Wolfmother: November 22nd Hammerstein Ballroom

On Wednesday the 22nd I saw Wolfmother at Hammerstein Ballroom in NY. My friend and I arrived a little over an hour before the doors opened to assure us of a solid view for the show. Luckily when we arrived we were amongst a fairly small crowd but to our surprise the show was actually sold out, something I certainly didn't expect. After standing out in the brisk rain for an hour with very anxious fans the doors opened and we found ourselves second row from the stage which was extremely exciting.

There were two opening bands, the first of which were the Silversun Pickups which were a pretty straight forward group, your typical rock music, nothing fancy or unique besides a female bassist, and overall the sounded good. The next band to come out was Dead Meadow, a band which was clearly different from the initial opening band just by appearance. The stage had a very psychedelic set up with a projector shooting out the typical psychedelic images onto the drummers bass drum. The band was incredible, preferably the guitarist, he was truly a phenomenal guitarist with fantastic and spacey solos which extended for pretty large chunks of time. The crowd was not buying into this genre of music and were getting moody as their set went on until Wolfmother finally hit the stage.

Wolfmother came out and walked straight to their instruments and without speaking a word they went straight into "Dimension." Every person in the house was completely into the performance screaming the lyrics to each and ever song. One of the greatest aspects of their performance was their stage show, guitarist and vocalist Andrew Stockdale was all over the stage, leaping into the air, doing some impressive high kicks, and climbing on boxes which brought him closer to the audience. Throughout the show he encouraged the crowd to be loud and to have a good time. Bassist and Keyboardist Chris Ross was and always is the highlight of the show for his insane on stage antics. To describe how wild he is on stage would be impossible but of course I will try my best. His keyboard throughout the whole show is manhandled by him, he tosses it around while playing it, play it while it's standing up vertical, sways it side to side, and best of all, jumps up from the elevated drum stand right next to the keyboard and plays the note spot on when it is supposed to be played. The only way to appreciate it is to actually see it yourself.

Besides the incredible on stage performance, their sound was fantastic. Andrew Stockdale's voice replicates his studio sound spot on with that incredibly high and raw sound. The band would add some nice little jam sessions on to certain songs to give them even more life than they once had. The energy of every song is so powerful and it just went straight through the crowd. The band played every song from their one and only album and gave us what may have been the best played song of the night, "Communication Breakdown" from the almighty Led Zeppelin. Their version sounded right on par with Zep's, recreating that astounding and unique voice of Plant and ripping guitar solo of Page. By the end of the night I was baffled by how good of a show it was, with only one album their show spanned an hour and 45 minutes, and keep in mind there was very little talking during the show.

If you have never seen Wolfmother or even worse never heard any of their music I highly urge you to do so. This is my second time seeing them and they topped the first, but this was probably because they were the headliners and it was their tour and they weren't allocated a certain amount of time to play. For those who want to see a Wolfmother rendition of "Communication Breakdown" below is a video of them performing at the UK Hall of Fame.

Just Got Back From Seeing Wolfmother

And this show was greater than I could have ever imagined, probably the third greatest concert I've ever seen. Hopefully I'll write up a review of it tomorrow night but I can't make any guarantees. So, if I don't post tonight, I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Bob Dylan: Continental Airlines Arena 11/16/06

My review is late because I went out last night right after work so I had no time to post the review, however here I am now and ready to review. The Raconteurs opened for the epic Bob Dylan and hit the stage at 7:30. They came on the stage and without speaking to the crowd or anything they opened up with the song "Hands." For those who have never heard the band I highly recommend them, this is my second time seeing them and they really outdid themselves this time. Tonight they had some intense jam sessions and Jack White cracked a few jokes with his interesting but odd humor and played what seemed like every song from their first album accept one. They may have two songs but from my recollection they did all but one, and on that note, they played for an hour. They closed their set with their big hit "Steady as She Goes." The song has one of the most infectious hooks for a chorus and the crowd ate it up and gave them a huge standing ovation when they left the stage. The crowd was an older crowd for the most part, the average age was probably mid thirties, and to my surprise there was a pretty large young crowd too.

Dylan took the stage at 9:00 and before coming out there was a voice over the PA system recapping Dylan's life, and eventually mentioned how Dylan found Jesus in the 70's and everyone wrote him off after that, once that was mentioned the crowd cheered with heart. He walked onto the stage wearing a black suit with silver buttons, a black top hat with vibrant rhinestones, and even a fancy looking scarf. Everyone rose to their feet and he opened up with "Cat's In the Well." Here Dylan's voice sounded rough and much like one who has lost their voice, the beginning of the song sounded like he could barely get the words out. Once he went into the following song "Senor" his voice was fully recovered and sounded completely on and great (I suppose who you're talking to this could differentiate, I personally like Dylan's voice.) He then followed that up with a song from his new album "Rollin' and Tumblin'" which was fantastic, a fun upbeat song which showed that Dylan was truly on tonight.

Dylan would then go into two of his greatest songs, the first of which was "Positively 4th Street" which was phenomenal, and that would be an understatement. Dylan clearly put all of his heart into this song tonight, and he spat out the lyrics with intensity and passion. The next song was "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding.)" This is possibly my most favorite Dylan song so I was ecstatic to hear it being played. Considering I've never seen Dylan I never realized that he completely changes the way the songs sound, he basically keeps just the lyrics and some of the important riffs. It was definitely different hearing his songs like this but at the same time nice. I suppose playing the same songs for forty years gives quite a valid reason for changing them up. Anyhow, Dylan sounded great on these songs with some fantastic Harmonica solo's and solid work on keyboard.

Dylan also displayed a fair amount of energy throughout the entire show, something that I hear many people complaining about. Whenever I talk to someone who has seen Dylan they always tell me, "It's Dylan, what do you expect" as if it were a bad thing. The whole night Dylan showed a fair share of energy, he was sitting down the whole night because he was playing keyboard, however, while sitting down he was bobbing around and stomping his feet with tenacity.

Dylan ended the set with a stunning rendition of "Summer Days." It was a great song to end the set with because it was the most energetic and action packed song of the night. There was a plethora of great solos on it and it stretched to a reasonable amount of time. When Dylan and crew left the stage the crowd went wild for around five minutes until Dylan would return to give us some more. When he came back on stage his encore consisted of the new single from "Modern Times" called "Thunder on the Mountain" then he went into "Like a Rolling Stone" and ended the night on the epic "All Along the Watchtower" that sounded more like the Hendrix version than Dylan's.

Considering this was my first experience seeing who I feel is probably the best song writer of all time, I was extremely happy. His set consisted of a lot of my favorites and his vocals were on all night. For anyone who has never seen Dylan I highly recommend it, if you like him or not he is probably amongst the top three most important people in Rock n Roll along with The Beatles and Elvis. There is no way to measure Dylan's importance in history because he far exceeds any scale.

Set List

1.	Cat's In The Well
2.	Señor (Tales Of Yankee Power)
3.	Rollin' And Tumblin'
4.	Positively 4th Street
5.	It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
6.	When The Deal Goes Down
7.	Things Have Changed
8.	Simple Twist Of Fate
9.	Highway 61 Revisited
10.	Spirit On The Water
11.	Tangled Up In Blue
12.	Nettie Moore
13.	Summer Days
	(encore)
14.	Thunder On The Mountain
15.	Like A Rolling Stone
16.	All Along The Watchtower

Review Of Dylan Live Later Tonight

If you read my last post you can see that was I in dire need of seeing Dylan and now I finally have. I made a last minute move to go see him at a venue that wasn't sold out, and boy was it worth it. I will post a review of the show later tonight.

The Worst Thing About College

The worst thing about college for me is not having a car, the only places I can really access are places within close proximities to train stations. This means a lot of great concerts are completely out of my reach such as Dylan and the Raconteurs who are playing at the Continental Airlines Arena on Thursday. However, Dylan recently released that he is playing at the New York City Center where I saw Tool. The venue is extremely intimate and small, and what happens when big people play small venues? They sell out, quick! I found out about the news of him playing here a bit too late and now I am trying to find a way to get to the show. I've e-mailed a few people who have ticket offers online for a reasonable price (Under $100.) So far I've received no replies but regardless I will be there when Dylan goes and I will pray that some tickets are released by the box office the day of the show, and if not, all I can hope is that some scalper will give me a reasonable deal on tickets. So while hoping that I am going to see Dylan I created my dream Dylan set list which is as follows.

1. Hazel
2. Girl From the North Country
3. Blowin' In the Wind
4. The Times They are a Changin'
5. Gates of Eden
6. Hurricane
7. Subterranean Homesick Blues
8. Who Killed Davey More?
9. It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
10. Maggie's Farm
11. Masters of War
12. Don't Think Twice It's Alright
13. Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues
14. Ballad of a Thin Man
    

Encore

1. Tombstone Blues
2. All Along the Watchtower
3. Like a Rolling Stone

Wishful thinking but one can always dream...

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."
-Dylan

The Perfect Gig

I've been lacking solid ideas for things to write about (I'm sure your sick of hearing that) so I decided to look for ideas by looking on some music forums and the first topic I clicked on brought me to what I think is a pretty interesting topic. Are cover bands pathetic, and if so, are the people who are in them even more pathetic? This is what one person on the forum had to say about the topic:

I find cover bands sad and pathetic, really. I mean, as long as it's just for fun for a little while, it's ok. But when they try to make a carreer out of it, I find it becomes sad. Think about spending all your time pretending your'e someone else, dressing like someone else, acting like someone else, playing someone elses songs....And if they can pull of playing the songs, they probably have basic musical knowledge, so there is no reason for them not to write their own songs.

When I read this I was rather shocked, what exactly is wrong with a cover band and on top of that, what is wrong with people re-creating the beauty these bands once made? To combat what this person said I am going to pick apart his argument.

I am going to skip right to the end of his argument which says "they probably have basic musical knowledge, so there is no reason for them not to write their own songs." Not everyone was granted with an artistic and creative mind, because from my experience writing songs is much harder than one probably thinks, and what is even harder is writing a good song. I'll often write dumb songs which are just poking fun at people and those aren't even easy to come up with.

So why not make a career out of being a cover band? As long as there is a market for it people will come to see it. What is even better about making a career out of it is that these people are playing the music they love, working in a career in something which you love is something most of America does not know. Most Americans have jobs which they feel disconnected from and work just to pay the bills. These cover bands are playing the music they love and getting paid for it, WHAT A JOB!

Now about dressing up and trying to look like the band, that is just a part of the experience. People go to see these shows to get the feeling like they are seeing the band they love, no reason to cut them short with just music, they might as well go the extra mile and dress like them. I know when I've seen cover bands, the people watching the show get really into them and that has to be such a thrill for the band. Most cover bands I've seen look nothing like the members they are trying to be but I give them credit for trying and of course there have been some cover bands that truly did look like their respective band, for example the cover band Who's Next had a singer which looked exactly like the Daltrey of old with the long flowing hair. It was great to watch them especially with a Daltrey look alike on vocals.

Cover bands are about the fun and entertainment and I highly doubt they dedicate every part of their life to trying to be the people they are on stage and therefore are far from being pathetic. Moreover, I envy successful cover bands because I know I would love to be on stage playing my favorite Floyd albums or recreating Townshend's famous windmill, and not only doing this but getting paid and having rooms full of people cheering you on. I have a feeling most people will agree with the fact that there is nothing wrong with cover bands and the more power to them! A matter of fact I will be going to see The Machine (Pink Floyd) in a few weeks if everything goes according to plan.

A Systematic or Shuffled Life?

Everyone is different when it comes to listening to music, one thing that goes beyond the genres and the individual bands is exactly how you listen to your music. In this day in age of ITunes and MP3's people have the ability to listen to their whole CD collection however they wish. Whether they listen to an individual album or individual songs from a plethora of bands in any order.

Personally I prefer to listen to songs by just one band at a time, I don't really enjoy listening to a mish-mash of songs from every band under the sun. Maybe I need a more strict and set way of listening to my music than most but when I'm listening to music you can probably bet that I will be listening to either one band or one album straight through.

I think an important reason why I would rather listen to albums straight through is because of the type of music I listen to. A huge chunk of the music I listen to was created to be listened to in full and in one sitting. Music that was created based on an album and not individual songs. Even when going past that, I still would rather listen to one band in a sitting.

I know a lot of people would rather just put their Ipod or whatever they use on shuffle to hear a little bit of everything from their collection. I would like to know what everyone here prefers to do, would you rather listen to just one particular band in a sitting? Or would you rather listen to your music on shuffle?