Phish - Worcester DCU Center (10/25/2013)

So last night I saw Phish for the first time.  They had been a major bucket-list band for me pretty much nearly a decade.  I discovered them in middle school and they were my favorite band for years.  My parents wouldn't let me go at the time (which in hindsight was probably a wise decision on their part haha).  Then the band went on hiatus my freshman year of high-school...Then when the tickets went on sale last summer for last night's show I decided to drop some dough on floor tickets - which was well worth it for my first time experiencing the band live.  The show was absolutely epic - they played for over 3 hours with a pretty diverse setlist and lots of jamming.

There were a handful of tunes I had never heard before that aren't on any of the studio albums or the live albums that I had which were absolutely amazing.  "The Curtain With" was easily one of my favorites (a tune back from the late 80's of theirs that was super proggy and harmonically really interesting) and "Vultures" which was seriously bad ass.  Also some great covers such as "Cities" (Talking Heads) and the Encore closer, "Good Times Bad Times" (Led Zeppelin).  From the way they closed with that and jammed on it - it seems likely that for their Halloween show they might be covering Led Zeppelin's debut album.  It was also cool to hear some of their newer tunes such as "46 Days" and "Backwards Down the Number Line", which on the albums seem more like song ideas rather than songs, fully developed and realized.

Got to hear a real good amount of jamming too on a lot of tunes I hadn't heard them ever jam on before - highlights for me would be "Carini" (maybe their most metal tune?) which grooved super hard and "Ghost".  Given I haven't heard what the band has been doing live for over 10 years, but the jamming seemed much more mathy (lots of crazy polyrhythms and phasing going on) and often darker than anything I had heard them do before.

(Photo courtesy of Ari - who I was standing next to, is taller, and take better photographs that me) 

The Setlist:

Set 1: Funky Bitch, Wolfman's Brother, Wilson > The Curtain With, Cities > Rift, Free, My Mind's Got a Mind of its Own, Vultures, 46 Days

Set 2: Waves > Carini, Prince Caspian > Backwards Down the Number Line > Ghost > Dirt > Down with Disease > Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley > Cavern > Run Like an Antelope

Encore: Contact > Suzy Greenberg > Rocky Top > Good Times Bad Times

You can listen to or download the whole set from last night here if you're interested.

Although I can't go again tonight (going to see Mehldau tonight!) - I'll definitely have to catch them next time they're in the area for sure.

Pumped for the other shows that are coming up later this Fall!

Foxhole Halloween Show with The Paintbrush Orchestra, Mike Simonelli (performing as the 90s), & We Avalanche (performing as The Pinkertones) - 11/1

I'm very excited to announce I'll be playing at The Foxhole on November 1st, at their first show in their new location near Porter Square!  And am equally excited to say that We Avalanche and The Paintbrush Orchestra will also be playing a set!!!  The Paintbrush Orchestra are a chamber jazz group led by Yeonatan Shachar who creates live composition through soundpainting (through a set of gestures, members of the Paintbrush Orchestra are cued to play specific material that is then shaped by the composer).  

It's going to be a Halloween show (in case you couldn't tell from the picture above) so dress up if you're into that!

My musical Halloween costume for my set is "the 90's".  So I'll be playing reimagined and strangely juxtaposed/mashed up tunes from the 90s, and using video samples from classic 90's commercials, shows, and movies.  And some home videos....like this:

So if you're a fan of sound-painting, multimedia stuff, the 90's, Weezer, Halloween...or good times in general - you don't want to miss this!!!

Hope to catch ya there!!!

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Godspeed You! Black Emperor & NIne Inch Nails - Mohegan Sun Arena - October 12, 2013

Such a ridiculous show last night...

So Godspeed opened - and played 45 minutes of entirely new material.  The new material was definitely up to par with everything they've done so far.  In a way it continues the direction they were going with Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, but in a way is unlike anything they've ever done.  There are still drone sections that are built in a similar fashion as were done on this last record, but the 2 new longer pieces that they played are slower and groovier than anything they've done before.  And both of these two pieces echoed each other...I don't want to give too much away - but there's at least an album's worth of amazing new material from arguably the greatest post-rock band ever - needless to say, I'm still geeking out about it.

Visually, Nine Inch Nails was the most impressive show I have ever seen.  It was a really sick set - and definitely made me see many more similarities between Trent Reznor and David Byrne.  Apparently some of the shows on this tour were set up in a way where it builds in a way that is inspired by "Stop Making Sense".  They played 9 of the tunes off their new record, Hesitation Marks, which is definitely one of my favorite releases of the year, in addition to being my favorite thing that Trent Reznor has released since 1999's "The Fragile".  It's an extremely diverse, groovy, and reflective record that is more subdued than his other releases (with the exception of 2008's "Ghosts").  It's a very psychedelic record, and at times even meditative - such as the song "Find My Way".  For some of his older tunes he played in the set last night - he reimagined parts of them in the style of this most recent release, and often the band had a much more soulful sound than I expected .  I think the best example of this was the song "The Day the Whole World Went Away" - which when they played it, the sludgy wall of sound that builds in the recording off "The Fragile"was replaced with meditative/psychedelic jam section - you can see what it looked like during this tune last night below:

My only complaint is for some tunes I felt like the band wasn't as tight as they were on others, such as on "All Time Low" - and at times it felt like something was missing without the production that is present on the recordings...but even when this was occasionally the case - the lights/visuals were so impressive that it basically made up for it.  It's amazing to me to see an artist like Reznor, who has been releasing music since I've been alive, continue to change and grow as an artist and push the boundaries of pop music.


NIN Setlist:
-Copy of A
-1,000,000
-Terrible Lie
-March of the Pigs
-Reptile (Tour debut)
-All Time Low
-Disappointed
-Came Back Haunted
-Find My Way
-The Frail
-The Wretched
-In Two (Live Premiere)
-Survivalism
-Running
-A Warm Place
-Somewhat Damaged
-Wish
-Burn
-The Hand That Feeds
-Head Like a Hole

Encore:
-The Day the World Went Away
-Even Deeper
-While I'm Still Here
-Black Noise
-Hurt