Twelve Concerts On the Year
At the end of March I had been to five concerts and seen six bands this year. One month later I'm now at twelve concerts and seventeen bands. It's been rather busy, and my last weekend posts haven't caught all of them, so I shall recap here.
6. As I summarized previously, I saw Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue at the Agora Theatre on Saturday, March 31. I didn't count Robert Finley as a separate act given that all his songs were in Auerbach's set. Shannon & the Clams opened.
7. I saw The Crystal Method (ok, half the Crystal Method) at the Beachland Ballroom on Saturday, April 7. My radio colleague Stout XTC opened up.
8. That same weekend, I was extraordinarily fortunate to see John Williams conduct The Cleveland Orchestra. That was Sunday, April 8 at Severance Hall.
9. As noted earlier, I saw The Mountain Goats at the Beachland Ballroom on Friday, April 13, with opening support from Dead Rider.
10. The Spin Doctors had one massive album in 1991 and 1992 and then more or less disappeared from pop culture. Lead singer Chris Barron now does the singer/songwriter thing in New York City, and played, by his admission, his first solo show ever in Cleveland on Thursday, April 19 at the Beachland Tavern.
Why I was there to hear that admission was sort of entertaining. I got home from the gym and M told me that I needed to shower quick so we could go to the show. It turns out that her high school friend Lindsay is married to Chris Barron. Lindsay had texted M and offered her free tickets, so we took her up on it.
It turns out that Chris's new album "Angels and One Armed Jugglers" is actually pretty good, and he has a keen ability to tell stories and jokes, particularly self-deprecating ones. After a play through of the new album, he did play some Spin Doctors tunes, including one introduced with the cutting comment "Who here is a hard core Spin Doctors fan? If you bought the second album you count." He also had a lot of stories about the Rolling Stones, whom the Spin Doctors opened for on parts of the Voodoo Lounge tour. All this and M bought me dinner at the Tavern.
11. Last Tuesday, April 24, I was at the Agora Theatre again to see The Decemberists for the first time since 2006 and the Crane Wife tour. Kendralin picked me up with her friend Jamie in tour, and then Eric met up with us, and I ran into Judie as well, who was photographing the show for some media outlet. Hopefully she got some good shots of the sweet floating skull backdrop.
I had listened to the new album I'll Be Your Girl several times in advance, which proved helpful as they hit that material very heavily. I enjoyed it, and Colin Meloy really seemed into it in a way that I don't remember him doing the three times prior that I saw them. I'm glad I went, and The Mariner's Revenge Song is still good fun.
A band called Tennis provided opening support. Their lead singer had a really interesting sounding voice, but the material was nothing special and beyond her voice nothing really grabbed me.
12. Way back in 2014 a local band consisting of two brothers calling themselves Archie & the Bunkers played Studio-A-Rama. Last night I saw them at Mahall's for their second album release party. The room was full of teenagers slamming in the pit and parents and teachers rocking out in the back of the room. I had a good time and added their new album to my collection. I ran into Eric, Lydia and RonK.
I also caught a bit of another punk band opening. They were called Two Hands and what little I saw I liked.
Unsurprisingly given how many concerts I've seen in the past month, my reading has fallen off substantially off the pace I set in the first three months of the year. Perhaps fortunately for my reading habits, my strategic ticket reserve is currently down to one Cleveland Orchestra concert in May, although I have a bunch more that I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on and buy.
6. As I summarized previously, I saw Dan Auerbach & the Easy Eye Sound Revue at the Agora Theatre on Saturday, March 31. I didn't count Robert Finley as a separate act given that all his songs were in Auerbach's set. Shannon & the Clams opened.
7. I saw The Crystal Method (ok, half the Crystal Method) at the Beachland Ballroom on Saturday, April 7. My radio colleague Stout XTC opened up.
8. That same weekend, I was extraordinarily fortunate to see John Williams conduct The Cleveland Orchestra. That was Sunday, April 8 at Severance Hall.
9. As noted earlier, I saw The Mountain Goats at the Beachland Ballroom on Friday, April 13, with opening support from Dead Rider.
10. The Spin Doctors had one massive album in 1991 and 1992 and then more or less disappeared from pop culture. Lead singer Chris Barron now does the singer/songwriter thing in New York City, and played, by his admission, his first solo show ever in Cleveland on Thursday, April 19 at the Beachland Tavern.
Why I was there to hear that admission was sort of entertaining. I got home from the gym and M told me that I needed to shower quick so we could go to the show. It turns out that her high school friend Lindsay is married to Chris Barron. Lindsay had texted M and offered her free tickets, so we took her up on it.
It turns out that Chris's new album "Angels and One Armed Jugglers" is actually pretty good, and he has a keen ability to tell stories and jokes, particularly self-deprecating ones. After a play through of the new album, he did play some Spin Doctors tunes, including one introduced with the cutting comment "Who here is a hard core Spin Doctors fan? If you bought the second album you count." He also had a lot of stories about the Rolling Stones, whom the Spin Doctors opened for on parts of the Voodoo Lounge tour. All this and M bought me dinner at the Tavern.
11. Last Tuesday, April 24, I was at the Agora Theatre again to see The Decemberists for the first time since 2006 and the Crane Wife tour. Kendralin picked me up with her friend Jamie in tour, and then Eric met up with us, and I ran into Judie as well, who was photographing the show for some media outlet. Hopefully she got some good shots of the sweet floating skull backdrop.
I had listened to the new album I'll Be Your Girl several times in advance, which proved helpful as they hit that material very heavily. I enjoyed it, and Colin Meloy really seemed into it in a way that I don't remember him doing the three times prior that I saw them. I'm glad I went, and The Mariner's Revenge Song is still good fun.
A band called Tennis provided opening support. Their lead singer had a really interesting sounding voice, but the material was nothing special and beyond her voice nothing really grabbed me.
12. Way back in 2014 a local band consisting of two brothers calling themselves Archie & the Bunkers played Studio-A-Rama. Last night I saw them at Mahall's for their second album release party. The room was full of teenagers slamming in the pit and parents and teachers rocking out in the back of the room. I had a good time and added their new album to my collection. I ran into Eric, Lydia and RonK.
I also caught a bit of another punk band opening. They were called Two Hands and what little I saw I liked.
Unsurprisingly given how many concerts I've seen in the past month, my reading has fallen off substantially off the pace I set in the first three months of the year. Perhaps fortunately for my reading habits, my strategic ticket reserve is currently down to one Cleveland Orchestra concert in May, although I have a bunch more that I'm almost ready to pull the trigger on and buy.