10/19/2004 The Tragically Hip, Sam Roberts (Rochester, NY @ Auditorium Theatre)
By Eric | October 19, 2004 11:59 pm
A tuesday night at the Auditorium Theatre, a beautiful place to see a show, as always. I got there just as Sam Roberts was starting, and he was definately entertaining as an opener, but I still can’t get into him. Not sure what it is, I liked him well enough in Syracuse also, but not well enough I guess. Still, he certainly kept my interest during his set. Then it was time for the Hip. Coming out to a rousing welcome from the packed house, they rocked the place. The setlist was a bit peculiar however this particular night, as expected the focus was on In Between Evolution, but there was a focus on Phantom Power for some reason as well, as the playing of Membership was a surprise. We got Wheat Kings again, but oddly enough, nothing off of Road Apples, Day For Night nor Music @ Work whatsoever, and in what had to be a rarity, the conspicuious absence of Nautical Disaster. It doesn’t matter much to me, but there were more than a couple complaints after the show that I heard. (Shades of PJ not playing Jeremy in Buffalo?) Regardless, the show was excellent as always, and I came away with a new-found appreciation for the IBE songs, moreso than Darien Lake for some reason.
Complete Setlist: You’re Everywhere, Fully Completely, Poets, Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park, Ahead By A Century, Summer’s Killing Us, Courage, Membership, It Can’t Be Nashville Every Night, Bobcaygeon, Fireworks, Mean Streak, At The Hundredth Meridian, Goodnight Josephine, Springtime In Vienna, New Orleans Is Sinking. 1st Encore: Vaccination Scar, Wheat Kings, Silver Jet 2nd Encore: Heaven Is A Better Place Today, Blow At High Dough
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Tags: 2004, Auditorium Theatre, rochester, Sam Roberts, The Tragically Hip
08/20/2004 Gavin DeGraw, Toby Lightman, Jennifer Marie (Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music Hall)
By Eric | August 20, 2004 11:59 pm
We weren’t sure how much of a crowd Gavin was going to draw this time around, seeing as the show wasn’t free. We kinda underestimated, because there were a TON of teenage girls in line. This meant more screaming for my poor ears. The first opener, Jennifer Marie, supposedly is from the Rochester area, and has a backing band, but not on this night. Just her and a keyboard. She sang decently well, but seemed to force a lot of embellishment on certain notes, missed a couple other notes, and all the songs kinda sounded the same. She’s young though, so I can’t just write her off completely yet. Toby Lightman was up next, and we got to see her entire set this time around, and it was just as good as the night before. I ended up buying the CD, I was that impressed. Gavin rocked the spot again as well, and we had a lovely time fighting off the drunk slutty girl that we got stuck next to up front. Such is concert life… 🙂 We were entertained yet again, and had a much shorter drive home this time 🙂
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Tags: 2004, Gavin DeGraw, Jennifer Marie, rochester, Toby Lightman, Water Street Music Hall
From The “Week’s worth of nothing” Dept.
By Eric | August 20, 2004 11:32 am
So what’s been up since Monday? Not too much, worked a full week, about to have my first weekend off in who knows how long (thankfully its a trend that will continue!), and even got some bike riding in. Last night Tiff and I journeyed to Thursday in the Square down in Buffalo to see Gavin DeGraw. The review will be up shortly, but suffice to say Mr DeGraw is a performer. He plays piano and guitar, and is quite the singer… with stage prescence! Needless to say, there were quite a few screaming young girls in the audience. His opener, Toby Lightman was equally as impressive, and I’m not usually one for female singers. Good thing too, because she’s opening for Gavin again tonight at Water Street, and since Tiff’s shows are few and far between, we’re hitting up this show as well. Should be a good time, and then its off to Horseheads for the weekend before I get to come back for Game Changes… Video Poker!
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Tags: Buffalo, NT, tiff, video, Work
08/19/2004 Gavin DeGraw, Toby Lightman (Buffalo, NY @ Thursday In The Square)
By Eric | August 19, 2004 11:59 pm
Tiff and I headed down the thruway to check out one of her favorite artists, Mr. DeGraw. However, before his set, we had a pleasant surprise of an opener by the name of Toby Lightman. At first glance, we thought we were in for a Lillith Fair type thing, as Toby is a female with an acoustic guitar. Nope, her stuff has more of an R&B feel to it, as evidenced by her cover of Mary J Blige’s Real Love. The rest of her set was quite engaging as well, with her single Devils and Angels, and a song alluding to the infamous “guy in the front row”. After her set, Gavin came on and hot damn if we weren’t at a teenybopper show. The screaming was deafening! He played everything off of Chariot, and then a couple of unreleased songs, plus covers! The show was almost a solid two hours, and he was quite the showman, definatley had the female members of the audience (and there were many) in a frenzy all night. It helps that he can perform, and his backing band was spot-on as well. A trip well-spent, and even better because the show was free!
Found a couple of short clips from the show on YouTube:
Let’s Get It On 1
Let’s Get It On 2
Follow Through
Meaning
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Tags: 2004, Buffalo, Gavin DeGraw, Thursday In The Square, Toby Lightman
From the “Reposting Fark” Dept.
By Eric | August 11, 2004 10:29 pm
This one almost made me snort chocolate milk out my nose…. from this thread about guilty pleasure songs…
2004-08-11 02:39:13 PM Radworld4
Most embarassing song moment…
Sing/screaming along to Faith No Mores “Epic” as I danced/stomped through my apartment in college while my girlfriend and her roommate walked in on me. Oh and I was naked.
When she broke up with me…I knew why.
Can’t say I’ve ever done *that*, but… getting caught belting out songs is certainly a red-faced moment (fully clothed, mind you!)
Topics: Blog | 11 Comments »
Tags: NT
From The “Will Write For Tea” Dept.
By Eric | August 10, 2004 9:08 pm
As alluded to by Sara’s comment in the last post, the Tea Party have their current single available for streaming, called “Writing’s On The Wall”. After one listen, I don’t know what to think. It’s a lot less complex than the previous stuff, more straightforward. Sara said it sounded like a Rage Against The Machine throwaway… I’d say it very strongly reminds me of a Stone Temple Pilots song, personally, but I can see how the main riff sounds Morello-like. I’m gonna obviously buy the CD, and probably end up loving it, but the first impression is not a bad one, just more of a “that’s it?”. I’m hoping the rest of the album is more of the Tea Party we all know and love. Not saying don’t change, don’t grow, just don’t lose the signature sound.
Topics: Blog | 3 Comments »
Tags: NT
From the “Needs More Cowbell” Dept.
By Eric | August 10, 2004 3:48 pm
I just put up the review of the Finger Eleven / Thornley show from last week on the reviews page. I swear, I’m either getting old (most likely), more jaded about concerts (not likely), or some shows have just started to become not as entertaining as they used to be (wouldnt be surprised). Take the last four I’ve been to, and the contrast is amazing: Sister Hazel, they were amazing, the musicianship, the energy from the band and the fans, everything was great. Then Nickelback / 3 Doors, where I’ve seen way better from both bands. For all the pyro and stuff, it was cool, the bands were into it, and I like both bands, but the performance left something to be desired. Then the Hip, which for having little more than a light display, played an awesome show just being on stage and playing. A raucous crowd helps, but still. Then Thornley / Finger Eleven, where Thornley was everything a club show should be, and F11 came up short. Having them 1/2 hour apart made it even more obvious. To me, considering I like all of these bands equally, and with the exception of Thornley, I’d seen them all previously, makes my feeling music-wise about equal. That is, I can rate the “show” and the “performance” a little more objectively, without loving something so much I get the rose colored glasses.
I’ve run on about this, and my end point is what? Not sure I have one, other than that I’m increasingly becoming more and more agitated by the fact that sometimes I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth for these shows. Must be a sure sign of getting old. *sigh* I’m waiting for everyone to comment on how the big music guy is finally seeing it how everyone else does, but so be it. Gotta learn the hard way, eh? 🙂
Topics: Blog | 7 Comments »
Tags: concerts, music, NT
08/01/2004 Finger Eleven, Thornley, Moments In Grace, Strata (Rochester, NY @ Steel Music Hall)
By Eric | August 1, 2004 11:59 pm
Steel Music Hall is a pretty small place, smaller than Water Street’s main stage, about on par with the club side. Regardless, Finger Eleven probably wouldn’t have filled Water Street, so this was about the right size room for them to play. I got there just as the doors opened, and parked myself fairly close in front. Strata was on first, and I kind of knew what to expect since I’d seen them on the Sno-Core tour in March. This time around, however, their singer sounded really hoarse, and wasn’t quite hitting everything. The band sounded pretty good, and there seemed to be a healthy amount of people there for them. Moments in Grace were next, and I wasn’t digging them at all. An emo-ish type band, the songs were just kinda plain and bland, and while the band showed a lot of excitement, the crowd didn’t at all. Their half-hour came and went, and then it was time for Thornley. What a difference! Rocked the joint from beginning to end, and they sounded awesome. Seeing Ken, the bass player, was a shock compared to how he appeared when he was with the Watchmen. Mowhawk anyone?!?! They played a good chunk of the Thornley album, including my favorite (which is the next US single, hello overplaying!) Easy Comes, All Comes Out In The Wash, Found Another Way, Keep a Good Man Down, Falling To Pieces, Come Again, and of course So Far So Good. They capped off the set by playing a Big Wreck tune, The Oaf, which was surprisingly well received by the crowd. I guess more people had heard of Big Wreck than I thought. I moved to the back after Thornley, and I’m glad I did, because Finger Eleven was just okay. Not terrible, but I’ve certainly seen them better (Thursday in the Square last year for one). A big reason for this was the fact that they had a heavy slant on the latest self-titled album. It’s not that the music on the album is bad by any means, its that a lot of time-honored favorites got left out of the set. Guys, you have three albums, and the latest one has been out for a year now, you can mix it up! No Suffocate, no Tip, although we did get Above, Costume for a Gutterball, and Stay and Drown. They also did a cover of a Bob Mould (Husker Du, Sugar) song called Can’t Fight It that was pretty cool. The obvious closer was One Thing, and the encore was Good Times. Band-wise, there was energy, but it seemed like they were back to the 5 guys in 5 separate worlds thing again. So the show was good, okay, but not stellar.
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Tags: 2004, Finger Eleven, Moments In Grace, rochester, Steel Music Hall, Strata, Thornley
07/23/2004 The Tragically Hip, Idle Sons (Darien, NY @ Darien Lake Performing Arts Center)
By Eric | July 23, 2004 11:59 pm
Tiff and I got there as the Idle Sons were playing, and they weren’t bad for an opener, nothing terribly memorable, but certainly not awful. After a 45 minute intermission (thank God for seats!), The Hip came out to a raucous crowd, and didn’t disappoint all night long. They opened with Vaccination Scar, and played a good chunk of tunes off the new In Between Evolution disc including Heaven is a Better Place Today, Summer is Killing Us, Gus The Polar Bear, It Can’t Be Nashville…, Mean Streak, Are We Family, and Goodnight Josephine, making for 8 of the 13 songs on the album. Then of course, they did crowd favorites like New Orleans is Sinking, Grace Too, Nautical Disaster, At The Hundredth Meridian, Courage, Poets, Music At Work, and Springtime in Vienna. Then for the encores, they did Wheat Kings, Ahead By A Century, and Blow at High Dough. This show was just great from beginning to its end TWO HOURS later. They put on a hell of a show, they sounded great, and the crowd had a great time as well. Can’t really say too much more than that… Nothing like a great show to follow up a good show!
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Tags: 2004, Darien, Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, Idle Sons, The Tragically Hip
07/18/2004 Nickelback, 3 Doors Down, Puddle of Mudd (Darien, NY @ Darien Lake Performing Arts Center)
By Eric | July 18, 2004 11:59 pm
I initially wasn’t going to go to this show, didn’t feel like shelling out for tickets at the time, until the day before, when Jeff IM’ed me saying he had an extra ticket. In section 102, Row 9. Eh, close enough! I got the ticket from him, and after coming home from work and changing, headed out to Darien Lake. I missed 12 Stones, and got there halfway through Puddle of Mudd, who were surprising quite entertaining. The half of the set I saw included a fair number of the hits, including Away From Me, Blurry, Bleed (from the Punisher soundtrack) and She Hates Me. They had a hell of a lot of energy, and had the crowd pretty into it. One set change later, 3 Doors was up next, and while they were fun to watch, I thought they were better at Harro East last year when I saw them. Although they did have pyro this time around, and a couple new songs that they played, including one that’s on the live EP called “It’s Not Me”, and another new new one called “Father’s Son” that was actually quite good. The rest of the set was predictably heavy on Away From The Sun tunes, but they played most of the hits off of The Better Life as well. Like I said, they were good, but the show was lacking something, and it made me glad they weren’t closing. This tour had 3 Doors and Nickelback as co-headliners, meaning they switched off every night as to who would close. We drew Nickelback closing, and this was much better. They came out with a lot more energy, but with what seemed to be a shorter set than they usually do. Obviously slanted towards The Long Road, I was kinda miffed that only Leader of Men was played off of The State. No more Breathe?! At least they dug into Silver Side Up a bit more. In any event, they sounded really good, but the number of songs could have been more, Chad did a bit too much talking in between sets, and they attempted to pass out beer to the crowd, so there was one more song they could have done. I sound like sour grapes, but I really did have a good time, but was it a $45 good time? I’m not so sure. I still think I’ll take club shows over the big ones.
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Tags: 2004, 3 Doors Down, Darien, Darien Lake Performing Arts Center, Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd