District of Cacophony

So this is turning into quite the summer for legendary British metal. Two Judas Priest shows and then Motörhead! Motörhead!

I’ve been grumbling for years about how metal bands hardly ever play in town, thanks to JAXX out in Springfield (and also lots of Baltimore clubs). Motörhead at the 930 Club makes sense, though, if partly because Lemmy and crew have a pretty substantial hipster following. I am no expert on the band, but it seems to me like they flit comfortably between a few different musical worlds, touring with metal bands one time, dirty hard rock bands another time, punk bands still another time. Currently they’re touring with the Reverend Horton Heat and Nashville Pussy, both interesting choices. It was a good line-up and a solid show.

First up were Nashville Pussy, a band I’ve been aware of for ages but had never much listened to. They were a lot more metal than I expected and I liked them a lot. The lead guitarist — Ruyter Suys — was super rad and bassist Karen Cuda was tough and hot. I have actually heard more stuff by singer Blaine Cartwright’s earlier band Nine Pound Hammer than I have Nashville Pussy, but I’ll check them out more. I am on a serious metal kick (my new favorite DC band is Rattler) and Nash. P. satisfied that itch more even than Motörhead did.

So far no clips on youtube for Nashville Pussy but here is a good one from the following night in NY.

Up next was the Reverend Horton Heat. Now, the Rev and me go way back. I’ve seen them 2 or 3 times before, though not for many years, and I like them a lot. The Reverend himself is one of the better guitarists I’ve ever seen and I really like his confluence of styles. Every now and then he goes off into a little too much of, say, a lounge-y swing-y direction, but generally he nails the surf/punk/rockabilly thing amazingly well.

This is a good excuse for me to dig through some old photos, because I have some shots of the Reverend Horton Heat doing a record store signing at HMV in Georgetown from like 13 years ago. As if I need to prove my bona fides, here is my friend Mike with the 1996 line-up (same as today’s except for the drummer):

Though I would say I’m a pretty big fan, I haven’t heard any new Rev. H.H. stuff in quite a while and wasn’t entirely sure how the show would be. In fact, would I even like it anymore? My musical tastes have shifted a bit since the Rev.’s heyday of the mid-’90s.

I needn’t have worried, it totally kicked ass. Heath is almost as much of a badass as fellow 50-year-old Nick Cave. In fact it is pretty exciting to see musicians of this generation, those around 50 who grew up on rock and roll and also experienced punk, grow older. There is a lot of fire left in some of these pentagenarians.

Here are a couple of clips of the Reverend:

“The Devil’s Chasing Me” (brief clip)

“Psychobilly Freakout”

So finally after two great performances we got to Motörhead! Rock on, right? Well, yes and no.

First off I don’t know Motörhead incredibly well… I probably have about 20 songs of theirs in my collection but no actual CDs or anything. I didn’t really get into Motörhead until I was older, after my metal fandom had been filtered through layers of grunge, punk, indie, and experimentalism. So I think they are rad, but I don’t feel a special bond with Motörhead the way I do with, say, Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. So I didn’t end up knowing many songs during the show.

But that wouldn’t have mattered. The main problem with Motörhead was the “oh my god it is too fucking loud” problem that I have experienced before on very rare occasions. I love loud music! I find it cathartic. I find beauty in loud music that many folks would run away from in terror.

But I knew from the moment I saw the wall of amplifiers on stage that Motörhead were gonna be maybe too loud. The last band I saw that was so crushingly loud was Dinosaur Jr at the Black Cat and I didn’t really like the Dinosaur show much at all (though I love their music!). Some things are just too brutal to enjoy, and the decibel level for Dinosaur really destroyed all my interest in ever seeing them live again.

Same thing with Motörhead. I stuffed my ears with paper and rocked out as best as I could, but it was just too loud. I know that’s kind of the point. And I dig it to an extent. But I am getting pretty damn old myself and just have to bow out of this kind of thing at some point.

Now — unlike that Dinosaur Jr show — I could still enjoy Motörhead’s performance and definitely had a good time. (I am guessing Dinosaur was significantly louder.) I was amused by Lemmy’s indecipherable commentary throughout — was it his accent or the ringing in my ears that made him impossible to understand? The music rocked and I found out via this last.fm review that the drummer was an emergency replacement.

Here’s a taste of some Motörhead — you don’t actually need earplugs for music on the internet:

So yeah it was an awesome performance, and a legendary performer, but it will not go down in my memory as a favorite show just because I can’t handle the volume levels anymore. Sucks but it’s true. But all power to Lemmy & co… hope I am still rocking and rolling for decades to come.

Here is the most famous Motörhead song as I go rest my ears:

And here is a snapshot from my cellphone:

Bit of a downtime for rock shows here… I have made an effort but to little avail. I went to the Black Cat last week to see Zomes but stupidly got there too late. I went to Lamont Park a couple weeks ago to see Hume and Janel and Anthony but the show was cancelled. So instead I have mostly been biding time until finally seeing Motörhead this week. I’ll discuss that shortly.

But while clearing out photos on my phone thought I’d share a picture and a couple comments about some random live music I saw last weekend in New York. First the photo:

One of the things I like about New York is the sheer number of talented people everywhere. I was in a random bar (Otto’s Shrunken Head) on Sunday night and heard live music coming from the back room, and eventually went to check it out. There was a diverse line-up of bands and musicians, of which I saw the last couple. The final band was introduced as “Acid Rays” but I asked the guitarist afterwards to confirm the name, and he said they “used to be” Acid Rays but changed line-up and dropped the singing so it wasn’t a definitive sort of thing. Anyway they were pretty good for a random 1 a.m. band: acoustic guitar through effect pedals, a cellist/violinist who played electric cello and electric violin (and I have never even seen an electric cello before!) and a drummer. Good stuff.

I was thinking of the line from the back of Yo La Tengo‘s Electr-o-pura where, among various absurd notes for each song, they say: “One of My Favorite Instruments-The Electronic Flute.”

Judas Priest twice in one summer! And my hometown heroes Kix! Ha! It’s always great to have old-school metal to fall back on when indie rock starts boring me to tears.

Going to see Priest again was a pretty random, last-second decision, and I probably would not have gone except that an old friend was kinda interested, and I have always sort of wanted to see Kix. Priest had been on tour with Whitesnake for much of the summer, but I never really gave a damn about Whitesnake. So I was pretty excited that David Coverdale had laryngitis and dropped out of the tour and Kix somehow got tapped to open up at least at the local show.

I’ve already talked recently about Judas Priest — and the show at Merriweather was superior in most ways to the show last month in Milwaukee — so I will talk a bit here about Kix, and ’80s metal in general.

So, yeah, Kix. Wow. What a band! I find that I can’t think about Kix without experiencing the same mixture of pride and shame that colors my discussions of my hometown area — rural western Maryland. On the one hand, I deeply love the band yet on the other hand I cringe with embarrassment at some of their antics and words. Same thing with the rural Marylanders/West Virginians I grew up with! Kix are basically exactly like the people from my hometown, in fact they practically are from my hometown; their wikipedia entry talks about how the singer met the others in Ridgeley, West Virginia; they were somewhat based in Hagerstown. They were really popular in western Maryland when I was growing up in the ’80s.

But let me describe the show. Kix were pretty good! But my god they looked old! Or anyway, sleazy frontman Steve Whiteman looked old! I have tracked down some old videos on youtube of Kix in the ’80s and I am not sure he was ever such a looker… and since some of his lyrics are predominantly about lovin’ the ladies, his skeezy look was sort of a distraction. The jumbotrons didn’t make them look any better. Also, physical appearance is semi-relevant since Kix songs are none too subtle, with songs like “Sex” and the following semi-hit, during which the friend I went with was asking “Blow my what?”

A lot of Kix songs are superior to the standard hair-metal canon, and though articles on the web often compare Kix to Poison, I think they are more similar to harder-edged pop-metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Ratt. On the other hand I believe their biggest hit was a power ballad, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” :

The band sounded great and seemed to be having fun. Whiteman talked about how they were doing some more local reunion shows where they could play a longer set, but it seemed like plenty to me, they must have played for something like an hour and 15 minutes, maybe even an hour and a half.

My favorite two songs were “The Itch” :

and also “Cold Blood” — there is a video of the ending here. “Cold Blood” is a great song, actually, and if there were any justice in the world, Kix would still be getting nice royalty checks from it, or at least it would be a popular Guitar Hero track.

So ok, those are the Kix highlights. But of course there are some low-lights too. I don’t actually care about the physical appearance thing, but there is a vibe to Kix that I have always been uncomfortable with, and I have spent 25 years being annoyed by Kix’s fairly revolting date-rape anthem, “Yeah Yeah Yeah.” (Here’s a clip from another recent Merriweather show if you’re not familiar.) I guess it is all meant to be fun, but honestly this is the kind of stuff that my old rock heroes Cobain and Vedder were railing against. The casual misogyny of party-metal is one of the main strikes against it (along with its general meat-headedness, casual homophobia (“In 1989, [Sebastian] Bach was heavily criticized for wearing a t-shirt on stage that a fan had thrown to him before he could read it, with the slogan “AIDS Kills Fags Dead” emblazoned on it … Although he made light of the incident in his original apology, Bach has since repeatedly apologized for and disavowed the statement” – via wp), conservative politics, bizarre anti-internationalism, idiot fans, etc, etc.) There is a pretty clear line — of correlation, not causality — connecting dumbass lyrics by the likes of Steve Whiteman and the rapes-to-Limp Bizkit of Woodstock ’99.

Sorry to go on a P.C. tirade but I am a P.C. kinda guy. (I have similar issues with misogynist hip-hop lyrics too. Somehow can’t get the humor in violence against women, I guess I’m just a total killjoy.) But the Kix song “Yeah Yeah Yeah” has bugged me for ages, with its “quit throwing up, don’t tell me no, tell me yeah yeah yeah!” Check out the lyrics and decide for yourself, I guess. (And by the way what was the deal with quaaludes? I was too young to ever catch that scene…)

It’s weird, I have no problem with vile lyrics coming from the likes of Cannibal Corpse, and am kinda amused by songs about necrophilia and cannibalism. I also am not against graphic sex in song lyrics, though it doesn’t seem like there are many good examples, aside from some rap songs. So maybe part of the reason I’m uncomfortable with frat-boy style lyrics about sexin’ it up has to do with the particular dudes who are singing. I mean, it’s one thing for Mick Jagger to beg for some action, or David Lee Roth to be hot for teacher. But then there are the Steve Whitemans and Vince Neils of the world, who are in a whole ‘nother category. You can pretty easily believe that a Steve Whiteman would lure a woman back to his trailer for Jack Daniels followed by comatose sex.

And yeah, I said “trailer,” here I am being snobby about my own people. I guess my thoughts about my hometown, and my thoughts about Kix, go like this: out in the boondocks, there are a lot of good people, despite a decent-sized contingent of slobbering racist assholes; there are also a lot of basically good people who are thoughtlessly racist, sexist, homophobic, and politically loony. Just because they are good people doesn’t mean I can’t condemn their racism, sexism, etc.

Ok time for a break from the rant; I really did enjoy Kix overall. So let’s look at some Judas Priest videos. Here is a montage of videos and photos from a youtuber who caught K.K. Downing’s guitar pick! I’m jealous :

Here’s a video of “Metal Gods” :

The highlight was probably “Victim of Changes” (not a super great video):

And for good measure here is “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” :

As a last bit of sociopolitical commentary, somewhat relevant to a Judas Priest show, my friend and I had a conversation at some point during the show about the homosexual subtext of heavy metal fandom. It’s totally there. There were some shirtless dudes near us, who were constantly grabbing each other amidst their headbanging. Other metal dudes, happy and screaming, locked forehead to forehead, eye to eye. I was doing some quick web searching (wonder how many other google scholar searches there are for terms like “gay heavy metal”) and couldn’t find much about the topic, surprisingly. I am sure it has been studied, that dissertations have been written about this. (If not maybe I have a new thesis topic!)

(Coincidentally, the City Paper’s Sexist blog today discusses the top 5 gay metal icons and I disagree about Doug Pinnick, I think he is pretty damn metal…)

The whole Rob Halford being gay thing was a total non-issue to me when I found out about it. I didn’t even think about it the last time I saw them; why would I? Based on the fans — and I’m now a veteran of two Priest shows and counting — it seems to be a non-issue to everyone. I would say the shirtless headbangers seemed at least as open-minded as a typical hardcore punk mosh pit. (Maybe I could do a comparative study! More thesis ideas!) Anyway it’s nice to see. I guess it’s possible that the rabid homophobic metal fans just avoid Priest, but I think more likely this is progress of a sort.

So on the one hand, I can’t stand punctuation in band names, and the main singer of Los Campesinos! was annoying as all hell, and the members of the band all go by the last name of “Campesinos!” Yuck. On the other hand I can’t really hate a band that does decent Pavement covers. So I will let the Campesinos slide. Also, for all their wry cleverness, I myself just wrote a song with the tentative title of “Summer Haze (Winter Version)” so I can’t really criticize them for such bon mots as “2007 The Year Punk Broke (My Heart).”

I didn’t know this band at all, but a friend had an extra ticket, so I was up for checking them out; it helped that I was mildly interested in seeing Girls. (I think it was dangerous for my hearing, though, going to another show just two nights after Mogwai.) Overall I thought they were decent. They reminded me a lot of the Arcade Fire though the Campesinos are a little more rooted in old-fashioned indie rock compared to the Springsteen/Bowie pop stylings of Arcade Fire.

They seemed very current, very well-aligned with their young fans who probably tweet excitedly about them during their shows. (Good lord, the band even blogged about the food at the 930.) This isn’t really my thing — I miss the days when people weren’t checking facebook during concerts — but I can see the appeal.

Other folks seemed to basically like it.

Here are a few photos via last.fm/flickr , including this one by alykat:

The photos remind me that the band had a trio of attractive women, including the super-cool looking bassist. Guess that is kinda irrelevant but it was nice to watch folks other than the singer, based on his annoying-ness, as mentioned at the beginning. A good singer, but annoying. Anyway.

Girls were ok. Honestly, the friend I was with wasn’t into them and so we left after a few songs to go drink at a cheaper establishment for 45 minutes. I got the gist of their music and thought they were fine, nothing special. I really like their one song, “Morning Light” which sounds almost exactly like Slowdive; their other songs (from what I’ve heard) are a little more, hmm, Brooklyn-sounding. They reminded me a lot of Love as Laughter — hippie-damaged indie rock. I liked them well enough but am not sure they are going to amount to much, though I think they signed to Matador.

Here’s their only really rocking song, “Morning Light”:

As I get old and curmudgeonly, I fine myself both looking down upon young musicians and bands, and becoming skeptical about old favorites retaining their strengths. I think the right term for this is “jaded.” I am a jaded music fan and rarely expect much even from my favorite bands. Maybe that’s why my reviews tend to be positive — actual live music can transport me out of humdrum world-weariness, or even make me euphoric. Somewhere deep in my mind I know this, and keep showing up to see live music, and that half-hidden recess of my mind is what made me certain to go see Mogwai again for, geez, I think the 5th time. And the last time was just last winter! Because if any band can shake me up a little and get me feeling the music and feeling alive, it is the Scottish Guitar Army.

There’s not a lot to say about Mogwai that I haven’t said before. So I think I’ll repeat myself: I said here:

I’ve seen a lot of swirling distortion bands, noise-rock bands, experimental droning aggressive bands, and I’ve never experienced noise like a Mogwai concert. I don’t know anything about physics, but I swear that when you go to see Mogwai, the sound becomes so insanely loud and powerful that it becomes solid and tangible. It feels like I’ve left those shows with bruises; I imagine that the MI6 has been scoping out Mogwai shows, trying to figure out a military application for this mysterious, primal power.

I’ve also written about Mogwai more academically, spinning a ridiculous, complicated, but reasonably well-argued case for considering extreme pop music to be a form of religious experience.

So yeah, I like Mogwai a lot. They were the first instrumental-only band to really mean much to me, ever since I saw them ten years ago at the Black Cat (HOLY CRAP CHECK THIS OUT OMIGOD I LOVE THE INTERNET) and they blew my mind and eardrums away. I went out the next day to DCCD (RIP) and bought Come on Die Young and Kicking a Dead Pig. But in recent years, like over the course of their past 3 albums or so (though I liked Mr. Beast more than the others), I have sometimes found them a little inessential. For one thing there are so many other bands that sound just like them; also I think some of their newer work gets a little too ambient and effects-heavy, neglecting to really rock (for example the crowd last night was excited about “Hunted by a Freak” but I find that one to be pretty sleepy/dull). But most importantly, I feel like Mogwai perfected their sound right at the beginning of their career, and everything afterward was just a minor variation on the same (gorgeous, stunning) theme.

So during the show Monday night, I spent about half the set thinking about how, despite my love and loyalty, I wasn’t having the Mogwai experience that I wanted. I was reflecting on their role in rock music over the past decade or so, about how they compared to the rest of the post-rock pantheon, about how from time to time you could really hear their avowed Slint influence, to such an extent that they are sort of distant musical cousins to other Slint-followers like Pinback.

Then, just as I was getting mildly disenchanted with the sedated Scots, they kicked it into gear and closed the show with a stellar set of their best material: my personal favorite Mogwai song “Ithaca 27 θ 9″ followed by one of my other all-time faves, “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong,” then “Glasgow Mega-Snake” which is one of their most rockin’est songs and one of the best of their newer albums. It’s the one that makes me think maybe these guys really do listen to death metal, as they claim.

Then came the encore and it was “My Father My King” which I have heard them play only once, many years back. Awesome. “MFMK” is pretty much perfect and I hadn’t even listened to it in a long time — blame it on the mp3 era where I rarely listen to 20-minute epics — so I was super excited to have the ending coda come back to me as they played it. Closed with minutes of squalling drone, as usual, and I stood and enjoyed it. Happy, renewed in my faith in rock and roll (at least for one night), I found myself whistling “My Father My King” while biking home afterwards.

This is interesting — a sound-check video.

Oh and here’s something else interesting… maybe I am late discovering this, but apparently you can tag flickr photos with a last.fm event and then the last.fm page has the photos. (Wonder if there is something similar for youtube or another video site?) Anyhow this is the flickr link for the Mogwai show. Here’s an example, borrowed from Slowcult:

A few years ago I went to the Black Cat’s Run for Cover event (where a whole bunch of local musicians put together one-night-only cover bands for charity) and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I had wanted to go back ever since. But this past Saturday I was less impressed. It wasn’t bad, but I was tired, annoyed by the Bon Jovi cover band, and left before seeing the last two bands (one a Weezer cover band, the other doing the Bee Gees).

From what I saw, there were two main highlights — the Runaways cover band which was pretty hilarious, as they did “Cherry Bomb” and then, since there were no other Runaways songs to play, a set of some Joan Jett hits preceded by Lita Ford‘s “Kiss Me Deadly.” And I totally LOVE the song “Kiss Me Deadly” so I was jazzed! They also alluded to doing “Close My Eyes Forever” and I think I would have died happy if they’d had an Ozzy-clone come out and do that one, but oh well. “Kiss Me Deadly”! Such a classic! I was also kind of hoping the real Joan Jett would come out and join them at some point, but I liked the faux-Joan Jett too.

The other highlight was a Cure tribute. The Cure seem pretty easy to cover if you can find someone who can approximate Robert Smith’s voice. The dude was good — here’s a clip:

But, sigh, Bon Jovi. I think I would not have minded them much at all, had I not seen a Bon Jovi tribute band just a month ago. That’s it for Bon Jovi tributes for my lifetime, I think. I mean, Bon Jovi were ok, but there are so many better bands in the same genre… the tougher bands like Crüe and Ratt, the heavier bands like GnR, the amazing party-dude/guitar god mashup that was old-school Van Halen. But Bon Jovi? Just a boring party band, but one that takes themselves more seriously than Poison did. If it was up to me I would’ve tried being a Tesla tribute.

I also liked the Guided by Voices tribute though I don’t know GBV very well. Maybe I should delve into it some more. Here’s a clip:

UPDATE 8/6/09: Just stumbled upon a clip from the “Cherrybombz” — very short but I wanted to acknowledge it since I thought they were rad:

A couple days before this show, I got a contrasting pair of emails from friends with extra tickets to 2 concerts the same night: M. Ward and Tool. I had never seen either one, and like both, though I know Tool a lot better and like them more. So my inclination was more towards seeing Tool, but the relative price of tickets and choice of venue led me to choose M. Ward instead (didn’t really feel like hauling my way out to GMU for Tool; besides I have seen enough big-name bands for the summer).

Anyway I made it to the 930 in time to catch some of the opening act, and lo and behold! There on stage was none other than Ian Svenonius! I had no idea he was performing — wouldn’t have guessed he’d open for M. Ward. He was with a new-ish band that I knew little about, called Chain and the Gang. If I had known, of course, I would have gone earlier. I’m definitely a fan. The last time I saw the sassiest boy in America in performance was probably around 4 years ago with Weird War. I thought Weird War were great; I was a little less sold on Chain and the Gang but want to check it out more. Ian told some typical amusing stories and I dug the last song, all about deathbed confessions and tying them into various conspiracy theories.

I can’t find video from the show the other night (or the Friday night show with the same line-up) but here is a youtube rendition of “Deathbed Confession” from a few months back. Not super quality, but you get the sense of it. And here is their myspace.

So for M. Ward, I was a little unsure what to expect. I had only listened to him here and there, a few downloaded songs, internet radio stations, etc. Honestly I wasn’t expecting to like him that much — I’m predisposed to dislike everyone these days that has blog hype, hipster cred, and is a singer-songwriter. I mean, ugh, singer-songwriters. I have also been eternally leery of his going by “M. Ward,” rather than “Matt,” finding it sort of pretentious and a rip-off of M. Doughty. ALSO: Zooey Deschanel?

But it turned out to be a great show. The music wasn’t especially innovative or anything, and I thought that Ward (should I call him “M.”?) didn’t really utilize the band enough, but everything was thoroughly enjoyable. They did covers of “Rave On” (highly rearranged) and “Roll Over Beethoven” (more like the version we all remember); when M. played piano it reminded me of old-fashioned Jerry Lee Lewis-style rock and roll. I have been into that kind of stuff lately so was pleased to hear it. I guess overall the performance seemed to me like a cross between ’00s alt-rock (i.e., Wilco) and Jerry Lee-style ’50s/’60s rock and roll. This is a good combination. There maybe was a little tiny bit of Tom Waits in there as well.

(On the other hand, I was reminded of how dull it can be to watch a rock musician play the piano. I think the reason piano mainly dropped out of rock and roll is that it is not interesting to watch a guy play piano and croon. I mean, compared to playing guitar. It’s more interesting than a laptop, though…)

The crowd was pretty pleased and the reviews were good. It didn’t really change my impression of M. Ward too much, but it was a solid, fun show. (Of course I was in a pretty good mood after unexpectedly seeing Ian S. perform…)

The 930 Club made a special point that night about “no videos, no flash photography” and I can’t find much of anything in the way of videos from the show. So I’ll wrap up with the weird official video for “Rave On”:

My first night out at Fort Reno this summer, I got there late, missed most of the second band while in line at Whole Foods trying to get a burrito and tea, but got to check out Imperial China for the first time on a gorgeous summer night.

I’d heard their name around this town before, but never was all that interested in checking them out, partly because I really don’t like the name at all. (Oddly, one of the people I went with, the other guitarist in my band, said the exact opposite.) Imperial China? It seems to violate all kinds of band-name rules: it’s kind of generic, it has no suggestions of anything, it has a geographical location in the name, it sounds like it is evoking history. I know it’s difficult to come up with band names but really I don’t like the name “Imperial China” at all.

Another thing that held me back from investigating them sooner is that I really soured on the DC “indie rock” scene over recent years. The younger generation of indie rockers — if you can call them that — seem to me to be really generic and dull. Somewhere in the early part of this decade it seemed like a flood of post-Death Cab, post-Shins, post-Bright Eyes kinds of bands emerged to kill indie rock via earnest dullness. They all just seem like uninteresting and generic pop-rock bands; like the Gin Blossoms without the hooks. (The flipside to that is the boring party/dance-rock indie scene, also pretty much humdrum.) So usually any band that gets a DCist “Three Stars” review makes me wanna hit snooze or maybe download some metal.

But I found Imperial China to be pretty good, definitely a step above the tepid-indie style so common lately. They grew on me during their set, and reminded me at least somewhat of some other interesting bands that I’ve seen in the past year or so, like Battles and Fuck Buttons. They were just rocking enough to not be an electronica act, but were electronicky enough to make it interesting. Pretty solid. In fact they were more interesting to watch than the much-hyped Battles, who make interesting music but weren’t really worth watching live. Other names my friends and I mentioned during their set included Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Helmet. I’m always glad to hear Tool influence (even if it wasn’t the band’s intention).

I wouldn’t say that Imperial China are the salvation of the local scene, but they are at least doing something that feels both interesting and contemporary. I’ll see them again sometime. Here’s their myspace with some samples and videos (apparently they recorded a full-length album with Devin Ocampo, hope it gets a solid release).

And here’s a flickr photo from bozick:

I’ve seen Sonic Youth like a million times. Well, maybe more like 10, but that is more than almost anyone else and definitely more than any other band that is not from the DC area. This is what longevity gets you. They are probably my favorite band and I never get tired of listening to them, but even with the best musicians, there is always the chance that familiarity breeds indifference. I remember how the last time I saw Fugazi (probably the band I have seen most of all) I was kind of antsy and distracted, and took them for granted… and then they vanished. So I try to keep paying attention to the bands I love.

My interest in SY has been steady for a long time, but a few albums back I began to find myself less immersed in their new material. I had a copy of Murray St. that cracked and broke; I hardly ever listened to Sonic Nurse. But I really loved Rather Ripped so I was pretty interested in hearing their new album, The Eternal. And I like it, but not as much as Rather Ripped. The new album meanders between generic Sonic Youth and some better material that doesn’t always really sound much like Sonic Youth at all. Good, but not great. And I’m not that wild about the single, “Sacred Trickster.” So I went to the show more for the sake of seeing them again, not with the keen interest I had in the Rather Ripped tour a few years ago.

Turns out they were good as ever and played a fun set: the new album and assorted oldies. It was cool to hear “Catholic Block” and for the encore they did a double-shot of the best Kim songs from Daydream, “The Sprawl” and “‘Cross the Breeze.” The new ones were good live and I really love the Lee song “Walkin Blue” — this was reassuring since one of the only disappointments from Rather Ripped was that the Lee contribution wasn’t one of the album’s best. The sprawling “Massage the History” is sleeky and mysterious… sounds more like a Thurston/Kim solo song on record, but it came across pretty well live. I can’t ever remember seeing SY play acoustic at a regular show before (as Thurston did on that song), though I may just be forgetting.

But overall most of the set was heavy and loud, and like usual, Kim was the face of the band for live-performance purposes. Here is the setlist and some photos from the City Paper. I don’t really have a lot to say except I’m glad I made it. I thought about going back the next night to try to score a ticket at the last second, but busy life and a summer of being broke kept me away.

Here’s their performance of “Calming the Snake”:

NPR also streamed their set from the following night right here.

By the way I regret missing opener Endless Boogie. I saw them once before opening up for someone at DC9 and really liked them. They were sort of like a jammin’ version of ZZ Top. The Sonic Youth show started surprisingly early and we were caught a little unawares; I guess the old rock stars had to get to bed before midnight.

While on a quick trip out of town to see family, I got to go to the Milwaukee Summerfest with my brother and brother-in-law to see the very first rock band I ever cared about, legendary metal gods Judas Priest.

I was into Priest in the early-to-mid ’80s when I was like six or seven years old, via my older brother who was obsessed with them during high school (and still kind of is to this day). My first favorite song was “Free Wheel Burning” and I also loved “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll.” My brother also got me into Ozzy and Queensrÿche at a rather precocious age; I’ve seen Ozzy (with Sabbath) and the ‘Rÿche before but never managed to see Judas Priest so I was pretty excited to go.

It turns out the Milwaukee Summerfest is an odd event and not really ideal for seeing awesome heavy metal bands, though great for fans of ’80s hard-rock cover bands. It is a lengthy event that takes place over 10 days or so, and they have multiple headliners each night all playing at around the same time on a dozen different stages. For example, on the night we went, Judas Priest played at the same time as Whitesnake and a little after No Doubt, among some other bands that I have heard of. But during the day, leading up to the main concert, there was a strange but occasionally cool mixture of different bands and music. There were a lot of cover bands, including a Bon Jovi tribute band who were kind of fun to watch for a bit but got old quickly. With all the cover bands, and hours spent walking around, we heard at least two performances of each of the following songs:

• “Separate Ways”
• “Crazy Train”
• “Don’t Stop Believing”

and

• “Wanted Dead or Alive.”

It was ok but repetitive after a while, and a little too heavy on the Journey. Anyways some of the bands were more interesting, and there was one small stage that had local Wisconsin bands playing original music where we happened to catch one duo worthy of a shout-out, called the Brothers Burn Mountain. These guys played acoustic guitar and drums and were pretty interesting. My brother bought some CDs from them and I am gonna link to their myspace and listen to them again sometime. The drummer had this fascinatingly weird style of playing that was both amusing and riveting… you have to check out the videos to see.

Judas Priest came on at 10:30 and we got to their stage about three hours early, but still too late to score seats or a spot to see them very well. Another hard-rock cover band played before them, and the crowd of metal fans was not exactly into it (during yet another Journey song the band commented on how the crowd seemed to get awfully angry every time they started playing keyboard — towards the end they “metaled it up” a little and finished with a couple of Metallica songs).

So eventually Priest really did play. Those dudes are old! But they sound amazing! It turns out the current Priest tour is a 30th-anniversary celebration of their British Steel album and they had a cool backdrop based on that album, and played most (or all?) of the songs from it.

The main problem was our inability to see much of the action. The stage (a ridiculously cool one sponsored by Harley Davidson and decorated with motorcycles) was surrounded by maybe 500 seats in long benches, but if you didn’t have one of those spots, there were no real sight-lines or other ways to see. There was a screen, but even that was hard to see over all the people standing on the benches. Oh, well. When I really stood up on tiptoes I could see the tops of the heads of Halford, Tipton, Downing, et al., and sometimes had a good shot of the screen.

So I missed a lot of the stage antics — and was surrounded partly by very drunk metal fans getting testy over their inability to see — but still had a lot of fun. Besides the British Steel stuff they played some other good songs too, including “Free Wheel Burning” as if to satisfy a dream I’ve nourished for 25 years. British Steel is a great album on its own, and even if you’re not a Priest fan you would recognize a lot of them, like this one (listen to Rob Halford’s voice! He is almost 68 years old!) :

Last week I was listening to the album in anticipation, and I was especially impressed by “Metal Gods” which is a sort of fan-favorite and reminds me of kraut rock, of all things. Check it:

My view wasn’t as good as all that, but here is a shot of the set from our spots:

Looking forward to more metal shows… I wish DC had more metal shows in town rather than way the hell out at JAXX…