For me, Beck is a sort of nostalgia I think. Lots of his songs were big with me at pretty good times in my life. When I got the email last week at 3PM saying there was going to be a Beck show at a really tiny venue that went on sale in less than 2 hours, I kinda freaked out. It’s not often you get that sort of opportunity. I was lucky enough to get tickets, judging by the angry people on craigslist, sonicliving and other websites tons of good fans were shut out cause TicketWeb was not prepared to handle the onslaught. (not surprising).

And unfortunately, I have to tell all of you that didn’t get to see the show that you really missed out on something pretty awesome. For me, Beck represents another bit of nostalgia in a sense, in that it was the first time I’d ever been to a show with a taper, my friend Rich, who I’m not even sure knows that I know about his blog. Regardless, his taping of the show kinda prompted me to think that taping things was a good idea so I bought some mics the next year and now I’ve got a ton of shows under my belt I guess you could say. I won’t put it all entirely on the Beck show as I’d been to a handful of other shows that were and weren’t recorded and I really wanted the stuff that hadn’t been recorded… and ultimately that Beck show in 2000 that I saw was what prompted me to say “why wait for someone else to do it?”. I thought it was all sorts of complicated or dangerous or whatever, but I was enlightened after that and it’s all been history since.

The show itself was more than I had imagined it’d be. I was figuring a low key sort of show, maybe mostly acoustic “small venue” songs. Nope! They tore right out of the gate with Devil’s Haircut and I knew at that point it was going to be a great show. And it totally was. The coolest thing to me was probably the “live remix” they did with Hell Yes and Black Tambourine. The band all put their instruments down and picked up drum machines (or something) and Beck had an ipod with a track you could scratch and they re-created the remixes from the Hell Yes EP live. It was a pretty awesome thing to see. They even played a pretty long set for what i was expecting. I’d figured an hour-ish would be plenty but they went the distance for a full 1.5hrs. They touched on all Beck’s albums, and even threw in a Dylan cover. There’s really nothing bad at all I can say about the show. However, the crowd was a bit rowdy (expected) and the drink girl was a little loud and obnoxious, but whatever. You get that at some shows and I’d rather have been in the middle of the room than off in the back somewhere when it’s someone that I know I’ll never see from that close up again.

I fear I’m ruined for Beck shows in the future. It’ll never be this good again.

Setlist:

1. Devil’s Haircut
2. Nausea
3. Profanity Prayers
4. Girl
5. Minus
6. Nicotine & Gravy
7. Mixed Bizness
8. Gamma Ray
9. Leopard Skin Pill-box Hat
10. Soul of a Man
11. Think I’m In Love
12. Replica
13. Modern Guilt
14. Youthless
15. Ghettochip Malfunction (Hell Yes)
16. Shake Shake Tambourine (Black Tambourine)
17. Walls
18. Orphans
19. Volcano
20. Chemtrails
21. encore break
22. Loser
23. Where It’s At
24. E-Pro

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless 16-bit FLAC via Dimeadozen (registration required)
download the show in lossless 24-bit FLAC via The Trader’s Den (registration required)
Links:

• Official Site
• MySpace:
• SF Chronicle Review

I’ve got a couple of shows I keep meaning to post but I can’t ever remember to do it before I get distracted. I was going to post the Liz Phair show from a few weeks ago, but I screwed that one up. (typical story with my recording lately I guess) I’m going to see like 5 shows in the next few weeks, hopefully a few of them will turn out nice.

I have two requests in the meantime:

#1: please comment on this post if you’re reading (it’s quick and easy) just to let me know that comments are working on this thing. I’ve been told at times that they aren’t, but every time I check they work. I’m confused. Nobody said anything on my last few posts and that’s somewhat disturbing. Either nobody reads, nobody cares, or the site’s busted. (and it’s not like I go around promoting this blog and try to get people to read it so I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody regularly checks it, I’m not one of those quantity over quality sorts of people so I’m not going to make 10 posts a day with worthless crap if I don’t have anything substantial to post). If comments are busted for real, I’d really appreciate an email. dave @ (w&w.com) if you can’t comment but otherwise would like to do so, and I’ll have more proof that it’s busted.

#2: If you’re one of those 3-4 people with a big huge DSLR/SLR/etc camera at every single show that I see, can we please work something out so you let me use your pictures? I’m finding it harder to find pictures to use that weren’t taken on someone’s iphone, and I know there’s at least a few of you at every show in the front row snapping pictures. I know you can’t all be there from the Chron/SFWeekly (and if you are, I never ever see pictures of any show I go to in those things) and I know most of you are just using it as a vehicle to get into show for free (wish I could do it too) so it’d be super if you’d let me use a picture from every show I see that you’re at.

Thanks, and new stuff this week I promise!

Full circle! For the first time, I get to post an artist for the second time. Tilly and the Wall was the first band I posted here a couple years ago when I got the urge to make a blog just for the stuff I record. I missed their show earlier this year at the Rickshaw Stop because I’d seen the British Sea Power show the night before and I didn’t feel like going out again the next night since it was Noise Pop and inevitably they pack so many bands on the bill that you’re soooo tired before the headliner gets on. Oh well.

Tilly and the Wall’s new album “O” is definitely one of my favorites of the year. It doesn’t hold itself to anyone particular sound, they’re experimenting with a lot of stuff to great success and really bringing a more rock sound to their music while retaining that whole thing that made them awesome in the first place. I think a lot of the songs were definitely conceived with the live show in mind, and that they perhaps needed a few songs where there wasn’t as much focus on the novelty of someone in the band tap dancing out percussion. There’s still plenty of that, but at the show it seemed like at least a little less prominent than in the past. There was a real drummer, but I didn’t see him do a whole lot. I’m not terribly sure how I feel about Beat Control either, since it doesn’t really sound like anything else they’ve ever done and not necessarily in a way I like. I don’t think there was anything but a pre-made beat and keyboards on the song which is totally weird compared to 3 guitars, percussion, and keyboards. I’m glad they didn’t do a whole album like that because while I like their voices, I don’t like the 80’s style dance music revival thing going on. Maybe it’s because I had enough of it the first time and I’m just not in nostalgia mode yet or whatever, but it doesn’t work for me. I guess for the kids that weren’t born until ‘85 or later it’s awesome because it’s brand new to them, but really the song sounds way too much Miami Sound Machine to me and that’s just not my thing.

Anyway. It was a good show! They threw out balloons before the show and the hipsters tried to act like balloons are totally not cool. Seriously guys, have some fun every once in a while okay?

As an aside, I sorta got “busted” during the show. The band was cool with me taping their last show in SF, so I figured it was okay again this time and I didn’t REALLY try to do any sort of hiding of my equipment but I put it all under a hat to keep it out of the way from anyone who might set their drink down on or near my stuff. The security guy came around and asked what I had under the hat, turns out that there was a blinking light and a glow that made it real obvious that I was taping and they had no video/flash photo signs everywhere and he was making sure I wasn’t rolling on video I suppose. Luckily he didn’t shut me down and was totally cool with things.

Setlist:

1. Intro
2. Too Excited
3. Alligator Skin
4. Rainbows in the Dark
5. Falling Without Knowing
6. Bad Education
7. Reckless
8. Beat Control
9. Cacophany
10. Pot Kettle Black
11. Tall Tall Grass
12. The Ice Storm, Big Gust, And You
13. Dust Me Off
14. Sing Songs Along
15. encore break
16. Shake It Out
17. Night of the Living Dead

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless FLAC from Dimeadozen.org (registration required)

Okay, I originally wrote up a big negative thing about the show, because I honestly didn’t enjoy it a lot. I thought the band looked bored, it seemed like they were legitimately pained to play some of their older songs, despite only having played a single show at a tiny club in San Francisco before… and the show was rather short for a headliner. The first time I saw them, I chalked everything up to it being their first US tour. This time, I don’t really know. Maybe they were just tired and didn’t care by the time they got all the way to San Francisco, I’ve heard it happens to a lot of bands. Regardless for the price and the time and all that, not really a good show. Oh well. The recording is nice anyway, and without visuals it holds up a lot better, but honestly most of the band just had a “lets just get this done so we can go home” look on their faces the entire time. Kate was into it, but the rest of the band… not so much. And that’s kinda disappointing to me.

Also, nobody on flickr took pictures and made them available to the public, so I can’t link a picture for this show. Double bummer eh?

setlist:

1. Century
2. Here Comes the Serious Bit
3. Autonomy Boy
4. The Couples
5. You Could Have Both
6. Round the Hairpin
7. Once and Never Again
8. I Liked the Boys
9. Separated By Motorways
10. Too Clever By Half
11. Guilt
12. Erin O’Connor
13. I’m Going to Hell
14. Giddy Stratospheres
15. Weekend Without Makeup
16. Lust in the Movies

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless FLAC (registration required)

The Dolls are my 2nd favorite band in the world, second only to Tori. (sorry!). Their live shows are without comparison, and should not be missed unless you just hate going to awesome shows that are worth every penny. I promise there’s no way you can leave one without saying “that was fucking awesome”. I’m not joking at all. I think I’ve seen them 20something times, and it’s almost like they just get better every single time. They’re not your typical “we play the exact same show every single place we go and just mail it in” sort of band. The average band will fill their setlist with 9/10 staples and maybe (if you’re lucky!) give you a song or two that you weren’t expecting. The Dresden Dolls however follow what I can only call the Tori Amos style of setlists, where their entire catalog and plenty of stuff that most people in the audience have never even heard is completely fair game. Most bands are also not brave enough to play new, untested material at a show. The Dolls however have no fear and that’s a great testament to how much of a great band, and an especially great live band they are. Despite having seen a crap ton of Dolls shows, a lot of this setlist was new to me. Not “new” in the sense that I’d never heard the songs, but new in the sense that I’d just never heard them play it live. (technically I’ve seen Amanda by herself playing some of them, but it’s almost totally different when there’s a band too).
As for the show itself, it was a typical Dolls show. (keep in mind this makes it instantly twice as good as any other show you’ve seen this year). As they’re touring behind their new album (comes out Today) No, Virginia which is a b-sides/old material compilation that just basically rounds up all of the stuff they’ve done live and/or just didn’t record for the last 5 years, I mostly expected a show full of those songs. Zoe Keating (previously of Rasputina, now doing stuff on her own) joined in for a few songs, East Bay Ray (whaaaat?) from Dead Kennedys shows up for a couple of songs. Meredith Yayanos (who I think just needs to join the band full time because some of these songs SCREAM for a creepy violin part, so can we make that happen somehow?) was there too and that packs in an extra dimension of awesome.

Many people may try to dismiss a band like this as a gimmick since oh it’s just a drummer and a piano… but for those of you at home who didn’t go to the show, keep in mind… Brian plays the drums and the guitar on The Gardener at the same time for the entire song. Can you do that? Can the drummer (or guitarist) in your favorite band do that? No, I don’t think they can.

Anyway, go see The Dresden Dolls if you can. It might change your life. (and hey, if it doesn’t you still saw a really great show right?)

setlist:

1. In the Flesh
2. Girl Anachronism
3. Night Reconnaissance
4. Mrs. O
5. Missed Me
6. Ultima Esperanza
7. The Lonesome Organist Rapes Page Turner
8. компютриCoin-Operated Boy
9. Moon Over Marin
10. Guitar Hero
11. The Gardener
12. The Astronaut
13. (post-war trade banter)
14. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)
15. Pierre
16. Boston
17. Half Jack
18. War Pigs
19. One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless 24-bit FLAC (registration required)
download the show in lossless 16-bit FLAC (registration required)

Links:

• Official Site
• MySpace: Dresden Dolls

Elbow is sometimes a difficult band to see. They write great songs, and Guy Garvey has a great voice, there’s no doubt. But, their songs are often slow ballads and not necessarily the stuff you can rock out with. This makes for a difficult live show I think, trying to keep the average crowd enthusiastic when for the most part if you give anyone a chance to hear themselves talk, they’ll take it as an opportunity to do so, even if the band is still on the stage and trying to perform. I was plagued at this particular show by a really coked up bunch of people who were trying really hard to be more impressive than the band. One guy couldn’t stop moving, maybe he wasn’t coked up and maybe he had Parkinson’s, I don’t know, but he couldn’t stop talking to everyone around him in such a distracting way that I personally found it really difficult to even concentrate on the band.
I personally like the long drawn out vocals and rather lush arrangement with the music. I don’t know what most people were expecting when they went to the show honestly. They did a lot of songs from their newest album, and a handful of older songs as well. It’s nothing I can complain about, but honestly it’s nothing that would have made me say “best concert ever”. The real highlight for me was One Day Like This where Guy got the crowd involved on the chorus. I guess I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, I don’t know. Good show, not great, but maybe it was the crowd and I was tired and this isn’t the sort of show for when you’re tired.

setlist:

1. Starlings
2. The Bones of You
3. Leaders of the Free World
4. Great Expectations
5. Mirrorball
6. Grounds for Divorce
7. Mexican Standoff
8. The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver
9. The Stops
10. Newborn
11. мебелиband intro / crowd lyrics
12. One Day Like This
13. encore break
14. Puncture Repair
15. Station Approach
16. Scattered Black and Whites

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless FLAC (registration required)

Links:

• Official Site: http://www.elbow.co.uk/
• MySpace: