IT HAD BEEN 20 YEARS since I last saw AC/DC: May 14, 1988, at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit. I was well into my new wave/punk/house music phase by then, but there are some musical things a rural-Michigan-raised kid never outgrows: Kiss, J. Geils and AC/DC. Those three acts broke in the Great Lakes State before the rest of America caught up, so it was my civil duty to go see the band on the "Blow Up Your Video Tour."
Some tidbits about that 1988 show: hair-metal forgettables White Lion opened, killed "Wait" and sucked horribly with everything else; lookalike nephew Stevie Young filled in for an alcohol-pickled Malcolm on rhythm guitar; and I seem to remember lead guitarist Angus rising out of the stage in a rocketship that looked suspiciously like a penis.
In other words, it was awesome.
So, when AC/DC announced Sat., Nov. 15, as the D.C. date for its "Black Ice" tour, I threw my hat in the Washington Post's assignment ring as early as I could — for if I wasn't going to cover it for the paper, I was going to buy tickets the second they were available.
Thankfully, Our Kid at the poppa paper, J. Freedom, hooked me up, and my review is in today's paper.
But my notebook was filled with fanboy scribblings that didn't make the cut, so here's a loose collection of deep thoughts on AC/DC — are there any other kind?
Continue Reading "Love at First Feel: AC/DC Live at Verizon Center" »
DAMIAN ABRAHAM LOVES punk rock. The lead singer of Fucked Up is a hardcore record collector (pun intended), and since this is the home of harDCore, it wasn't surprising when he asked his bandmates to do one more song at the Rock & Roll Hotel on Sunday: a cover of Wire's "12XU," which Minor Threat recorded and to which Abraham wanted to pay a self-described "cheesy" tribute.
Deep down, however, you know he really meant the homage.
But when the song went off like a car crash, Abraham pushed guitarist 10,000 Marbles and then spilled half of Mr. Jo's drum kit before jumping off stage. (It was the second time he left the performance, actually; earlier he dashed off the dais in order to puke up all the nachos he ate before the show.)
"DONNIE WAHLBERG, Donnie Wahlberg?" said a man hawking tickets on the corner of F and 7th Streets, adapting his usual "Got tickets, got tickets?" catch phrase for the hordes of twenty- and thirtysomething women pouring into the Verizon Center last night.
To a non-New Kids on the Block fan, this fella wouldn't make a lot of sense. But if you asked, say, a 27-year-old girl whose parents didn't let her go to a NKOTB show when she was eight-years-old ... uh ... for instance ... she'd know this living Stub Hub was referring to the New Kid responsible for getting the guys together for this reunion tour.
A chance for unclaimed childhood nostalgia — and this time with beer!
Thanks but no thanks we told the guy; we had our tickets — the cheapest seats, which set us back $52 each to sit in the nosebleeds. Riding the Verizon Center escalator to the 400 level, the excitement was palpable. But at 9:15 p.m. the show had already started, with "You've Got It (The Right Stuff)" reverberating throughout the now empty stadium hallways.
"We're missing it!"
"First let's get beer!"
Continue Reading "Hangin' Tough Hangover: New Kids on the Block" »
I'M SUFFERING FROM a fun hangover, and James is to blame.
I was just one bopping body in a sold-out crowd that jammed the 9:30 Club last night to see the Manchester lads take the stage. It was a Britpoppy performance that rippled with energy, with verve, with emotion.
It's a show that I never thought would happen.
After two decades of indie stardom, a few mainstream breakouts — "Laid" and "Sit Down," most prominently — and helping to fuel the careers of bands like Nirvana, Radiohead and Coldplay (all former opening acts), James effectively broke up when singer Tim Booth bowed out in 2001.
Now seven years later, reunion rumblings have evolved into a smashing new album and a tour that takes the band to New York tonight and New Jersey over the weekend.
They're in for a kick-ass show. From the first note through the final bows two-and-a-half hours later, Booth and the gang displayed the vivacity of a group half their age but the seasoning to target their songs toward that perfect psychic note.
During their undulating first set, they wowed with the life-affirming glamishness of "Bubbles," soothed and prioritized with "Waterfall" and struck a political chord with the anti-war "Hey Ma."
IMAGINE IF GEORGE MICHAEL had been granted the opportunity to become popular. Let's put that another way: Imagine if George Michael had been granted the freedom to detach himself from a record label that exploited him (Sony), so that he could become a prolific songwriter rather than a novelty act.
Tuesday's sold-out performance at the Verizon Center chronicled more than just the former Wham! frontman's musical maturation and hairstyles. It presented a living — albeit abbreviated — history lesson on the fickleness of a music industry intent on treating its talent like professional slaves.
After Michael's wildly successful album "Faith," released in 1987, he went on record stating his reticence to be a puppet for his label. As a result, his next studio recording, "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1," was perhaps the crooner's flashiest work, and probably his most modest. Shrugging off the status of a preening sex symbol, he refused to appear in the now-iconic music video (featuring a bevy of bathing beauties including the supermodels Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford) for his song "Freedom 90." Michael got little airplay in America after that, and his creative output was stifled by lawsuits and frustrations.
That was then; this is now.
Continue Reading "Freedom '08: George Michael at Verizon Center" »
ON THURSDAY NIGHT at the 9:30 Club, young and (mostly) old alike turned out to soak in the feel-good vibes of legendary experimental pysch-noise band Butthole Surfers.
While it's safe to say that the entirety of the audience was there for the performance on stage, only a band like the Butthole Surfers has the ability to bring out an audience that's just as entertaining — which is why I'll review the fans and not the Buttholes.
Continue Reading "The In Crowd: Reviewing the Butthole Surfers' Audience" »
ONE WOULD EXPECT a certain amount of chaos from something called the F Yeah Tour, which staggered into the Black Cat on Wednesday night.
Inspired by the Los Angeles art and music festival of the same name, the tour was headlined by 2007 blog superstar Dan Deacon, featured similarly hyperactive bands such as Matt & Kim, Monotonix and The Death Set, and will likely have reviewers such as myself trying to think of lots of different ways to say "spastic."
There was definitely no shortage of fist pumping, jumping, shimmying and shouting. Visibility was harder to come by. That's because the majority of the acts didn't bother using the stage, instead choosing to set up shop right in front of it, or sometimes directly in the middle of the audience. It made for an evening of massive audience participation and if you didn't happen to be right in the middle of things to see what was going on, no need for concern. (With a good percentage of the audience wielding cameras and cell phones, a quick search of Flickr or YouTube ought to fill in the blanks.)
"THIS SONG IS dedicated to the daughters of the revolution," pealed Cyndi Lauper during the encore of the True Colors Tour, which arrived at D.A.R. Constitution Hall on Saturday night.
She ripped into a husky a capella rendition of her bittersweet single "Same Old Story," in honor of the three women who have come closest to sitting behind the desk of the Oval Office: Eleanor Roosevelt, Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton: "Friends tell me you've been around / Big fish in a big ol' town / Gobbled up all in one fell swoop."
That gesture, paired with the lyrical implications of power and struggle, provided a sobering capstone to a four-hour celebration. Although the glass ceiling was not the evening's primary concern, it was referenced often enough to sharpen the focus.
The second year of Lauper's festival brought music, humor and a clear anti-discriminatory agenda to an affectionate, multigenerational crowd. The cross-section of demographics in attendance was asked — vociferously at times — to demand more equitable voting rights in their communities. This meant pleas for more accessible registration and more digestible paperwork. Lauper also trumpeted the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights lobbying group that receives money for each ticket sold on the tour.
Not that the concert was entirely about message.
TOURING BEHIND ITS supposed industry-revolutionizing album, "In Rainbows," Radiohead played one of the first shows of its U.S. tour on Sunday at Nissan Pavilion.
But instead of a dollop of arena-rock experimentation on a balmy spring evening, fans were treated to a downpour of rain, which was overheard being described as "vengeful" and "deliberate."
The band's decision to play the purportedly environmentally friendly Nissan Pavilion over the more-convenient, Metro-accessible options was ballyhooed across D.C. Internet message boards and blogs upon the show's announcement.
No doubt Radiohead would shed a trail of recycled tears if the band calculated how much gas was guzzled on the long, slow haul to Bristow, Va.
"I'M A FUTURE FALL OUT STANDING / In the present race I phantom," Jeff Tweedy crooned to a packed-to-the-gills house at 9:30 Club last night.
Phantoms of the past, present and future pervaded a show that chronicled a band's evolution and a singer's checkered emotional past. When Tweedy invited the audience to sing along to the deceptively jaunty "Hummingbird," it felt like an enormous group hug. To wit: "His goal in life was to be an echo / The type of sound that floats around and then back down."
Not that the Chicago-based group has fallen on hard times. Far from it. But on the artistic front, 2007 proved to be a tumultuous year for Tweedy and Co.
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