Posts Tagged “great american music hall”

I know, I super slacked the last few months, so here’s the first show of 2009. I’m not seeing a ton of shows lately, but this is something worth getting out of the house to see, for sure.

Jonathan Coulton speaks to the soul of every nerd, geek, and anyone that comes in contact with anyone who considers themselves to be part of either sort of person. That’s not to say the music can only be enjoyed by nerds and geeks, but there’s a little something extra special inside for those who are. Not many people can get away with writing a song about having a mundane programming job, zombies, monkeys, evil mad scientists, and then still make some really nice and/or depressing songs about relationships in general and also fucking. It’s truly representative of humanity as a whole I think, and there’s definitely something there for everyone.

As for this show, I mean it’s tough to say anything but “he played all the songs I like pretty much” except that it’s difficult to even say there are many of his songs that I don’t like anyway… so yeah great show. I hadn’t been keeping up with the website, so I didn’t have a clue about the couple of songs for the contest thing so there were even a few treats as well as some covers. Can’t go wrong with a TMBG song at a nerdy rock show right?

I had tickets to the Saturday show as well, but unfortunately I flaked and didn’t go. (lots of reasons, none of them good). I kinda wish I had, because this show was great from start to finish and that’s something I haven’t been able to say about a lot of shows. Anyway, this one was great. Enjoy.

1. Intro
2. Big Bad World One
3. Shop Vac
4. Skullcrusher Mountain
5. Still Alive
6. Millionaire Girlfriend
7. Drinking With You
8. Famous Blue Raincoat
9. Tom Cruise Crazy
10. Code Monkey
11. My Monkey
12. Chiron Beta Prime
13. Always The Moon
14. Birdhouse In Your Soul
15. Creepy Doll
16. Mr. Fancy Pants
17. Someone Is Crazy
18. The Presidents
19. The Future Soon
20. Space Doggity
21. Re: Your Brains
22. First Of May
23. Sweet Caroline

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

Links:

• Official Site
• Jonathan Coulton: Listening primer

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)

So, I slack to say the least. I was going to put out an old Matt Nathanson show a while back (around the day of this show) that I just hadn’t worked on for a long while. Then I went to a Borders intstore performance for Matt’s new CD Some Mad Hope, and won tickets to a special CD release party show at the Great American Music Hall from KFOG. I don’t listen to the radio, and I wasn’t previously signed up for KFOG’s stuff, so I had no idea the show even existed, much less how the heck to get tickets. They mentioned it at the instore appearance, and I had a strong desire to figure out how the heck to get into this show and who I was going to have to beg to get in… and then I won a pair of tickets anyway! I never win stuff, it’s just not how things happen but it worked in my favor, and now I bring you the show. I’ve had the older show finished for a while as well, I’ll post that later this week too, so you can get a double dose of Matt before his new tour starts. (go! really!)

I’d only seen Matt a few times before, opening for Howie Day with a bass player and nothing else, solo acoustic opening for Tori Amos a couple of times, and a solo show in San Francisco once. (more on the solo show later, which was my original post!) This show however was a full band show, which is definitely more reflective of the newest album. Now, for those who haven’t seen his shows or listened to any of a number of the really excellent live recordings that are out there his show while not being “comedy” exactly, is full of a lot of audience interaction and banter. As such, the solo shows and the band shows have a totally different vibe. I don’t know how much of his solo shows are really influenced by the crowd and how much he has pre-rehearsed or planned, but there’s a lot of spontaneous interaction. He really makes the audience a part of the show, rather than just people who paid some money and showed up to hear some guy with a guitar sing some depressing songs. Unlike say a Rasputina show where the between-song banter is all planned out (not that it’s a bad thing, it’s like a sort of musical theater that way), Matt’s seems just like a stream of consciousness every time. It’s definitely one of the most unique performances around, and of course like a lot of artists out there… the live show is a much better representation of Matt Nathanson than his studio albums reflect. (not that the albums are bad, but it’s just a much richer experience at a show which is something a lot of bands can’t claim).

This show was of course, exactly like I was expecting. A good combination of rocking songs, and the slower downers songs, a mix of the brand new songs and some of the old favorites peppered with random comments from Matt about absolutely random things. Maybe I’m one of the few people out there who enjoys it, but I really love to hear an artist introduce their songs as if there’s really a story behind it and that they’re interested in us knowing their story and not just their song.

Matt Nathanson is one of those guys who gives us his story, and not just his songs.

Setlist:

1. Intro
2. Car Crash
3. Lucky Boy
4. “ice cream song”
5. Come On Get Higher
6. Heartbreak World
7. Princess
8. Gone
9. Don’t Stop Believin’
10. Wedding Dress
11. To The Beat of Our Noisy Hearts
12. Angel
13. I Saw
14. Detroit Waves
15. All We Are
16. Suspended (unplugged)

• download the whole show as a .zip file
• Lossless (24-bit) download available here via Archive.org

Bonus! Here’s the recording of the Borders instore CD release as well. Nothing here that wasn’t at the KFOG show, but the banter is worth it as always.

1. Intro
2. Car Crash
3. ‘requests’
4. Come on Get Higher
5. ‘italian frescoes’
6. Gone
7. ‘lactating’
8. All We Are
9. ’suspended intro’
10. Suspended (unplugged)

download the whole show (borders instore) as a .zip file

Links:

• Official Site
• MySpace:

I’ve seen Rasputina the second most out of any band in the 2 years I’ve lived in San Francisco. (#1 is The Dresden Dolls) Their devotion to spreading the music is second to few, and I have to say that I’ve never been disappointed by any of the shows I’ve seen. I have to admit their last album was definitely not my favorite, but I did like Zoe Keating playing with them a lot. I figured she was a perfect addition to the group and I was really hoping she’d stick around. Unfortunately that wasn’t meant to be (Melora seems to run though cello players like underwear or something). I’d seen the previous lineup with Zoe the last 3 times they hit up the Great American Music Hall, and 2 times before that in the Atlanta area so I guess it was appropriate that a new 2nd chair ended up at the show promoting their latest album. (how many rocking cello players are there out in the world anyway? Surely we’re coming to the end of girls who are interested in putting on a corset and looking like something dirty from the early 1900’s and touring around the world in a bus rather than kicking back and playing in a symphony?).

I really like the new album, I think it works a lot better as an album than their last one did. Melora really has the story idea behind the album down finally, so you get a complete picture from an album rather than a lot of good songs but the concept is kinda loose. The new songs worked well live too, although there were only a few of them that I haven’t seen before. That’s the way it goes when you see a band something like 7 times in 3 years though right? The idea that they really got a cohesive theme going for the latest album was even more obvious when they played the new songs all in a row and without any old material between them I suppose, and it really worked. Overall, perhaps not the best Rasputina show I’ve ever seen (the one from late 2006 was probably the best) but still a very good show from a very good band. Obviously worth seeing agan, which I’m sure I’ll do every time they come to town again, and again, and again…

Setlist:

1. Intro
2. Hunter’s Kiss
3. Transylvanian Concubine
4. Thimble Island
5. Saline, The Salt Lake Queen
6. Things I’m Gonna Do
7. Watch TV
8. Barracuda
9. Wish You Were Here
10. Oh Bring Back the Egg Unbroken
11. Baby Got Back
12. Draconian Crackdown
13. 1816, The Year Without a Summer
14. Cage in a Cave
15. Choose Me for Champion
16. In Old Yellowcake
17. A Retinue of Moons > The Infidel is Me
18. encore break
19. Rusty the Skatemaker
20. Trenchmouth
21. If Your Kisses Can’t Hold The Man You Love

download the whole show as a .zip file

Links:

• Official Site
• MySpace: