SNOWPATROL

The beginning of the concert season continued with a performance by Snow Patrol this Friday night at the Fillmore Auditorium, the first night on their spring tour.  The sold out show drew in a crowd early with lines stretching over a block and a half to get into the venue. I took my teenage daughter and one of her friends to the show, surprised to see that most of the people in attendance were closer to my age than theirs.  Having arrived later than usual, I had no choice but to stand about 50 feet from the stage.

Ed Sheeran, the UK based singer/songwriter, opened the show with his one man act, using special effects recording techniques to create a layered sound that made gave the appearance of there being a full band behind him.   Being the opener for a restless crowd who has already been waiting over an hour to get in was challenge enough, but doing so with only the strength of your vocal ability accompanied by an acoustic guitar upped the stakes a bit more.

A reviewer said:

Throat issues and rockin’ anthems don’t exactly go together, but Snow Patrol made it work Friday night when the Scottish/Irish band brought its Fallen Empires tour to the Fillmore Auditorium. Lead singer Gary Lightbody apologized repeatedly. “We’ll do better next time, I promise,” he said at one point, about the fact that his voice was faltering, and “How do you guys deal with this altitude; it’s crazy?” he asked, clearly out of breath, as he sucked down water at every chance, sometimes in the middle of songs.

Add the fact that the band had periodic technical difficulties, and you’d think the crowd would have started chucking tomatoes. Not so. The show was a hand-waving dancefest, spirited and upbeat, and sometimes surprisingly so for a band often better known for its wistful, pensive ballads.

Credit Lightbody himself for keeping everyone happy. Sure, the rest of the band holds up their end of things – particularly guitarist Nathan Connolly and drummer Jonny Quinn, the latter of whom is responsible for driving home the points this endearingly earnest band is always making – but it was shaggy-haired Lightbody who came out with his hands spread wide to the crowd to start them off with a version of “Hands Open” that sent out sharp, crowd-pumping guitar ripples.

Read it all here, with more pictures:
http://www.heyreverb.com/2012/04/30/snow-patrol-fillmore-denver-photos-review/

More pictures here:
http://www.whatstheruckus.com/2012/05/photos-snow-patrol-at-the-fillmore-denver/

Download the show here:
https://www.rapidshare.com/#!download|755|1222351896|SP_Fillmore_2012-04-27.rar|233851

A HANGOVER NO PIL CAN TAKE AWAY

Bad news was received this week when I was told a dear friend of 40 years was in the hospital and his cancer was terminal. By the time I got the news he was essentially bedridden and unresponsive, his family in attendance for the purpose of wishing him farewell. I met him in Mr. Cisik's 9th grade English class, a friendship that was to grow and endure through the years. The pain and sleeplessness he was experiencing these last several months probably allowed him to accept his fate and embrace the coming end. One of my best friends is gone and my world has become so much smaller.


Instruments beeping
Change to a steady alarm
And with that, he's gone

Mr. Cisik asks
Two pyramids and a sphinx
A friendship for life


Bears a heavy weight
Borne with such dignity
His smile is all we see

Forty years seems long
Leaving behind a lifetime
To never hear his voice


Sides with the angels
Persuasive with the good book
Praying hands give a push

Late night Christmas Eve. Time for some music to chase away Santa Claus. First up was a short set by Snow Patrol, a live performance from Dundee, Scotland on March 13, 2006 which was broadcast on FM radio.

Download it here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0880M7E4

What I really was waiting for was an excellent quality soundboard recording of Public Image Limited's show at the O2 Academy in Manchester, England on December 19, 2009 while on their 2009 Reunion 'ALife' Tour. Great performance even though John Lydon was ill with the flu. At the beginning he really berates someone in the audience for throwing a beer at him while on stage. After being scolded in that fashion, I can imagine that person being very well behaved for the remainder of the show.

This was written about this particular performance:

THERE’S still a certain something about Johnny. He’s still the wilful, arrogant boy we’ve all loved down the years.

Public Image is the opening battlecry, beautiful in its anti-hero message and added to by Lydon’s beautiful riposte to someone who tried to shower him with lager: “I’ve had your money, you can go home now.’’

Draped in some kind of serge straitjacket, he is still the ultimate livewire. Too scary to be confronted by drunks on the last train home, yet articulate enough to take home to your mum. If she collects national treasures.

He billed his appearance as dubious entertainment and dwelled on the idea of turkeys before Christmas. He was correct. But he’s no pantomime dame. Yes, he is camp. Yes he had the knowing asides. And yes, we never know his real hair colour.

Read it all here:

http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/reviews/10017516_pil_are_unsweetened_and_unadulterated

Find it here:

http://sex-pistols-pil-live.blogspot.com/2010/12/19th-december-2009-o2-academy.html

WHEN IT SNOWS, WE GO ON PATROL IN OUR PLAIN WHITE Ts

A governor mandated furlough day scheduled for Friday meant it was a short week. Coupled with Columbus Day, it turned into a long weekend. Unfortunately, the combination of poor weather, a lack of family interest and my sons worsening cold did not result in the fruition of my original plan to do some in state traveling. Being home bound, I stayed busy with other things.

Realizing that we had no plans to leave home, I purchased a ticket Wednesday to see Snow Patrol and Plain White T's perform at the Fillmore in Denver. Thursday night an inch of snow fell at the house (the seasons first), requiring I start a fire in the fireplace to ward off the frigid outside temperature. Cleaned the garage of all the residing tools and supplies, making room for the car once again. A trip to the landfill helped remove the final evidence of a summer spent working on the house. On to other things. More snow was predicted to fall Friday night following the concert.

Plain White Ts, an American pop rock band from Chicago, opened the show. I moved up front as close as I could get without having to push through the tightening crowd around the stage. They put on a good show, which included their Grammy nominating hit "Hey There Delilah" and "1,2,3,4", and certainly warmed me up for the act to follow.

His anaesthetic

Slow drip into the bloodstream
Tequila's warm glow

Traders on Wall Street

Know death is profitable

Our red yields their green

Snow Patrol closed the show this evening. A second great performance.

Delvin Neugebauern of the Colorado Springs Gazette wrote this about the show:

DENVER - The Glasgow-based rock band Snow Patrol gave a stirring, uplifting performance to a capacity crowd at the Fillmore Auditorium on Friday night.

The show got off to a shaky start, though. During the opening song, “If There’s a Rocket Tie Me to It,” bassist Paul Wilson experienced some problems with his amp set-up. Singer Gary Lightbody apologized to the audience, and promised that once the stage hands resolved the issues, the band would pick things up “as if that never happened.”

After five minutes, the group returned and started into the song “Chocolate.” By that song’s end, it did seem as if the initial gaffe never happened. The rest of the performance erased any concerns over Snow Patrol’s ability to deliver the goods.

Snow Patrol specializes in hymn-like melodies set to driving rock dynamics. Its songs build up to surging choruses before dropping into more hushed passages. Augmented by a percussionist and an occasional third guitarist, the quintet - Lightbody, Wilson, guitarist Nathan Connolly, drummer Jonny Quinn and keyboardist Tom Wilson - maintained this balance of the anthemic and the intimate perfectly throughout its show.

The set list included plenty of songs that made people raise their hands and cheer and yell. Yet in song after song, I could look around and see rapt wonder on many faces in the crowd. They stared at the stage as if they were in a small room, with the band playing just to them.

The only thing that could jar such a mood was a reminder of the day’s headlines. Lightbody dedicated the song “Run” to Barack Obama, calling it “a great day for America” that the President had won the Nobel Peace Prize. This drew a mixed response from the Denver crowd. Once the singer started into the song, though, any stirred-up rancor was forgotten quickly.

Like most singers who come to Colorado on tour, Lightbody had some difficulty performing at this altitude. His voice began to lose some of its strength on the high notes. Apparently, he decided his voice needed a break mid-set, letting the audience handle a lot of the singing on “Shut Your Eyes.” “One of these days,” he told the crowd afterward, “you’re all going to have to come over to my house, and I’ll sing for you there.”

Apparently, spending the summer as a warm-up act for such heavy hitters as Coldplay and U2 hasn’t affected Snow Patrol’s onstage presentation. The group kept its stage relatively simple. The lighting and the full-length video screen behind the band were fairly standard stage equipment for a venue the size of the Fillmore.

The group started winding down its set with “the world concert premiere” of the upcoming single “Just Say Yes.” The song seems to have been circulating online: I heard quite a few voices around me singing along. After that new song, the band finished its main set with “Take Back This City” and “Open Your Eyes.”

A minute later, text began scrolling on the projection screen, receding back as it scrolled, “Star Wars” style. The text announced the first encore: “The Lightning Strike,” the three-part song that closes Snow Patrol’s most recent album, “A Hundred Million Suns.” The band played this 17-minute piece in front of a video that presented the whole history of the universe - from galaxies forming to life beginning on Earth, right up to the Snow Patrol concert itself - with animated folded-paper figures. Following that, the band played the more compact rocker “You’re All I Have.” to close the show.

Contrary to their band name, opening act Plain White T’s dressed for the occasion in white dress shirts and ties (except for guitarist Dave Tirio, who wore a leather jacket onstage). The Chicago quintet’s crowd-pleasing set was full of tight pop-oriented ensemble playing and four-part vocal harmonies. The 40-minute set included one brand-new song, “Boomerang,” that sounds destined for inclusion on a future movie soundtrack.

http://soundboard.freedomblogging.com/2009/10/10/review-snow-patrol-called-in-for-light-melodies-driving-rock/1065/