Posted by Joel Weiss on Jul. 31, 2009, at 11:39 am
Shitty concert etiquette can destroy what could otherwise be an out-of-this-world concert experience. I’ve attended hundreds of metal, rock, and punk shows and witnessed all manner of drunken douchebaggery. The more intense the show, the more idiocy you’ll have to put up with.
I’m not a people person. I don’t go to shows to get shitfaced. I don’t go to shows to intentionally collide with people galloping in a sloppy circle while shadowboxing. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things, and I have no problem putting up with people who engage in them — I just want to enjoy an awesome live show.
Gogol Bordello played the Ritz Ybor last Monday. They were just as amazing as their last Bay Area appearance at the State Theatre, and I had an awesome time. Early on, however, I feared my evening would be ruined by the most egregious concert etiquette faux pas. An error so heinous it transcends rock shows and infringes upon normal everyday life: exceptionally awful body odor. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Lily Reisman on Jul. 30, 2009, at 2:16 pm
It was ridiculously hot. It took me 15 minutes to realize that my white wife beater would become my face towel for the day. It was loud. It was colorful. It was my first time at Vinoy Park. And finally, at the age of 24, it was my first time experiencing Warped Tour.
It’s been three years since I attended a music festival and as I walked through the ticket line into a field filled with tents, stages, beer stands and even a slip n’ slide, I instantly recalled why I love outdoor fests; passing through the gates meant entering a world of the unpredictable and the unexpected. I didn’t know what kind of crazies I’d come across (there were bound to be some amidst the 10,000 attendees), what kind of new music I’d hear, or how pleased I’d be with the bands I was there to support. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Eric Snider on Jul. 3, 2009, at 12:58 pm
Most pop singers from the ’60s and ’70s who are fortunate enough to still be touring resort to what I call vocal cheats. That’s when they get to a point in an old hit that has a particularly high note they can’t hit — a note that especially resonates with the baby-boomer audience — so they either drop it an octave or turn it over to the background singers.
There’s nothing really shameful about these vocal cheats — it would be worse, for instance, if Daryl Hall tried to hit that big release note in “She’s Gone” and failed miserably. Or if Roger Daltrey attempted to render the big scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and sounded like a frog.
I tell you all this because I saw Boz Scaggs last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall and he didn’t resort to any vocal cheats. He’s 65 years old. Very impressive. When, on “Lido Shuffle,” it came time for the “Lido, whoa, whoa” part, he was right on it — with the backup singers helping, yes, but not drowning him out and thus protecting him. Scaggs came up a little short or a little thin on some of the high notes, but he went for them all.
It wasn’t just the lack of vocal cheats that made Scaggs’ 75-minute set in front of a near-sold-out crowd a success. His voice still has that full, creamy texture of the old days, and his delivery and phrasing brimmed with nuance. (more photos below; all are by Tracy May)
Posted by Eric Snider on Jun. 22, 2009, at 4:13 pm
The Killers will play UCF Arena in Orlando on Thursday, October 1.
Tickets are $52.00 for the General Admission Dance Floor, $38.00 for Reserved Lower Bowl Seating and $35.00 for Reserved Upper Bowl seating. They go on sale Saturday, June 27at 10 am at LiveNation.com, charge by phone 877-598-8698 and all TicketMaster outlets.Day of show the price increases to $55.00 for GA Dance Floor, $41.00 for Lower Bowl and $38.00 for Upper Bowl.
Posted by Eric Snider on Jun. 3, 2009, at 11:20 am
Last time Miley Cyrus played Tampa Bay it set off a Ticketgate, with moms of young daughters up in arms about being screwed out of the opportunity to buy tickets. Many of them dropped several hundreds of dollars as to not run afoul with their progeny.
Let’s hope there’s not another ticket fiasco this time. Actually, the best thing that could happen is that Miley-mania has calmed down the extent that MILFs aren’t breaking the household budget to take 11-year-old young Brittany to see her heroine.
Here we go:
Miley Cyrus will perform at the St. Pete Times Forum on Tuesday, Dec. 1, 7 p.m.
More important, though:
Tickets for this event go on sale next Saturday, June 13th at 10am only at www.ticketmaster.com/mileycyrus and by Ticketmaster’s charge-by-phone number 800-745-3000. Tickets are priced at $39.50, $59.50, and $79.50. Prices do not include service charges.
Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan is recovering from a cancer scare! First hospitalized for gastrointestinal issues on May 12, Gahan couldn’t shake what his people thought was just a nasty stomach flu (I think swine flu was ruled out early on). It’s a good thing Detective John Kimble wasn’t around, because it was definitely a toomah!
On May 12th, lead singer Dave Gahan suffered a severe bout of gastroenteritis, leading to his hospitalization and the cancellation of the Athens concert. While in hospital, further medical tests revealed a low-grade malignant tumour in Dave’s bladder, which has since been successfully removed. At doctors’ orders Dave Gahan must take a break until June 8th, to ensure that he makes a full recovery. The Leipzig show on June 8 will be the first concert following Dave’s recovery.
All told, Depeche Mode cancelled or postponed 15 shows in the four weeks Gahan will spend out of commission.
Posted by Joel Weiss on May. 10, 2009, at 10:54 pm
I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into Friday’s concert at Mahaffey Theater featuring an un-costumed, un-amplified-to-11 Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Maybe I was thinking too hard about it? After all, when you go see a band, they play their songs. When you go see a comedian, he does his material. With Guest, McKean, and Shearer, reality lay in between — a hilarious, two-hour multimedia jaunt down memory lane complete with stories, clips, and songs predominantly from two classic film satires about seemingly disparate genres of music. Read the rest of this entry »
Barely a month ago, I finally witnessed Iron Maiden live. It literally took half my life to see them. I documented the journey, from the show’s announcement through its conclusion. While nothing could top my Maiden experience, it seems the Metal Gods continue smiling down on me nonetheless. After all, you can’t mention Iron Maiden without bringing up Judas Priest.
Is it possible? Maiden and Priest playing Florida in the same year?
A form of influenza caused by overly aggressive pigs (also known as law enforcement professionals) that occurs commonly after close encounters with these infectious vermin. Symptoms include nausea, despair, and a general lack of a good time.
After a successful performance at the State Theatre in St. Petersburg, I caught a flight this past Friday to rock mics with the rest of B.A.S.E. Inc at Radford University’s Quadfest 2009 in Virginia. We were all excited to play a show together for the first time on our home turf. Little did we know that we were the ones about to get played.
Posted by Joel Weiss on Apr. 18, 2009, at 12:57 pm
I know. When you go see a shitty band, shitty concerts usually ensue. Keep reading.
Papa Roach dropped their major label debut Infest in 2000. Their first and arguably biggest hit to date, “Last Resort,” shamelessly plagiarized various classic Iron Maiden riffs, and along with bands like Korn and Disturbed helped to usher in the nu-metal hey day of chugga-chugga riffs and lyrics so embarrassingly angst-ridden that even grunge bands must be ashamed to have been of influence. Thanks to mediocre ballads like “Forever,” Papa Roach stuck around. Most recently, guitarist Jerry Horton called their new album Metamorphosis, “rock record of the decade.” I’ll at least credit them for the Kafka reference.
This brings us to last Thursday night in Manchester, England. Courtesy of an e-mail to U.K. website Rock Sound, a concertgoer just couldn’t, or perhaps, didn’t care to make it to the restroom.
Posted by Eric Snider on Apr. 15, 2009, at 10:57 pm
I’m pretty sure I was a sophomore in college when this happened.
I was sitting in a friend’s room in the dorm on a weekday afternoon when I heard this music from another room. The stereos, dorm stereos at my college at least, were shit, so the sound was faint. But the song captivated me. I tuned out the conversation, stood up, walked out the door, made a left, went down two, maybe three, rooms and turned right.
A medium tempo sort of folk-rock tune was playing on the shitty stereo. “Who is this?” I asked the guy playing it on the shitty stereo. Daryl Hall and John Oates, he told me. “Never heard of ‘em,” I said, and he handed me the LP cover of Abandoned Lunchonette.
“Ahh-oooo, uh-oooo, woo-ooo, it’ll be all right, when the morning comes,” the male tenor sang. It was Daryl Hall.
So began my long love affair with the music of Daryl Hall & John Oates. I followed them through the glam period, through the quasi-psychedelic period, through the quasi-disco period, through the superstar period of the 1980s, which turned into the set-the-drum-machine-so-it-sounds-like-a-baseball-bat-hitting-a-garbage-can period. I followed them through the “you like Hall & Oates?” jibes from my hipper-than-thou acquaintances, insisting that Hall & Oates were merely a pleasure, not a guilty one.
I’ve seen Hall & Oates six, seven, eight times, but I never heard them play “When the Morning Comes,” the song that first seduced me from another room.
They played it last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall. A lump-in-the-throat moment.
Posted by Eric Snider on Mar. 31, 2009, at 8:54 am
Our guy Woody at Live Nation sent us this fresh info:
Tickets are $253.50, $98.50, $58.50 & $33.50, and go on sale Monday April 6 at 10 a.m. through livenation.com, 877-598-8698 (the toll free Live Nation ticketing phone number), and all TicketMaster outlets.
Long-time U2 Show Director Willie Williams has worked again with architect Mark Fisher (ZooTV, PopMart, Elevation and Vertigo), to create an innovative 360? design which affords an unobstructed view for the audience. U2 360° also marks the first time a band has toured in stadiums with such a unique and original structure (which can be viewed at U2.com).
“U2 has always been at their best when surrounded by their audience, this staging takes a giant leap forward. With 85 percent of the tickets priced at less than $95.00, general admission floor tickets priced at $55.00 and at least 10,000 tickets at every venue priced at the $30.00 price range, we have worked very hard to ensure that U2 fans can purchase a great priced ticket with a guaranteed great view” says U2’s manager Paul McGuinness.
I’ve had a long time to muse over the Phish reunion shows, to listen to the live downloads over and over again, to read the reviews and see the pictures and laugh at the outrageous (and in some cases, sad and amazing) stories on the message boards, and to plan out all the ways I can scrimp and save so I can hit some more shows on the second leg of their summer tour in addition to the three (or four, or maybe five) I’ll be hitting up on the first leg.
I had my soul cleansed in Hampton and now I’m ready and hungry for more.
But before I can set my sights on the shows that are to come, I thought I’d share some pics and other odds and ends from the Hampton shows — my observations a few weeks later, having stewed on things a bit.
It was my first time in Hampton, Va. I was underwhelmed by the town itself, though it held a certain charm I equated with its place in Phishtory. We had a prime spot at the Ramada Inn, likely the cheapest and closest hotel to the venue. In fact, our main room (we had two split between a party of four) afforded us a perfect view of the Hampton Coliseum. Read the rest of this entry »
Kylesa Static Tensions (Prosthetic)
Between a tour with Mastodon and a killer new album, Kylesa seem poised for a breakthrough year in 2009. The ten songs on this Georgia band’s fourth full-length, Static Tensions, speed by in 40 minutes — relatively brief by sludgy, stoner-groove standards; more abstract than Crowbar, but not as otherworldly as Neurosis. The long-time experimental Australian band Alchemist is my closest point of reference. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Eric Snider on Mar. 17, 2009, at 9:14 am
This just in from Ruth Eckerd Hall:
It was announced today that due to illness, Willie Nelson has unfortunately postponed his concert in Clearwater at Ruth Eckerd Hall scheduled for tonight at 8 pm. The concert will be rescheduled for October, 2009. The exact show date will be announced soon. Willie regrets any inconvenience to his fans.
You know when you learn something pleasantly unexpected? For instance, a favorite band you wrote off as finished because its principal members blame each other for stupid shit through music blogs announces their first tour in years? What’s that feeling called? Oh, yeah… hope!
The Pixies return to action this summer with a series of European concert dates, including a June 14 appearance at the Isle of Wight festival with Neil Young, Billboard has confirmed. The gigs will be the first for the alternative rock standard-bearers since 2007, dispelling doubts that the group’s most recent hiatus was permanent. Further details about the additional European shows will be released soon. No North American gigs are planned, according to Billboard’s sources.
The full article from Billboard provides a bit more background, but barely scratches the surface of several years of tension. Statements made by Frank Black and Kim Deal towards the end of 2007 fueled my pessimism that the reunion was over.
Posted by Joel Weiss on Jan. 23, 2009, at 12:38 pm
You may have missed this the first time around, because who the hell watches Fuse? But last spring, the music video network took a break from airing badly-censored versions of shitty movies and provided a decent reason to tune in: NOFX: Backstage Passport. The eight-episode tour documentary chronicled what the band thinks may have been its last extensive world tour. Their rationale? As NOFX passes the quarter-century mark and its members approach middle age with families to support, they might not have many chances to give remote locations on planet Earth a good punking – much less document the experience.
The result: several hours of entertaining shenanigans and an interesting look into the life of a band on a world tour. Sure, we all have ideas about cramped trailers and smelly bandmates – but what happens when your band plays for several thousand people in China, but the promoter tells you the nation’s widespread counterfeiting problem makes it impossible to discern how much money he owes you? How about a promoter in Peru that secures a vacant lot for an outdoor show, but no power, water, food, bathrooms, or permits? Then the police show up and practically hold your band hostage! Watch Kent, NOFX’s tour manager and the absolute highlight of the series, deal with such crises while getting fifteen different kinds of drunk – all while bandmembers snort strange green drugs in Singapore and videochat with their families.
Tour documentaries and live DVDs are usually “for fans only” affairs – but you don’t even have to be a punk rocker, much less a NOFX fan, to appreciate this.
Mohawk Bomb Records, the award-winning, Clearwater-based independent record label, announces its release schedule for spring 2009.
Soulfound “Live at Zen Recording”: features 5 songs performed live at Zen Recording from their “Is a Rock Band” album, released in September 2008. There are 5 video companions to the songs available on Soulfound’s YouTube channel. The EP will be available as a digital release on February 17, 2009.
No Lip Vol. 2 Compilation: This 14-song eclectic mixed bag of Rock music anthems is the second release in Mohawk Bomb’s No Lip series. Although leaning towards Punk and Pop Rock, No Lip pulls samples from the Florida, California, Texas, Ontario (Canada), UK and Australian music scenes as a survey course of the caliber of independent music. Profiles on each of the contributing bands will be posted on the label’s Website at www.mohawkbomb.com over the next month. The compilation will be available for sale online after February 24, 2009. Physical CDs will be passed out as free giveaways and sent to music press around the USA.
Mohawk Bomb Records is a new kind of record label, focused on sharing all music with the World using social networking and Web 2.0 technologies.
A Reason to Rock 2
A benefit concert for Parkinson’s reasearch
Jannus Landing, St. Petersburg, FL
Saturday January 10, 2009
Bands: Chris McCarty Band, Radio Reset, Soulfound, The Prospect
All Ages | $20 at Door | Meet and greet at 6:00p | Doors at 7:00p
Posted by Eric Snider on Dec. 2, 2008, at 12:54 pm
The twin pianos — one black, one white — stationed in the St. Pete Forum conference room should’ve offered a pretty solid clue. But the rumor at the news conference was that the Forum was unveiling a Britney Spears tour date.
Instead, Tampa Bay Lightning owner Oren Koules stood at the podium just past 11 a.m. and announced that the venue would host Billy Joel and Elton John’s Face 2 Face Tour on Thurs., March 5, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. through Ticketmaster, livenation.com or the Forum box office. They range in price from $179 to $54.
The Joel/John touring collaboration, which dates back to 1994, has been called by Billboard magazine, “the most successful touring package of all time.”
This tour will follow the familiar pattern: The two titans will open shows with a series of duets on twin pianos, then each artist performs a set with his own band, after which the entire aggregation joins for a big encore.
Shitty concert etiquette can destroy what could otherwise be an out-of-this-world concert experience. I’ve attended hundreds of metal, rock, and punk shows and witnessed all manner of drunken douchebaggery. The more intense the show, the more idiocy you’ll have to put up with.
I know. When you go see a shitty band, shitty concerts usually ensue. Keep reading.
You know when you learn something pleasantly unexpected? For instance, a favorite band you wrote off as finished because its principal members blame each other for stupid shit through music blogs announces their first tour in years? What’s that feeling called? Oh, yeah… hope!
