Maybe five years ago, I was at a house party where Afrobeats were performing and standing to his side, I watched him manipulate tapes, beats, volumes, and the thing about EDM is when you watch a great DJ perform it is like watching a great guitarist take a solo and it is all in the hands and when you can’t see… No wait, much like EDM this review suffers from ADD
At his most complex he is in the working place where, as Jarvis Cocker once noted, common people watch their lives slip out of view. You don’t have to guess with Seger, you don’t have to interpret, he is the poet of desperation and he is the poet laureate of the simple need to be someone
This was a retelling of the prodigal son story, the killing of the fatted calf which left Stevie with less stage time (the way it wouldn’t do for musical director Buckingham) and it was just a little uneasy. A good concert yes, how much joy can you get out of Chrissie seeing “falling, falling, falling”? A lot of course. but it didn’t have the spark of a band reinventing itself.
The song and verse goes freedom requires endless vigilance but if that’s the case, why bother? What sort of freedom is that? Freedom is the freedom to dress weird and be sexy, take Mollie and dance all night to heavily processed beats. That’s it. That’s what makes life worth living when you’ve just hit 21 and that’s what Bassnectar offer.
If it is nostalgia, it is big shot big time nostalgia, it is nostalgia the way McCartney is nostalgia, but it is more life a masterclass: I think it must be like watching Maria Callas or Louis Armstrong. Who wants to give Armstrong a hard time for playing “Sleepy Time Down South”? To what end?
So $100 for four hours of better than average modern country played by topnotch Nashville Cats and singers who know better than to phone in anything. Ten times crazier? Maybe, OK, why not? Grade: B+
At best the evening (and Mercury substitute) put Queen on life support. Adam Lambert fulfills a dream and the musicians can continue making love to their instruments and bring the larger than life deceased Freddie Mercury back from the dead. “After all these years who would have thought we would have the chance to be rock gods again?”
Never before have so few done so much with so little. Queen are simply not a very good band saved from obscurity by the ashtrays of emotion that was Freddie Mercury and a firm grasp on maybe half a dozen indelible songs. Queen was what you got when Mercury added Liberace to Elvis Presley.
They launched straight into “Now I’m Here” and it was rocking. Adam’s voice and energy were excellent, everything I’d hoped they would be. “Stone Cold Crazy” and “Another One Bites the Dust” had the crowd going, having fun, Adam’s vocals in good form. Yeah, he’s not Freddie, but I was okay with that (for now).
Katy and uber-producer Dr. Luke simply ruled and three years later the Katy Perry reign continued. And while sure, it wasn’t much, a mix of fair pop hits and iffy dance slams while Katy moved away from her Dorothy in Candyland 2011 persona to still embrace her inner 13 year old but through the eyes of a blasé 29 year old writing a self-help manual, it pleased those it was meant to please
There are reasons why Michael Buble is the biggest cabaret star in the works: he wears a tux well,he pushes classic rock and soul with the same fervor as the American Songbook, he’s a funny charmer. But it soon becomes very clear that the man is a lightweight.
Yeah, we are all little monsters in it together doesn’t really mean much and yes, she has written a song as good as “Bad Romance” in way too long, and yeah, popstars need consistency, and Lady Gaga seems not to have it really. But they also need energy and joy and a throbbing exciting basslike brilliance and that she sure does have.
The pairing of Sting and Simon is less questionable and I understand the intention behind the experiment of the music and combined talent. Sting, while more fit and ten years Garfunkel’s junior, is Simon’s other half … for about a third of the show.
Perhaps married life has softened the band, the growing old, the changing of the guard, and the world’s hostilities, the relatively low sales volume of the pretty good Mechanical Bull, the hit and miss rate on their own songs; while they still seem way too distanced, they don’t have the stench of arrogance any more.
I went to see the Knicks at Madison Square Garden a week before, the Knicks lost, and it is the exact same thing as this set. Exactly. That’s what it felt like at the Phish concert. You come in with hopes, they play lacklustre for three hours, put on a sport to get it close and then it’s over. Better luck tomorrow.
EDM is so folded into popular music that it didn’t appear as a THING at all, so according to Z100, pop music 2013 is dance pop and that’s really it. Perhaps they are right, or perhaps it was just a bad year for Z100 talent promoters.
There is still no crime in giving people precisely what they bought and there is no crime in growing old and missing a step and Rod Stewart did exactly that in his “Live The Life” concert at Madison Square Garden, Monday: he gave the people what they wanted and he missed a step
I don’t think John can help himself; fronting a full swing full scale rock and roll band, he has no problem pounding the drums into submission. It is such hard work with all sense of fun or camp for that matter, long time gone, that it is a storm warning: why feel if you can over feel.
The 7th Avenue entrance not only was speed lightning to get into but the “Chase Square” is absolutely gorgeous (you can see my picture there) though after you get past the wow factor, it is the same old windows to buy tix from
The trick with countries in the middle of civil wars is the same as the trick with the Eagle: knowing when to get up and leave. The second half of the show plunders the post Greatest Hits, where whatever minimal charm the snide smelly superstars ever had was lost for good. So I left.
What if you charge the old section 200 prices for the new 200 section prices, then guess what? Then you are paying $100 for a section 400 which you used to get, just two years ago, for $40
Of the Brit rock supergroups to invade and remain in the States, only three matter, and of the three Muse are the least popular and the best. But what does that say? That Matt Bellamy abstains from Chris martin’s mewling egotism and Bono’s Messianic braggadocio for a plainspeak rock star singlemindedness?
The band are pros, neither in awe or nor indifferent to their surroundings, the set is a jet propelled wonder so good live, you have to wonder if it’s the producer who is botching the job on record.
In the end, this was about BB King and Buddy Guy and Chicago Blues, at least that’s my story!
On Monday night when Stevie and Lindsay shared the stage while Fleetwood and especially Mac kept them steady, it seemed like a type of symbiosis. Everybody was better and especially Stevie managed an artistic habitation I have never seen the pair share before unless you go back to the early early pre-Mac 70s.
New World Punx were excellent at proving the tools for swift, loud, LED inspired release. The duo are very, very busy, there will be no Youtube of them having a cigarette while prerecorded tapes air, this was two master DJ working at a feverish pitch while being listened to by a huge following , 6.5 million people, worldwide.
The pop singer with the powerful voice hasn’t changed much in the proceeding years, she has just gotten bigger and better and in one of the remarkable Arena shows you will ever see, she was both a bigger than life cut out character, and a personable, friendly singer, with many hit songs to choose from
The hits hit good, “Big Green Tractor” is masterful and “Dirt Road Anthem” a major singalong, than he does the impossible and doesn’t embarrasses himself dueting with a video taped Kelly Clarkson on “Won’t You Say”.. He saves “Night Train” and “1994” from the latest album. And is a capable and smart band leader.
This is all lucid momentum and the band seldom slow the pace or lower the volume and by the three quarters mark they reel off “Harder To Breathe” , “Wake Up Call” and “One More Night” in succession. One from each album and genius setlist programming.
The “rust” on the first set meant the band weren’t willing to scale the heights of jam, it was a ridiculously tight, 12 songs in 75 minutes with a fast on its feet rockabilly “Kill Devil Falls” and the full length three days late gravity defying”The Little Drummer Boy” played live for the first time since 2004
People who watched it from home told me Governor Christie is really really fat people who watched it at the Arena told me Billy Joel is drunk and I can tell you that being stuck at MSG for the six hours of 12-12-12 was like being at a never ending PBS fundraiser.
More like a High School cafeteria than the Billboard 200 comes alive, Taylor is dating Harry and Justin has broken up with Taylor’s best friend forever, meanwhile Ed, the perennial guy no one sleeps with is scurrying between TS and 1D mutterring “Don’t call me Ginger”. Is this any way to run the US Top 10? I mean, honestly.
The r&b band are used to Arenas, they have opened for the likes of Queen’s Brian May and Bon Jovi, a concept manager Doc McGhee (who was involved with Bon Jovi along with an impressive list of other bands) invented to get maximum exposure along with the Los Angeles four piece maximum r&B.
I saw a performance of Quadrophenia back in 1996 (three times actually) with Entwistle’s bass and I can tell you absolutely they are equals. And what they have in common is that as an opera, they are written to be played. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t the Who who plays them. Q stands alone
The next day “Page Six” had a blurb about Max George being caught making out with Lindsay Lohan at a club. The Wanted get Lindsay Lohan. One Direction? Taylor Swift. Next.
Over and beyond CRJ’s first post THE SONG album the terrible Kiss, not really deserving of too much consideration , she isn’t much of a performer. With a rock backing band, she is is engaging but bland, pretty but vacant. In other words, she is the Phillip Phillips of Canada
He really wants to be the new MJ, it is MJ like MJ t Motown25 saying “yeah the oldies were good” before launching into “Billie Jean” with an “but the new ones are better”. For Justin, the old ones are bad and the new ones are worse.
It is not Steve Tyler’s fault he grew old. and at MSG Wednesday night the boy was game as well as gamey, it is Steve Tyler’s’s fault he dresses like Stevie Nicks. And it isn’t Joe Perry’s fault he is the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” of Keith Richards wannabes but that mustache? That’s Joe’s fault.
A huge disappointment, these are the guys Lennon chose to play with him on Double Fantasy, these cats are the real deal. I plan to see em next time they headline.
Overall it was an exciting two hours of fun and spectacle and it’s befitting that Madonna’s photo is next to Elvis “The King” Presley, for she is still the reigning queen of pop
With the house lights up, the E Street Band entered to a complete recording of Sinatra’s “New York, New York” before a blistering, very, very smart “Badlands”. The momentum took the band straight thru the lights dimming full throttle “We Take Care Of Our Own”.
Two guys and three back up musicians playing blues and rock but mainly blues, one of them moves the other one sits behind his drumkit center stage and bangs em hard. And they performed for three quarters of an hour, then the three musicians left the stage, and they played a s duo and then all five played together.
An overlong hour song set was more than a taste but even from a distance the band had an excellent dynamic, seldom jamming, always at service to the songs, and with a pretty good leader in Turner, they had problems making an impression.
Kool And The Gang might be a nostalgia band but they are a completely pro nostalgia, capable of getting the mid-40 Van Halen fans to shake their ever widening booties
the band barreled through one hit after another turning the Arena into a sweaty rock and roll club. Interspersed by Dave’s consistently self-amused commentary on the action and Eddie’s short, fluid, guitar solos. They managed to cover just about all of the Dave era fan faves and still have time for a drum solo.
They sold out MSG in ten minutes of presale. And the audience were berserk, a truly fun buncha kids, who were like dayglo hippies on ecstacy instead of weed, and dancing up a storm. I, myself, who only white man dances, felt moved to shake it. But it wasn’t a “concert”. It was a DJ set.
All the action was on the Top 40 and the Top 40 was ruled by dance, which made last nights “Jingle Ball” the most consistent night of live music this year. 10 artists and everybody at the top of their game
These born again Christians are pretty brutal if you can’t meet them half way but really, given the job at hand, they handled themselves OK. Friendly, Godl fearing, lotsa face scrunching. You could do worse.
Adam Brand is a good ol’ boy from Australia, playing some of that country-pop and, along with three other acoustic guitarists and a washboard, he performed a pretty good 20 minute set that didn’t come close to wearing out its welcome.
Lady Gaga’s fans treat her like a very cool maiden Aunt, sticking up for them when their parents just don’t understand. Katy Perry’s fans treat her like a big sister, testing the adult world’s waters for them. Swift is a mix of sister, role model and best friend forever
