
“Everybody Wants Some!”
“Somebody Get Me A Doctor”
“China Town”
“Hear About It Later”
“Oh, Pretty Woman”
"Drum Solo"
“You Really Got Me”
“The Trouble With Never”
“Dance The Night Away”
“I’ll Wait”
“And The Cradle Will Rock …”
“Hot For Teacher”
“Women In Love”
“Beautiful Girls”
“Ice Cream Man”
“Panama”
"Guitar Solo"
“Ain’t Talkin Bout Love”
“Jump”

Read it here with more pictures:
http://www.heyreverb.com/2012/05/25/van-halen-denver-pictures/

Eddie, Alex and Wolfgang were all in fine form for the most part. Roth seemed to be the weaker link. At times, he seemed to be trying to compensate with antics, the occasional karate kick, James Brown spin and he even did the splits -- which was pretty damn impressive, both that he's still able to pull off that sort of move and that it didn't tear the crotch out of his skin-tight pants. Just the same, dude managed to give a fairly decent performance, hamming it up, sporting a cheesy grin most of the show.

Read more here:
http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2012/05/review_van_halen_denver.php

Download the flac file here:
https://rapidshare.com/#!download|540p2|4211101630|VHDENVER120524FLAC.rar|825529|0|0

Download the 320 kbps mp3 file here:
https://rapidshare.com/files/245370600/VHDENVER120524MP3.rar

ANNULAR ECLIPSE 2012

The family and I drove nonstop to Albuquerque, New Mexico this past Saturday for the sole purpose of seeing the 2012 annular eclipse, which began somewhere in China and ended a short time later in Texas just across the border from NM. By the time we arrived, checked into a hotel and had dinner in Old Town Albuquerque, the day was largely over. In one of the art gallery’s I came across the work of an artist who I liked, bought a piece and hope to have him do more for me. Saintfied dead artists and musicians. Sid Vicious with a halo??

D-Day was Sunday. We spent the late morning/early afternoon hiking in the Petroglyph National Monument on the mesa west of town. The hike we did had over 5000 documented petroglyphs pecked in the dessert varnish on the rock surfaces, blocks of basalt on the edge of a 150 thousand year old lava flow. They were created in this harsh landscape 400 or more years ago.  At this time I began hearing that things were going to be busy around eclipse time, the west side of the monument (where the cinder cones were and where I wanted to be) being closed because “all tickets had been sold.” I overheard others talk about being on the west side of town late in the afternoon as well. After the two hour hike in the monument we drove back to Old Town Albuquerque where we did some more tourist shopping and had an early dinner. By 5 PM we found ourselves with a few other drivers parked in the right of way along the road leading up to the west entrance to the monument, setting up our gear along the fence line with a clear view to the west. We were within a mile of the centerline for the eclipse. A few clouds were present that eventually burned off before the critical moment. Soon vehicle after vehicle pulled up and parked up and down the fence line and a festive, circus-like atmosphere ensued. Tables came out, lawn chairs, food and drink. I heard someone say this was a big gathering of nerds. The ultra light airplanes joined us, buzzing the fence line 20 feet off the ground.

At 6:28 the show began at first contact, the edge of the sun dimpled by the moon. We watched as the moon took more and more out of the suns disk, its progress marked by noting when it covered three prominent sunspot groups visible on the sun's surface. The moment everyone was waiting for happened around 7:30. The trailing edge of the moon gradually moved onto the sun’s disk, second contact. You could easily see the moon’s movement as the two points of the light crescent moved towards one another, touch and complete the “ring of fire.” This bright ring was visible for a little over 4 minutes, during which the throng of people cheered and clapped. The ring was broken at third contact and the eclipse went in reverse with the moon exiting the suns disk on its upper left-hand side. People gradually began returning to their vehicles and made their way back to Albuquerque. We waited for sunset along with a bunch of others. And it was a spectacular sunset with a crescent sun setting behind distant mountains. 

Then it all came to an end and the remaining vehicles returned to the highway and back home. We drove out of Albuquerque by 9 PM and were back home in Colorado by 3:30 AM. Lots of driving but the whole experience was worth it. Our daughter’s high school graduation ceremony began at 8 AM. I was tired all day.

The next total eclipse is happening in November in Australia! Who’s going?

The night before our departure I listened to some music.  I continued with The Doors, listening to their second show in the evening of January 17, 1970.  A fantastic show on this great quality recordin!

It was written:

It is this spontaneous fire that made the Doors, and the performances contained within this set, such an exciting live act. Take for instance the three searing versions of “Who Do You Love?” The first one, from the first show, is the one we all know and love from the much loved In Concert album. Here, in it’s original running order in the show, followed by a dramatically perfect “Little Red Rooster,” a boogiefied “Money” and a pointed “Light My Fire,” we can hear just how capable the band was of providing blistering blues one minute, and psychedelic wonder the next.

One of the more interesting aspects of this set is getting to hear the progression of the band, and the ecstatic New York crowd, over four distinct shows. As each show progresses you can hear the band taking just a few more chances in the music. Compare the evening show of the first night to the earlier show and the band sounds just a little more loose, wild, and perhaps like they’ve been doing some backstage “relaxing” between shows. The crowd too becomes a part of the performances, growing ever more passionate as the nights goes on.

Read it all here:
http://www.musicmookreview.com/2011/05/the-doors-live-in-new-york-1970/

The second half of the evening was spent with Ian McCulloch, listening to his Pledge Music release of his latest solo album.  I'm still listening to it to get a better sense of the completed work.  It has been various described as "a boring pile of shit",  "nought earth shattering new on it", "apathetic",   "Adult Contemporary", "children's nursery rhymes",  "it's overwhelmed by schmaltz" and corny and cliched," all of which I agree with based on my limited exposure to it.  Many others like it, but I'm finding it easy to disagree.

Can't wait to get the autographed copy of his acustic performance at the Liverpool Anglican Cathederal.  That I know will sound like heaven!