Category: Live Show Review

Well I unfortunately gotta keep this one short and sweet.

A little backstory on this concert.  It was the 30th anniversary of Subpop.  Subpop is of course the famous record label that gave bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden their start.  After 30 years, and many ups and downs, they’re still at it.  Some bands on their label are currently some of my favorites, so I was really looking forward to this concert.

Unfortunately my favorite signee of theirs, Afghan Whigs, played the night before.  I was at the Pearl Jam concert so I can’t complain too much. Even though they wouldn’t be at the festival I was still really looking forward to catching Bully, Metz, Hot Snakes, and Father John Misty.

After Pearl Jam I ubered back to my place and went to bed as soon as I could in preparation for this free outdoor concert.  Me and my roommate woke up like giddy school kids, ran up to the gas station to buy some booze, and came back down to get the party started at 10am.  Our friend Saman showed up and we threw many, many drinks back waiting for the music to start.  Around noon we headed to the beach which is only a block away.

During what I’ll call chapter one I was able to catch Bully, Kyle Craft, and Metz.  I wasn’t expecting much out of Kyle Craft but was very pleasantly surprised.  He sounded great! I unfortunately didn’t know any of the songs but next time he’s in town I’m definitely going to check him out.

Bully was of course amazing. The lead singer apparently learned how to record from Steve Albini who did Nirvana’s second album “In Utero”.  I could definitely pick up on some albini-ness in her recordings and I was glad to hear the same during the live show.  She put on a great show, the band definitely revolves around her.  The other musicians are great, they just don’t seem to get into it as much as she does. Maybe they’re musicians for hire? I dunno.

I then got to see the last 2 songs from Metz.  I’ll be honest I wasn’t too into it.  The energy was definitely super high which I loved, but the sound almost seemed jumbled.  Very abrasive and noisy.  I can see myself getting into it in the right mood, but wasn’t really for me. I don’t see it as a daily listen or a favorite of mine is why I’m getting at.

After Metz I went back to my house to re-charge and fell asleep.  I woke up and was super bummed I missed hot snakes. Anyways, I made my way back out to the beach and got to hear beach house. That is some relaxing stuff.  I don’t smoke weed anymore but I imagine if I did I would listen to this.  The atmosphere was pretty cool during this show. The sun was setting so it was perfect for the music.  Again though..their stuff is not for me.  This time instead of noisy and abrasive its just too reverb-y and dreamy. I didn’t hate it, but lets just say I was easily distracted from the performance.

Lastly after this my friends left me by myself. I didn’t want to leave because I wanted to check out Father John Misty and see what the fuss was about. I dislike crowds and let me just say I was JAMPACKED in there.  I was definitely out of my comfort zone but wasn’t too far from the stage.

I stuck around for about 6 songs and like Kyle Craft I was pleasantly surprised. I had always thought of FJM as full of himself, conceited, and a total douchebag…which I guess to be honest he kind of is. But as far as music is concerned he’s great, and I genuinely enjoyed every song I heard.  Since then I’ve been jamming Real Love Baby a lot.  I’m glad I stuck around because it’s opened a new realm of music I want to check out.

The crowd got to me eventually and I ended up leaving.  Overall a great day full of music, but I’m disappointed I drank too much towards the beginning causing me to go to sleep around 4. Oh well! Live and you learn.  I at least now have some new artists to check out and other ones I know I’m not into.

I’ll go ahead and apologize for the quick review of this show but I’ve seen them once before and honestly I write on here for myself and no one else…

A little backstory….2 years ago I went to sooo many shows.  I’d say it was somewhere around the 100 show range.  Looking back at it I was bummed because I didn’t have a “history” of all the shows I’d seen.  I mean off hand I can think of Primus, Dawes, Journey, Tom Petty, Dave Matthews..but thats just the beginning of the iceberg.

I decided I needed to fork over some money to start up a website to where I could treat it like a journal and keep track of shows, songs I like, and heck I might even start writing about tv shows I like.  It’s just hard to remember stuff anymore and its nice to be able to look back and be like “oh yea I love that!”

Anyways back to the show at hand, this was my first time heading up to the gorge the same day as the show.  Let me just say, I’m never doing that again.  Traffic was horrendous, and the line at the gorge was godawful.  I seriously don’t know how they could screw up so bad but hey, I’m not surprised. Best part though was my buddy Jake was in town from Indiana and we were gonna have a good time.  It was me, Jake, Jake, and Alyssa. We ended up meeting with Allen and his daughter Aleina.

Right when we arrived we only had half an hour to “chill” before we needed to walk to the show to catch the beginning.  I think we kind of took our time and chugged some beers and ended up leaving a little late.  Sure enough we missed the beginning unfortunately. I’m telling you, never show up the day of the show!

Anyways, as was the case back in 2016, the vibes were great and everyone was in a great mood.  John Mayer was sporting his new “90’s” look on stage wearing what looked to me to be a pink jacket. All the players were spread out on stage nicely and Bob Weir had a nice spot up front looking OLD.  He’s still a shredder of course.

The setting at the gorge is unbelievable and I was overcome with a sense of peace.  I had a great time drinking some beers and catching up with Jake to the sweet sounds of John Mayer just shredding the crap out of the guitar.

One downside of this concert compared to the last one was I did not know hardly any of the songs.  I think I only knew one, “Playing in the Band”.  That was kind of a bummer…granted you can’t go wrong with the Dead…but still I would have liked to have known more of the material.

Regardless the musicianship was out of this world and it was just great being around friends in that setting.  We ended up leaving a little early and headed back to the campsite.  I was pretty toasty and after a short amount of time I was passed out in the tent.

Next day we had a nice trip home and got some food in Ellensburg. Kind of the usual for a gorge trip! Anyways you can see the “official” link below for a real live video from the show! Enjoy.

 

My girlfriend Alyssa is in love with Adam Levine.  I’ll prove it to you:

So for Christmas I thought me being the awesome, amazing, perfect boyfriend that I am I would buy her two tickets to see Maroon 5 at the Tacoma Dome.  Granted, it was 5 months away, but it was the most thoughtful thing I could think to do.

I told her the tickets were for her to bring whoever she wanted thinking she would surely bring one of her friends for a girls night.  To my utter horror…err…surprise, that other ticket was for me! Can you imagine, a rocker like me jumping up in down in the stands screaming for Adam Levine? I was … flabbergasted.  But nevertheless I told her I would go.

I’ll admit up until this point the only Maroon 5 song I liked, and I hate to admit this, is “Sugar”.  I heard it drunk at the Corner Pocket in Seattle one night and just started dancing while playing darts.  I had no idea it was Maroon 5 until afterwards.  I still love it. I genuinely love that song.  It might be the closest we can get to Prince now that he’s gone? I dunno.

Anyways, back to the story at hand.  in the months leading up to the show I started dipping my toes in the Maroon 5 pool.  There were some songs I genuinely still detested.  “Moves like Jagger” being one of them, I also HATE “She will be Loved” but I came across other, better ones I actually got into.  “Animals”, “Maps”, and “Wait” to be particular.  I’m not saying I’d run across the bar to turn these songs on, but I liked em.

Fast forward months and months and next thing you know me and the ole’ lady are driving down to the Tacoma Dome.  It only took an hour and half and we were there! We actually found the best parking spot in the world but I’m not going to share that information here.

We got into the venue pretty quickly thanks to Alyssa’s maneuvering.  I tend to just wait in the longest lines. We were in, grabbed a quick brew, and went to sit in our seats to watch the show.

First up was Julia Michaels.  Well I say first up but she was the only opener. I was totally out of touch with what she sings and what she does. Alyssa said her songs weren’t as good as recorded.  The performance did see a little off.  Some of her performers seemed super out of touch with what they were playing.  There was a cool part where she played a bunch of songs she wrote on acoustic guitar and kinda let the crowd sing along. My favorite part was the guitar player. He thought he was slash and honestly that was my favorite part, just watching him rock the hell out to these wimpy pop songs.

With all that being said Julia is an AMAZING songwriter.  She’s written hits for Justin Bieber, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Linkin Park, Halsey, etc.  Thats very respectable.  Her music is infectious but I still can’t get into it.  Much respect to her though, I hope to one day have that same, sheer talent with my own music…in my own way of course.

After her set came Alyssa’s future husband…Adam Levine and Maroon 5! They had a cool long entrance but I was a little distracted eating some pretzels and cheese. I quickly got my act together and started paying attention though. They started the set off with What Lovers Do which got the crowd in high spirits.  I’ll admit I was immediately “in the zone” paying attention to all the lights and entertainment.

Adam was great at walking around the stage and also having the appropriate amount of swagger.  Everyone up on stage definitely has the confidence that put them there.  It helps remind me what I need to do to get to that point one day. I loved the lights and background stuff going on throughout the songs.

I was surprised as the set went through the songs…”payphone”, “stereo hearts”, “cold”, and “don’t wanna know”…that I knew them all. It made the set way more enjoyable because I had accidentally and unknowingly…heard all the songs. Thats when it hit me at exactly how big Maroon 5 has grown to be.  It definitely helps Adam being on the Voice but the whole band is solid and very smart.  Their music is very smartly put together and they definitely know exactly what they’re going for.

The best part was by far the absolute shredding that Adam did on guitar.  I’m going to try to post a clip below for your viewing pleasure:

Adam Levine Solo

If you click that and it doesn’t work I’m sorry, I’m not the best at technology. Leave me a comment and I’ll fix it!

All in all it was an amazing night out.  You know how sometimes you go to concerts and by the end your ready to go? Not this one.  I have a new found respect for Maroon 5 and I think honestly anyone who went to the see them would feel the same way.

After the show we went and got some late night Mexican food to finish the night off.  I caught myself singing “Girls Like You” in my head over and over.  I’m still singing it….

Oh well, it’s a great guitar riff and I’m sticking to that! Let me know what you think of Maroon 5 in the comments!

I first heard of Kaki King through my obsession with another guitar virtuoso, John Renbourn.  After listening to John for a bit, Kaki popped up as a recommendation on Youtube. I started listening to her music one day at work and had the random idea to see if she was on tour. Lucky me, she was coming to Kirkland in a few months. I mentioned the thought of going to her show to my girlfriend and then forgot about it.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and I had a terrible day at work.  Alyssa surprised me and bought 2 tickets to see Kaki.  I was thrilled to say the least.  I was apprehensive as I normally only want to go to shows where I can stand, drink, rock out, and have a good time. This show “The Neck is a Bridge to the Body” is exactly what I needed and broke me out of my shell, all while sitting down! (albeit having a drink in hand)

Kaki had the audience’s attention the entire time, and the show is truly a unique experience.  I would almost venture to say it was a once in a lifetime experience. I literally have no idea of how I could ever see anything remotely like it again.  Images are projected onto her solid white guitar while she shreds and smacks the guitar to oblivion. in the back ground is a companion projection to whats playing on the guitar.

That’s not to say this is some crazy hardcore rock music either, most of her music is actually very soothing, but thats another thing she did so well. The balance of heaviness and softness was perfect, and the show even came with a perfect humorous interlude of a “movie” about her guitar being unique and not liked by other guitars.  While the movie was playing, the guitar “spoke” through Kaki’s playing.

I realize reading back at what I wrote that that sounds very confusing but it is one of those things where you just have to be there.  I would highly recommend this show to any diehard music lovers and show goers out there. It might be too weird for the mainstream (like my conservative dad or the girl you know who only listens to Imagine Dragons) but if you genuinely appreciate music, you’ll love Kaki King.

Here’s a video of her doing her thang… what a great time!

A couple shots of whiskey.

A couple more.

A handful of friends.

That’s all it was going to be, not a big deal at all.

I swore to myself going into this concert that I would keep it to a few drinks and have a great time.  We had an awesome group of dudes heading’ out (all Queens’ fans) and I really wanted to relish what was surely to be an amazing concert. Rounding up a bunch of friends and enjoying a debaucherous night out is something to be cherished in 2018, first world America.

It started out with grabbing an Uber ride up that-a-way.  Jake wrongly told our Uber driver the way to go.  Or did he correctly tell the driver the wrong way to go? Either way this caused us to just hop out of the uber in a traffic jam and walk across Seattle center to a bar on the other side.  Jake took the liberty of peeing in public, right in front of MoPop.  Hell of a guy that Jake Flatt.

Anyways, we were obviously feeling’ pretty good. In the bar it was obvious everyone was jacked for the show. It was packed to the rim but amazingly, and luckily, drinks were cheap. (Maybe that wasn’t so lucky looking back on it?). I think it only took us a max of 15 minutes to finish 2 drinks a piece there.

We then headed to a buddies house and finished off some whiskey bottles. No, they weren’t fifths or anything, the smaller ones. Pints I guess you’d say, nothing outlandish, however on top of the previous pregaming it was enough to make my head spin. Yea yea I know it was a bad idea but hey, YOLO.

Finally we arrive to the key arena and its kind of hectic. In my drunken stupor I said hi to a few people I knew. I’m not sure all of what was said but I’m sure it was the typical drunken banter of “Hey great to see you, I’m pumped….yea gonna be awesome….can’t wait….have fun”

By the time we got to our seats I was actually surprised at how close we were…I mean for buying seats at Key Arena that is.  If you were looking directly out from the stage, we were back left but towards the floor.  This had me excited but it only last a little bit.

First on was Eagles of Death Metal.  This was my fourth time seeing them and honestly the worst time.  Out of all 4 times seeing them I’d say the 3rd time was the best, followed by the 1st time. So maybe they’re like an every other show kind of band.

Regardless I still love them, in fact they’re one of my favorite bands, but a couple things combined to make it less than stellar for me.  They were far away so I couldn’t see too clearly. For some reason the stadium had no tv screens (which would hurt the experience later too).

Boots Electric (Jesse Hughes) didn’t seem that into it, at least relative to the last show, so that sapped some of the energy out for me. Honestly maybe the blame lies more with me as I’ve seen this show 4 times before so perhaps the thrill is all ran out for me.  I mean songs and everything sounded good, just didn’t really captivate me and to be honest, most of the crowd didn’t seem too captivated either. My drunk was pretty strong too, that probably effected my time as well.  If it didn’t, it’s certainly effecting my memory.

Anyways after them came Queens of the Stone Age. This was my first time seeing them and to be honest, I was very curious to see what the fuss was about.  I’ve always liked Queens, but I’ve never been a huge fan. I figured their live performance might be amazing. I was hoping for a “Primus” experience that I think I’ve talked about in this blog before. Basically, I was looking for a live performance to blow me away and show me exactly why they were one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

WELL I gotta say I had my hopes way too high.  Granted, I was far away, they looked like stick people out there. Lights were awesome but nothing too crazy.  Songs sounded just like the CD.  Crowd was attentive but not too into it. I don’t know, it ended up just being a boring “movie theater” style concert.

Again, I want to reiterate I wasn’t in the pit. I’m thinking in the future for rock shows I should never be sitting. Its just impossible to rock out in your seat.  That being said, I just didn’t see anything crazy that made me think “wow these guys are crazy rock and roll badasses”. Alice Cooper put on one hell of a show. Primus put on a hell of a show.  Eagles of Death Metal the Showbox with the Melvins put on a hell of a show.  This show was just ehh.  It was worth my money but honestly, I now understand why I don’t love Queens.

If you’re a fan and love the cds, go and enjoy the music. However, you could also turn on some Lava lamps and laser lights and put the cd on at home and have about the same experience.

After the show I quickly Uber-ed home and went to sleep. Nothing groundbreaking and my earth wasn’t shattered.  For the final time I just want to say you can take this whole review with a grain of salt as I was drunk, which may have effected my judgement.  Point remains I wasn’t captivated though, and with them being the “Villains” they are, I would think their rock show would appeal to drunken me.

Here’s a live clip of them playing at the arena.

 

 

Way back in the golden days of my youth when I was working as a production assistant in Hollywood, I first heard Fleet Foxes and fell in love with them.  I knew and loved every song off their first album.  At the time I was broke and honestly, although I loved playing music, I wasn’t much of a show goer so I never really made it out of my way to see them live, they’d always kind of been a “on the speakers” band, not a live thing.

In September I got my chance to see them at the Paramount and I was super excited.  I felt it would be the perfect time to hear their harmonies and instrumentation and was excited to zone out to their medieval-esque music.

I’ll go ahead and summarize the show because honestly, it’s been a couple months, and even more importantly, it just wasn’t that exciting of a show.  I got to hear some favorites. White Winter Hymnal he said was about Enumclaw which I thought was crazy.  Enumclaw is a little offshoot town kind of nestled in the mountains and hills outside of Seattle. It’s also famous for the worst reason ever but I’ll let you do the research on that one.

Other than that I got to hear some other favorites off the first album, namely Mykonos and Ragged Wood, which were by and large highlights for me.  I will say though, and I didn’t predict this, but I got bored. Everything blurred together and sounded the same.  There was no diversity, it was like going to a bar full of people who don’t drink, or eating the same meal for 2 weeks straight. It just got old.

That being said the sound was good, and the harmonies were great, it just wasn’t my thing.  Was it worth the money? Yea I suppose.  But I dunno, I can’t help but think there’s some great potential for an amazing live show and I just don’t feel theres anything there to warrant it being one of the memorable shows of 2017.

Here’s a video of one o my favorite songs by them, Ragged Wood.

Kings of Leon is my favorite band period.  Yeah, yeah give me flak for it because they “sold out” or because of their bro-jams “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody”, I don’t care.  I’m sticking to the fact that Aha Shake Heartbreak is my favorite album.  Youth and Young Manhood is a close second.  Those two albums sum up great rock and roll to me. A good mix of everything and honestly what I try to shoot for in my own music.

Anywho, back to the show. You can imagine how excited I was to hear about it. I bought tickets immediately months and months before hand as well as a camping spot.  If I had to I would have made the 2 hour trip alone to see them, but luckily I didn’t have to. Had an amazing group of people come with which made the experience that much more of a good time.

The first night only Jake came up with me and we quickly made friends with our neighbors. We spent the night drinking and called it kind of early, went on to sleep to wake up to the blistering heat that is the gorge.  Not going to bore you too much longer with what we did the next day.  Same ole same ole, lots of drinking, and playing ladder ball.  This time I made sure to wear plenty of sunscreen so no lobster skin for me.

Finally, on to the point of this whole post, we made it to the show.  I was feeling very good to say the least and this time we were able to make it to some good seats towards the middle of the stage.  Granted we were in the grass, but it was still better than being towards the side of the stage.

The strangest part of this show was how they started of the entire thing with their song “conversation piece”.  While I do love all of their songs, this is definitely one of my least favorite.  It has such a slow pace, and its very simple. I will admit it gave the start to the show a relaxed feel though, kind of a calm before the storm feel.

After the slow start, the show turned into the best one I’ve seen there.  I know every song by heart so naturally I was into everything they played.  It helped being there too with friends who loved all the tunes.  The drinks kept coming and we kept dancing. I feel bad for people who had to look at my bodacious dance moves, but hey theme the breaks.

To sum up their show for someone who hasn’t seen them I do think it’s worth it.  There’s not much to their stage antics, but their instrumentation and vocals are flawless.  They’re hugely successful now so they have amazing lights and video.  As for improv, there wasn’t much (nor was there much last time) but there were slight variations to solos that I appreciated.

I was also worried going into this that it would be mostly new material. that wasn’t the case they played a handful of songs from every album which was great.  Honestly pretty much a timeline of my life in music which I think is why this concert meant so much to me.  I can only hope I get to see them come through again soon.

Normally I post a Spotify song or youtube video to one of the “official” songs but in this case I’m going to post a live video taken at the gorge.  On this video in particular they’re playing on of my favorites “Fans”.

Enjoy!

 

I had postponed writing this for so long because I really just didn’t know how to reflect to myself and especially to other people about the concert.  This was my second time seeing Tom Petty and it may or may not be as good as the first time I’d seen him.  He played almost all his hits this time whereas previously he played a lot of new ones off his Hypnotic Eye album. The previous time was at the Gorge as well which was amazing in itself.  However, I think seeing any Tom Petty concert is just a Next Level experience thats hard to explain.  I hate to use some hippy rhetoric, but the “vibes” are always “woke”.  Everyones so carefree and happy. It’s just an amazing experience that unfortunately I’ll never get to experience again.

I want to deal with his passing in another post so for this one I’m just going to focus on the show itself.

This is my first concert that I’ve seen at Safeco and I’ll be honest, once I was in my seat it was cool, but JESUS it was a nightmare getting inside.  Lines around the block.  And this was after I waited and waited since I had no interest in seeing the Lumineers.  I’ve heard since that the staff or the “venue” as it were has fixed the problem, and I hope so because the only downside to the whole show was getting in.

Once I was in my seat had a great view of Seattle and kinda looked down at Stage Left.  I’ll be honest I’m not sure I can even give this show review justice as I can’t really recall or put into words the songs I heard.  The songs were all the hits you’ve heard on the radio. Refugee, Runnin Down a Dream, Free Fallin, and an encore with American Girl. Lots of others as well. Yer so Bad is a personal favorite of mine so I was happy he played that.

After a few songs in my seat I made my way over to Alyssa’s side which looked down on stage right.  Tom was in such a good mood and seemed spry and happy.  He kept stage banter to a minimum for the most part and the songs were played with enthusiasm and lots of smiling by all the heartbreakers.  Everyone seemed happy to be there and this reverts back to the “good vibes” I was talking about earlier.

There was one part of the show where there was some audio issues on a song to where no one in the audience could hear anything.  Afterwards in typical tom petty fashion he just laughed it off and said they’ll be back in a few with his signature nasally voice.  No one seemed angry and the sound was fixed and the concert was going with minimal delay.

All in all it was great experience. I certainly wish I had drank a little bit less so I could seal the memories in my mind better.  As for now I’m left with a haze of the show and the good time I had. Such an awesome show, I only wish I had many more of his  concerts to see in my lifetime! RIP Tom Petty.

Here’s one of my favorites of Tom Petty’s I heard at the Gorge the first time I saw him:

 

 

Wow, I’m so behind on updating this website it’s embarrassing. Especially once you consider the money I poured into starting this up.  I reallllly need to get better at this.  Too bad with each blog post I’m not rewarded with a Montucky Cold Snack, or concert tickets…. Then I would be writing all the time!

Anyways, this is the second concert me and Alyssa went too.  I actually wasn’t looking too forward to it. I mean I like one song from Cold War Kids and like 2 songs from Young the Giant, but I hit the concert scene HARD this year and I just….it just took a lot of effort to get the energy together to go out to this one.

We showed up like 30 minutes past doors and had already missed the opener…who I believe was Joywave.  I wasn’t too worried about missing them.  And it was only like 7:30 sooo super early anyways.

The concert was at Wamu theater which is right next to the Century Link Ampitheater in Seattle.  It’s where the Seahawks play, duh.  Anyways, this building is absolutely humongous.  It just…dwarfs everything.  The whole concert took up a small portion of the whole building.  Me and Alyssa headed to the beer garden area and paid like 10 bucks a pop for those crappy aluminum bottles of bud light.  After the wait and everything Cold War Kids hit the stage, ohhh yea.

For their portion we just watched from the beer garden but it was really good.  I didn’t realize the front guy was so talented as far as singing and just all around musicianship. Probably my favorite part of the show was when he’d hop on the piano and tear it up.  They played the song I knew “Hang Me out to Dry” as well as their obvious radio hit “First”.   It was a good time.  I mean, nothing blew me out of the water but I enjoyed it.

After their set we went back and grabbed another beer.  Chugged that down and Alyssa talked me into moving my lazy ass up towards the stage for Young the Giant. So glad I’m did!

Young the Giant blew me out of the water more-so than any band in my recent memory. By blew me out of the water I specifically mean going into a concert with my hopes low and immediately being completely astounded at the talent.  Right from the get go I was just amazed at how good Sameer Gadhia’s voice is.  Absolutely insane.

Their stage presence was literally the best I’ve seen.  All members worked the stage like a 5,000 dollar stripper. I mean they were all over the place.  They all had cool Beatles-esque outfits on and cool props littering the stage that included a sunflower on the guitar and some hippyish scenery. The background was some amazing hypnotic video effects that matched up to the mood of the music.

The music was just upbeat and made me an instant fan. I had went in only knowing a couple songs such as “My Body” and “Cough Syrup”. I left becoming a fan of their whole new album.  My favorite part of the show was after all the upbeat-ness, they slowed it down and came forward to the front of the stage to play few songs acoustic-y and coffee shop-y.  It was really neat and truly made for an experience. it was much more than just hearing the songs you know, it made you feel like you got your money’s worth.

Anyways, I’m rarely this surprised and I would highly recommend catching them if they come through your town. I have a feeling that they are going to blow up to astronomical levels in the next couple of years.  Lets hope they don’t get bored and lets hope their shows continue to be as exciting!