12 Months of Live Music

When things started opening back up in 2021 after fifteen months of living in a cocoon, I was chomping at the bit. I purchased concert tickets left and right, many from bands that probably wouldn’t have made the cut in 2019, but in my newfound freedom seemed like necessary luxuries. Twelve months later, I look back on a year’s worth of live music. It was a great run. All but two of the acts I had never even seen before. You can read below for details, but Joseph and Sammy Rae & Friends win my two best shows of the year. The War on Drugs earns my worst. Nearly everyone else gets high marks.

September 18, 2021.  Black Pumas, preceded on different stages by Poi Dog Pondering, Moon City Masters and Sheila E.  Sheila E. proved to me that she kicks ass even in her 60s, putting the rest of us aging schlubs to shame.  I was unhappy that I had to leave the end of her show to ensure my attendance at the beginning of the Black Pumas concert, though they were terrific too, easily one of my three favorite bands of the past half a decade.  Sadly, they’ve cancelled shows for the latter half of 2022, leading to questions about the long-term health of the band.  Hopefully they’ll release more music soon.

November 13, 2021.  The Fixx, preceded by Fastball (the acoustic duo version of the group).  The Fixx was fantastic, one of two bands I had seen prior to 2021.  They are in my mind one of the most underrated bands of the 80s and 90s, achieving a level of musicianship and lyrical content that surpasses most of their contemporary and more-popular brethren.  Fabulous.

November 21, 2021. Sammy Rae & The Friends.  I’ve written about this band before, but they are ridiculous.  Sammy Rae’s voice is out of this world, and she really sings, eschewing the vocal shouting that appeals to the masses on shows like American Idol and The Voice.  As gifted and as ebullient a performer as you’ll ever see grace the stage.  One of my top two concerts of the past year.

January, 2022.  Pinegrove.  Postponed due to COVID.  Stay tuned.

January, 2022.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones.  Postponed due to COVID.  I eventually got my money back, but fortunately got to see the band in August at the Sacred Rose Festival.  Stay tuned.

January 15, 2022.  Nate Bargatze.  Not a musician, but a fabulous comedian who manages to be hilarious without resorting to the low hanging fruit of vulgarity and profanity.  Not that I’m a prude, but comedians like Jo Koy assault the audience with F-bomb after F-bomb, and it becomes tiresome.  Bargatze takes another path.

February 27, 2022.  Ralph Covert.  Formerly of acts like The Bad Examples and Ralph’s World, this local Chicago musician played for 2 hours and 45 minutes!  I shit you not.  Playing as a trio for most of the night, Ralph told stories and played selections from throughout his career.  Terrific.

March 27, 2022.  Bright Eyes, preceded by Christian Lee Hutson.  I took a chance on this one.  I only know that band’s final two albums and really dig them, but my dabbling into their earlier efforts has left me mostly unimpressed.  Fortunately, the band brought it with a crazy number of musicians on stage, including at times a mini choir and orchestra.  Led by Colin Oberst, the band clearly has its fanatics, as illustrated by the woman behind me who sang every lyric to every song…loudly.  Admittedly, I was kind of annoyed, but also impressed!  And I didn’t feel that I – a minor fan at best – could possibly bitch to someone who was clearly more passionate than I was.  Great show.

April, 2022.  Spoon.  Cancelled by me due to double-booking.  Damn.  This one hurts a little, as I rank their latest album among the best of 2022, and it looks to have been a great show.

May 4, 2022.  Aimee Mann.  Postponed due to COVID.  To date, this hasn’t been rescheduled.  I haven’t seen Mann perform since Til Tuesday opened up for Tom Petty in 1985!

May 5, 2022.  Steve Hackett.  Performing a short set of solo stuff followed by the entire Seconds Out Genesis album, this was a kick to see live, especially with my son.  Such a high level of musicianship, and I finally got to see Supper’s Ready live!

June 25, 2022.  Again with my son, this was the first time I saw Billy Joel since 1990, and he really surpassed my expectations.  Sure, he played it extremely safe with the setlist, but damn, I can’t argue with the quality of the tunes, and I was impressed with Joel’s vocal ability at such an advanced age.  He seems very at ease in the elder statesman role, probably happy to be alive and still performing for appreciative fans.

July 15, 2022.  Adrian Belew.  I kind of went to this one on a lark, unsure if it was worth the hassle.  It was.  The show cost all of $35, and it was sparsely attended, so my friend and I could stretch out in relative isolation during a high-COVID time.  Belew was fantastic, playing the guitar as no other with an unbelievable bassist and drummer to fill out the trio.  The music is weird and not always in my wheelhouse, but he was fun to see live, and I’m thankful he performed “Three of a Perfect Pair,” a favorite of mine.

July 26, 2022.  Pinegrove.  My daughter turned me onto this band, and while I enjoy their output, I can’t exactly name a song by them.  But this was one of those tickets I purchased way back in the fall of 2021, figuring, “What the hell. Take a chance.”  Playing twenty-two songs almost uninterrupted, the band was tight, offering a multitude of changes of tempo and feel, with odd-metered output and crunchy guitar making this a feast for the ears.  I was glad to have the plugs handy!     

August 26, 2022.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones, preceded on different stages by Sierra Hull, White Demim, City and Colour, Punch Brothers, and afterward a half an hour of The War on Drugs.  A stellar opening day of the Sacred Rose Festival in Chicago, I was greeted with a variety of acts, all really good except The War on Drugs, who I found to be ponderous and overly sincere with songs lacking hooks.  Oh well.  St. Paul & the Broken Bones, on the other hand, were stellar, with lead singer Paul Janeway leading the way.  He especially gained my respect after thanking security for getting his “fat ass” back on stage after a romp through the crowd.  Anyone who can laugh at himself is cool by me.  Oh, he can sing too!

August 28, 2022.  Khruangbin (but it was not to be), preceded by The Infamous Stringdusters with Molly Tuttle.  Bad weather made this entire day at the Sacred Rose Festival precarious.  I got to see an abbreviated setlist with the Stringdusters and Molly Tuttle, who were terrific.  Alas, nearby lightening shut things down thereafter.  My friend was particularly distraught after waiting for two hours in the front row to see Khruangbin, only to be turned away.

September 9, 2022.  The Shins preceded by Joseph.  Such a score on this one!  I was a little unmotivated to see The Shins on a weeknight, concluding that I may have been a bit too zealous with my concert ticket purchases earlier in the year.  But then a few days before the show I discovered that Joseph were opening, another band introduced to me by one of my daughters.  I liked their output and wondered how they might perform live.  Wow.  I mean, wow!  Three sisters singing tight harmonies to nothing more than an electric guitar and an occasional MIDI kick drum trigger.  And they killed it!  One of my top two concerts of the past year. I came home and immediately ordered their acoustic album on vinyl.  The Shins came out and killed it as well, offering a lot more urgency and energy than on their studio albums, and singer James Mercer was in great form, nailing the high vocal parts that Mercer could have been forgiven for reworking to accommodate his aging voice.  But no, even on the powerhouse “Simple Song,” he hit those suckers perfectly.  Great show.

And so ended twelve months of live music.  Not too shabby.  At present I don’t have tickets to see anyone, perhaps needing to take a reprieve after such a breakneck pace.  But it was a helluva good run.

Eleven Albums from the Past 30 Years

A little over three years ago I wrote a number of blogs about albums I can’t live without – my desert island picks, if you will – and I ended up with 58 albums. Since then I’ve listened to a whole lot of music, including new discoveries and some older releases that I’d overlooked the first go around, and I thought I’d summarize my favorites in my next few blogs.

Incidentally, while I’ve written several times about the merits of physical music mediums – most recently in January of this year – I haven’t captured the case quite as eloquently as David Holmes in this month’s issue of Esquire. Check it out.

So here goes – in reverse chronological order – a bunch of albums that I’ve listened to over the past three years. And to Holmes’s point, I actually remembered these albums rather than relying on Spotify to tell me my play history.

Sammy Rae – Let’s Throw a Party (2021).  This is only an EP, so if I’m allowed to bend the rules, I’d couple this release with 2018’s The Good Life – also an EP – for one full-length album. My wife and I got to see Sammy Rae in November (and all of my children are seeing her in their respective cities – she’s managed to attract the attention of my 19-year-old all the way up to my 53-year-old self) and she is easily among the top five performers I’ve ever seen. If you have a chance to see her, do it, even if you don’t think her albums are the bee’s knees, which they are. Ebullient, energetic, contagious, Rae is also a vocal gymnast with a kick-ass band. Thanks to my son for exposing me to this artist.

Black Pumas – Black Pumas (2018).  I also got to see this band in 2021 – my first show in 18 months due to the pandemic, and this is simply the best rock band to come out in recent history. Offering swampy, Austin soul, this duo churns out melodies over intoxicating grooves and doesn’t let up. And singer Eric Burton is…well…as amazing as the aforementioned Sammy Rae. A powerhouse. And a kick-ass logo and album cover to boot! Rae could learn a thing or two about their graphic design.

Flying Colors – Second Nature (2014).  Oh, the alluring bombast of prog rock! It’s a genre that these days often borders on metal, which isn’t in my wheelhouse, but wowie wow wow, this release by Flying Colors, a sort of super group with former members of Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple, Dream Theater and others, is the bomb, offering grandiose, anthemic rock that’s complicated and heavy without going over the edge. It’s also melodic as hell, which is what I always desire. This release – the band’s second – is the better of their three releases, and it accompanied me for many hours as I worked on my basement in 2020. I wish I could remember how I first heard of them; I think it may have been the podcast Political Beats. As with so many albums from the CD Age, it’s too damn long and the final two or three tracks should have been scratched, but those first six tracks would make a killer normal album-length venture.

Queens of the Stone Age – …Like Clockwork (2013).  This probably should have made my list from 2019. I first heard the song “I Sat by the Ocean” while driving home late at night and nearly pulled the car over. What the hell was this? A pulsating, edgy ditty with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind lyrics and a unique vocalist. Wonderful, as is the whole album, toes dipping in melancholy and angst that often hits the spot for me. Why it took my TWENTY YEARS to discover this band is mind-boggling, but as I’ve admitted before, I have my blind spots. Like, nearly my entire periphery.

Bright Eyes – The People’s Key (2011).  Kudos to WXRT for playing the song “Jejune Stars” one afternoon while I was driving (You see? It really does pay to drive sometimes and listen to whatever is out there) and thought, hot damn. I memorized just enough lyrics to do a Google search upon arriving home and discovered once again that I was listening to a band that was TWENTY YEARS OLD! I’m seeing this band this Saturday in Chicago and am really excited to see how this band plays live. (Update: they were excellent.)

The Red Button – As Far As Yesterday Goes (2011).  Damn, this is good. Once again Spotify gets credit for this one, as the title track of this band’s sophomore effort came up while listening to Emitt Rhodes’s radio (Rhodes will come up in my next blog). I actually thought the song was a Rhodes recording; it was such early-70s-powerpop-perfection, but this comes from a duo of veteran LA musicians, and they really hit the nail on the head after their 2007 debut. Once again, I learned about a band ten years AFTER the fact. Sensing a trend?

William Shatner – Has Been (2004).  I’ve written about this one before but failed to include it in my top albums back in 2018. With Ben Folds at the helm and with contributions by Joe Jackson, Aimee Mann, Henry Rollins and Brad Paisley, this is a terrific blend of comedy, insight, vulnerability, irony and sentiment. If you’re skeptical, I get it, but listen to the first three tracks on the album and then tell me Shatner doesn’t have something very real to offer.

U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004).  I remember seeing the iPod commercial with the accompanying U2 song “Vertigo” during the summer Olympics and thinking, well hell, this is refreshing! I love the tune, and probably the first 7 or 8 of this release before it starts to wane a bit. But for me, this is superior to the critically praised All the things You Can’t Leave Behind, and it represents the last gasp of a band that has probably overstayed its welcome. I’m still pissed that I’ve never seen these guys live. Hell, one of my daughters has seen them twice!

Kate Schrock – Dames Rocket (2000).  I’d completely forgotten about this gem, but then last year when I was cataloging my CDs on Discogs I happened upon this album again, having to clear away the cobwebs before my memory started to come back. Of course! I love this album! And those horns were arranged by my old Berklee buddy Tom Snow! I was delighted to be reacquainted with this singer from Maine. The album gets better as it goes, with “River,” “The Wait” and “St. Jude” absolutely killer. Wonderful.

k.d. lang – Ingenue (1992).  Another one of those gems that I simply forget to listen to, but after revisiting it I recalled that this is the real deal. Lang’s voice is unrivaled, absolutely perfect, and the music on this LP offers complex textures: sensual, moody and passionate, desire oozing from the grooves. The album takes it’s time – perfect for sitting back in the recliner with a bourbon in hand on a cold, winter’s evening. The final track, “Constant Craving,” got some radio play back in the day, but the penultimate “Tears of Love’s Recall” is one that really grabs me. 

Psychodots – Psychodots (1991).  Digging into the band The Bears led me to this follow-up band – with the same members minus Adrian Belew – and I spent the next two months listening to this album. The song “Stella” is perfect; I once played it on repeat for an hour straight on my back patio. This band played its last show just a few months ago in their hometown Cincinnati, and I’m sorry I never saw them in any formation, including the original band, The Raisins, whose LP I’m still on the lookout for.

That takes me through the 90s! I’ll add twelve additional album next week as I cover the 80s through the 50s.