Don’t miss your chance to see Night Beats if you’re on the west coast. They’re hitting it hard through November and touring with Mystery Lights – a band I’ve been meaning to check out for a couple weeks now.
The Night Beats are killing it right now, and I’ve yet to see them put on a bad show. They are well worth your time and money.
Keep your mind open.
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File this under: Best News You’ve Heard Today.
Avant-garde psych-lounge master Gary Wilson is releasing a Christmas album three days before Halloween. It features 14 tracks of Wilson’s take on the holiday season. The titles reflect a lot of Wilson’s favorite themes – love (“A Christmas Tree for Two”), breakups (“Santa Claus Is Coming to My Lonely Town”), desire (“A Date for New Year’s Eve”), the town of Endicott (“It’s Snowing in Endicott”), and the mysterious women he references on his albums (“Cindy Wants to Cry”).
This will probably be my go-to gift for many people on my Christmas list this year. Be sure to put it on yours.
Keep your mind open.
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Fort Wayne, Indiana’s first ever Middle Waves festival has released its full lineup for 2016. The festival’s additions are heavy with Fort Wayne bands (go figure) that range from Americana (James and the Drifters) to rap (Andromeda and Sankofa) to electro (Metavari) to psychedelic (The Be Colony).
Added acts from outside Ft. Wayne include the Ike Reilly Assassination, Tanlines, and Oddisee.
Early bird prices on tickets are gone, so get your tickets before they’re gone or prices rise. They also plan to announce more bands and daily lineups soon.
Keep your mind open.
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I’ve been meaning to make it up to my wife for dragging her to see Japanese acid rockers Bo Ningen (a band she just doesn’t understand) at Levitation Austin a couple years ago, so I thought taking her to see Seal might do the trick.
He played at the Four Winds Casino Silver Creek Event Center in New Buffalo, Michigan. The “Silver Creek Event Center,” mind you, is just a big carpeted room the casino can use for everything from a Seal concert to a wedding reception. It is much smaller than the venue map on Ticketmaster’s website makes it appear. I’m happy to say that the acoustics in the place are quite good, however. The whole show sounded great.
Part of that is because Seal is a great performer. It was him, a DJ / synthesizer player, and a guitarist on stage. No drummer. No horn section. No bass player. They didn’t need any of them. Seal opened the set with “Crazy,” his biggest hit here in the U.S., and the crowd was instantly on its feet. His voice hasn’t lost any power since the song was released in 1991, and I loved the way his band turned it into a bit of a dark wave tune with the synth work. “Killer,” another early hit, followed it with even more of a dark wave feel to it with heavy synth bass.
The first track they played from Seal’s new album, 7, was “Daylight Saving,” a gorgeous love song that preceded another from the same album, “Do You Ever.” “Prayer for the Dying” was another heartbreaking cut (to the point it made my wife cry) that led into “Love’s Divine.”
A surprise was his cover of Hall & Oates‘ “Sara Smile” (with Seal on back-up guitar). “Love,” the last song on 7, led into the first verse of David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity,” and I thought my wife was going to slide off her chair.
“Deep Water” was another beautiful track, and then came another surprise – Seal’s cover of Tears for Fears‘ “Mad World,” which he dedicated to the victims of the recent earthquake in Italy. “My Vision” and “Right Life” got everyone up and moving again, and he even threw in a little bit of Chic‘s “Le Freak.” The fourth cover of the night was Prince‘s “Hot Thing,” which was one of the funkiest tunes of the night and closed out the main set to a standing ovation.
The encore consisted of “Kiss from a Rose” and then another track from 7, “Life on the Dancefloor,” which had everyone dancing and grooving and leaving on a good buzz. I saw two ladies a few rows behind us when the houselights came up, and they were dumbfounded in their chairs. They didn’t move for several minutes.
I asked my wife if the show made up for Bo Ningen.
“Almost,” she said. “Probably the Bo, but not the Ningen.”
I took that as a win. Thanks, Seal.
Keep your mind open.
The 2016 Desert Daze festival in Joshua Tree, California (Oct. 14-16) is turning out to be one of the best festivals of the year from the lineup alone.
The Sonics, Temples, Bombino, Gary Wilson, and Death Valley Girls alone are all worth the Friday admission.
As for Saturday, you get Primus, the Black Angels, Thee Oh Sees, the Raveonettes, the Coathangers, Night Beats, Ryley Walker, Vinyl Williams, and L.A. Witch.
Sunday brings you Television! Television! Add the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Dead Meadow, and Deap Vally to the mix and you have a killer final day.
A three-day pass is only $165.00. That’s a steal.
Keep your mind open.
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There was a nice psychedelic rock show at Fort Wayne’s Brass Rail last week. First up was Slug Love – a local act who played a good set of punk-psych. They have some stuff on Soundcloud right now and hope to have more material out soon. I look forward to it.
Detroit’s Sisters of Your Sunshine Vapor were up next and they played only one previously released song (“Desert Brain”). Everything else was entirely new material, and all of it sounded great. The new material has a bit of a cosmic vibe. Guitarist and singer Sean Morrow mentioned Hawkwind to me when discussing the new stuff, so I’m hoping their upcoming album will be a spacey trip.
Pleasures came all the way from Florida to play their wild electro-psych full of distorted robot vocals, throbbing synths, and even a weird collection of film clips projected on their kick drum head (a genius idea, by the way).
Ft. Wayne’s Heaven’s Gateway Drugs closed the night with a lot of material I hadn’t heard before either. I’d learned earlier from SOYSV that this was a challenge they’d made to HGD to play new material (The two bands are all pals, by the way.). HGD played their usual sharp psych layered with almost meditative beats.
It was a fun show for a cheap price. Don’t miss the next one.
Keep your mind open.
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The closest I came to seeing L7 in their first heyday was when they were on the 1994 when they were on the Lollapalooza tour. We got to what was then known as Deer Creek Music Center (and is now know as Klipsch Music Center) in Noblesville, Indian a bit late and we could hear L7 wrapping up their set with “Pretend We’re Dead” from the parking lot.
I wouldn’t have the chance to see them again for another 22 years. They played a sold out show at Chicago’s Metro (one of my top favorite venues in the city) on August 06, 2016, and it was definitely worth the wait.
Punk trio Radkey opened the show with a damn fine (and prompt – 8pm sharp) set that sounded like a combination of the Damned and the Misfits. The crowd was appreciative and they got everyone geared up for more heavy rock.
L7 came out to a packed house of punks, Gen X’ers, MILFs, DILFs, gays, straights, and at least one woman in her 70’s I saw heading up to the balcony to watch the show. They opened with “Deathwish,” and immediately proved they haven’t lost a thing since that Lollapalooza gig.
Donita Sparks belted out the “Deathwish” lyrics and everyone in the packed, hot crowd was in the band’s hands within seconds. Suzi Gardner then bellowed “Andres” and Jennifer Finch knocked out “Everglade.” They came out swinging with three hard rockers and everyone was on their heels with joy and dizziness.
“Monster” (with Dee Plakas‘ much-beloved cowbell in full effect) and “Scrap” had everyone grinning. “Fuel My Fire” had everyone jumping, and it’s easy to forget how heavy “One More Thing,” “I Need,” and “Slide” are until you hear them live.
There’s no mistaking “Crackpot Baby” for anything but a fist to the face, especially with Sparks singing so loud that I’m sure people in the SmartBar downstairs could hear her. Two cuts from The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum followed – “Must Have More” and the always-excellent “Drama.”
The rest of the crowd and I were happy to chant and pump our fists to “Shove,” and “Freak Magnet” was a nice lead-in to my favorite surprise of the night – Finch (rocking age 50 and a Misfits-logo bass) and crew performing her song “Shirley” (a great tune off Hungry for Stink about NHRA drag racing champ Shirley “Cha-Cha” Muldowney).
They closed with, of course, “Shitlist,” which had everyone completely batshit by this point.
The encore was “American Society” (another great rare cut), “Pretend We’re Dead,” and the (finally!) mosh pit-inducing “Fast and Frightening” (which, if you didn’t know, has perhaps the most rock lyric of all time).
It was a great show with a great crowd. The Metro blasted Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” after the encore and nearly everyone was dancing on top of crushed plastic cups and spilled beer (myself included).
Thanks, L7, for reuniting and giving us these shows. We needed them, and I hope it won’t take me another two decades to see you again.
Keep your mind open.
[Thanks to Robert Fagan for getting me a press pass to the show, the lady working the press table at the Metro for being so helpful, and to Hannah – my +1 for the night. I’m glad to have met you and that you had a good time.]
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Atlanta’s Music Midtown festival has announced its 2016 lineup for September 17-18th It’s a good mix of rock, rap, electro, and R&B. Beck, Deadmau5, the Killers, Alabama Shakes, and the Coathangers are all worth seeing. Weekend tickets start at $125.00 and will only go up as the dates get closer.
Keep your mind open.
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The Detroit Masonic Temple Theatre building is a massive, imposing place. It’s gorgeous, and this is the first thing we saw there.
We were there to see John Carpenter’s live film music retrospective, so this sign was a good one that the show would be outstanding.
Carpenter and his band (which includes his son, Cory, on keyboards and synthesizers, and his godson, Daniel Davies on lead guitar) have been on tour most of the summer and the Detroit date was one of the last three in the U.S. before embarking on a tour of Europe and the United Kingdom. I wasn’t going to miss this show, and I was delighted to see a screening of Escape from New York had been added to the bill since I bought the tickets. The screening was a hoot, with people hissing every time Snake Plissken was on screen, cheering for every major cast member, and laughing at Lee Van Cleef’s giant “futuristic” walkie-talkie.
Carpenter and crew opened with the Escape from New York theme and then gave us a great show combining film theme music and cuts from his two recent albums – Lost Themes and Lost Themes II.
“Vortex” from Lost Themes was particularly good live, and the crowd went crazy for the theme to Assault on Precinct 13. Of course, they put a fog machine to good use for the theme from The Fog (one of the best ghost movies ever made).
The crowd was having a ball (and many were hammered drunk) by this point. The theatre’s air conditioning was working at minimal levels, so everyone in the joint was sweaty and a bit rowdy. We would’ve been miserable had it not been for Carpenter and his band tearing it up through the theme to Big Trouble in Little China and nice cuts from Lost Themes II like “Distant Dream.” Davies, by the way, is a great guitarist.
The crowd went absolutely nuts when this happened.
The subliminal messages from They Live played on the screen, cutting into the film scenes shown throughout the theme. The movie, which is more prescient now than ever, and its theme struck a chord with the audience, and it was great to see the whole band wearing sunglasses in the spirit of Roddy Piper and Keith David.
Of course, they got a standing ovation for the Halloween theme.
I was also delighted to see and hear them play the themes from some of Carpenter’s lesser-seen works – In the Mouth of Madness (which I really need to see again) and the completely bonkers Prince of Darkness. They ended with Carpenter telling us, “Remember, as you go home, drive safe. Christine is out there!” before launching in to the Christine theme.
It was a great show, and one I’m glad I didn’t miss. Catch them if you can. It’s a must-see if you’re a fan of horror films, film scores, Carpenter’s work, or cinema.
Keep your mind open.
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Levitation France has released single-day tickets, daily lineups, and additional band announcements. The additions of Follakzoid, Alex Mass (of the Black Angels), and Klaus Johann Grobe are great ones. Don’t miss this festival. It’s sure to be an excellent two days.
Keep your mind open.
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