I haven't, but my guess is that The Misfits - Danzig = Not The Misfits.

quote:

Since Louis didn't mention it, i guess i should

Thanks for the review.
I didn't know how to put words on the firts band.
You did well

If the Arkans were visiting, I'd definitely take them go to see Next Life performing at Christiana tomorrow evening.

Don't know if I'll go anyway. Any other Copenhagen Wigbers interested?

That looks so good.

Argh.

I'm this close to getting a plane ticket, you know...

quote:

Originally posted by Architect:
I'm debating whether to see Misfits. Anyone seen them Danzig-less?

i saw the misfits without danzig about 9 years ago. it depends why you are going to see them. i thought it was a fun night out. and it was fun to hear all the old stuff. sure it wasn't the real misfits in the correct sense. but then i;ve seen danzig play as well and he isn't the misfits either.

just uploaded my pictures from this.
started to write something about it.
post that soon. but it was a brilliant gig.
thorougly enjoyed myself.

the silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band
ABC Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow
1st June 2006

the silver mt. zion memorial orchestra & tra-la-la band - apparently this was the 80th band that this montreal based band have played. which surprises me. especially since its the third time i've seen them play in glasgow. the first time i saw them i saw them as a frustrated fan of godspeed you black emperor - frustrated in that every time godspeed played i missed them. i enjoyed them a lot. much more than i did godspeed when i finally caught them live.

the first time i saw silver mt. zion was about the release of "born into trouble", their second album. it was before the album came out, so probably 2000-2001. they played king tut's wah-wah hut, with fellow constellation band frank spiro. second time was my birthday in 2004, before the release of the third album "horses in the sky", though they played a lot from the album. that time the support band were someone i can't remember, kind of sums them up. they played the basement of oran mor, a converted church - now restaurant and venue, with painted ceilings by writer alisdair gray.

a few months ago i was making a rare walk past the ABC in sauchiehall street. a fairly new venue, having recently been converted from a derelict cinema that had been sitting empty for the last few years. there i noticed a posted for a silver mt. zion, so next chance i got i grabbed a ticket. so i've been anticipating this gig for a while, keen to see them - because even though i've seen them twice before i enjoyed them a lot.

last night i arrived at the ABC. doors opened 7, i got there about 7.15. i suspected the support band probably wouldn't be up to much, but i would have hated to be proved wrong, so decided to turn up reasonably early. rather than about 9 when i would have perhaps guessed a silver mt. zion might come on. that first hour i was restless as the place filled up and no support band appeared. 8.15 and there was some movement. a band starting to get ready, and as they did so, i recognised them as a silver mt. zion. so. no support band.

they started the set with a couple of tracks from "horses in the sky", then worked through a few new tracks. ranging from the melodic and harmonious to rock out cacophany. my favourite material is the slow stuff, the stripped, raw and melancholic tracks, the ones where all seven members are singing together. its at times like that you know silver mt. zion are a live band - where you can stand there, witnessing the emotion, when you can make out each voice and pick out who it belongs to. of course its still striking when they hit the other end of the spectrum - some of the newer material being rolling rock, more reminiscent of godspeed or the "this is our punk rock" EP - when you can make out the melodies of the violin and cello in amongst the wall of guitars.

a silver mt zion played for two hours, taking their time between tracks, building us up high, bringing us down low. bantering with the crowd, dedicating the performance of new track blind blind blind to sauchiehall street where the gig was held. efrim's voice always carrying through everything. he asks the crowd if everything is good, suggesting that they are an accomodating band and are willing to sort any problems - a voice shouts "get a hair cut", the band and crowd laugh, a moment later the same voice shouts, "only kidding", efrim responds by saying he has had nightmares like this, another voice shouts "so you've been to glasgow before then". they go off, come back on, go off, finishing with another new song - one million died to make this sound.

as i uploaded the photos from the gig i did a quick search, i found a couple of silver mt. zion concerts on the internet archive available for download.- the tracklisting to this french concert on the 1st of may 2006 looks to have been pretty similar to the set we got a month later -
http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=smz2006-05-01&from=browseRecent
which i'm listening to as i type now. great stuff.

Heard jazz harmonica tonigt: Ron Kalina
http://www.newportpacificrecords.com/RonKalina/ronkalina.htm

Awesome and evocative player. I asked him about Howard Levy [a player out of Chicago who I heard on Donald Fagen's "Morph the Cat" album], did he know his work? Kalina said not only does he love his work, they are friends and often do seminars together. He said while he plays chromatic harmonica, Levy manages to get all the chromatic notes off his diachromatic harmonica. Said while they approach playing from a wide angle to each other, they arrive at the same place. I am throughly charmed by Kalina's sound and "voice." AND, he's a hell of a keyboard player. Such rhythm and taste, with spunk.

Bought his cd.

Listening to Kalina's cd now. What an instrument. Geez, I love learning and hearing this stuff.

Anybody going to The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC next Saturday (17th). Sonic Youth will be there with Be Your Own Pet.

Oh, i totally forgot:

Keith Caputo 28/05/06, the MaZ, Bruges.



Keith Caputo, frontman of Live Of Agony, takes his solo material on the road. The music is a lot more relaxed and introvert than the heavier LOA, but the emotional intensity is the same.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this show, because i've heard of him doing entire accoustic sessions where everybody was seated or laying down on big pillows, but also him doing upbeat and energetic gigs. It could go either way.

The moment the band came on stage and started playing though, it became obvious that they'd be bringing a combination of accoustic and electric songs. The whole show was glowing with a sort of positive energy, Keith was in a good mood and while somewhat quiet at times, he entertained the audience well in his own relaxed way.

The setlist was a combination of his two solo albums, with some LOA songs (adapted to fit both the style of his solo music and the playing style of his backing band) mixed in. It all added up to about an hour and a half of playing, which is pretty long. Not that we minded of course. Keith's music was a perfect way to spend a relaxed sunday evening: great music with even greater singing. Keith is one stellar artist, and that's one thing i think everybody walking out of the MaZ that evening wholeheartedly agrees with.

If you should notice him performing in your area sometime, i recommend you go see this man. He Rocks.

Sonic Youth coming up next Thursday (second show of a two-show night). Will definitely write-up/post pictures (may be my last 9:30 club show for a while).

Hey Justy, let us know how Be your own Pet is. I've never seen them live.

DBT on Conan Tuesday night was too short to represent their style.

In the thoroughly self-serving tradition of the WGB, let me tell you a little about a gig last night. This was at The Bohemian. Johannesburg.

The featured band is Jack Hammer, which is Piet Botha, an old rock 'n roll legend in SA. Piet is the son of Pik Botha, who was for years Foreign Minister of SA during the nasty old days. Piet looks just like his old man, it's quite scary. He sang a couple of old favourites last night, including "Beautiful Mozambique", a homage to the truly beautiful country his father spent quite a bit of time bombing flat during the day. And some old Neil Young numbers. This is big, big rock, the full 15-minute drum solo stuff, and our sound guy gave them a terrific mix.

Piet was standing in for another band who couldn't make it, who are called Rokkeloos. In Afrikaans, this literally means "Dress-less". It's an all-girl, hard hard rock outfit. The lead singer, Prinses Petro, is a performer of note. She would blow Madonna off any stage.

Anyway, I discovered last night that our manager is now booking Rokkeloos. I'm so happy to hear this. Something is really coming together.

The name comes from one of the band members who lived in the US for a while and forgot her Afrikaans. She was trying to say "roekeloos" which means "reckless" and came up with "rokkeloos" instead, and they loved it. They do gigs where they all dress up in nurses' uniforms and have the men's jaws gaping. They really really push the limit. It's raunchy stuff. I love them, mostly (I know you won't believe me...) because they're absolutely brilliant musicians. They have a new bass player, though, who has simply the best body I've ever seen on stage. She does things with it that you shouldn't be able to do while you play the bass. And she's a really serious jazz student. Johnny Dopper, our guy, says she doesn't need to play. She just needs to stand there and breathe.

Her boyfriend is an old pal of mine. He calls himself "The Man Who Knew Too Little". He was the crime reporter who was one of the first on the scene of a mysterious murder of a big, big, big tycoon here that caused some little trouble a while back. I think I mentioned it.

The boyfriend said fortunately he didn't get to find out too much about what happened. That's why he's still alive. So he's "The Man Who..."

There's a new book about the tycoon. Reveals that apart from being a loving father and husband, he was "very fond" of certain young rent boys, and used to buy them flashy motor cars to show how fond he was of them. And dodgy diamonds dripping in blood.

Ah well. Another gig.

I'm doing a lot of blues harp work at the moment. Can't bend the notes too much to simulate the chromatic, because then the harp breaks. I've got a whole bag of Hohner "Pro" harps I've thrown away, in theory you can buy new reed plates for them, maybe I'll get around to it some day. Hohner have brought out a new harp, it's called the EB for "Extreme Bending" -- WGB should like that, I think. I tried to buy one the other day, they cost about $100. The top note was a semitone flat, and the guy at the shop said oh, the other one he tried to sell was also like that. Total rip-off. I heard someone playing one, it sounded great, but I'll take my chances with the Pro Harp at less than half the price.

Piet Botha had a big Tribute concert in March, where all the bands associated with him played. We featured, Johnny Dopper went to primary school with Jack Hammer. It was quite an event. They made a DVD, there was some fantastic music. I'd like to see it. Top of the day (and the only black faces in sight apart from ourselves) was a scorching reggae band called Tidal Waves who've been around for about 15 years. They are I think one of the great bands in the world today. They played a screaming set, Jacob their guitarist, who plays rock 'n roll guitar like a bat out of hell, was climbing all over the speakers and just screaming. Very unusual for a reggae band to have heavy rock guitar over it. They do a kind of "cross rhythm" thing where one half of the band sounds like a stuck CD while the other half goes off at a reggae tangent. It's not really a cross-rhythm, they are in different worlds. I've never heard anything quite like it. Then they come together again with a bang. It's quite scary, I get huge cold shivers when I hear Tidal Waves play. They're big in New Zealand, they played there, big reggae following in NZ apparently.

Jacob also plays devastating harmonica, he plays it right from the diaphragm. At the Piet Botha concert the drummer broke his kick, and Jacob kept the crowd going for 10 minutes with a harp solo. Also gave me goosebumps.

Good stuff happening down here, have to say. Watch out for Tidal Waves, if they manage to hold themselves together, they are going to really make waves. They are our brother band, actually, they join forces with our guys to form something called Taskforce. And with Rokkeloos as our sister band....

Last night...the Split Enz reunion gig.

[Insert random superlatives here.]

Just a fantastic night. Great playing, terrific choice of songs, fine atmosphere.

The support band (Evermore) were damn good, too.

Sonic Youth last night, 2nd show of a 2 gig double-header. Be Your Own Pet opened (as Eric mentioned above) and kicked some ass, even though as lead singer Jemina Pearl said, "this is our second show, sorry we suck." She bounced around a *lot*, had a tee-shirt with a pineapple on it, and wore beat-up white Converse lowtops.






Then Sonic Youth. Also their second show of the night, Thurston showed up somewhat fucked up (he started rambling about previous DC and Baltimore appearances immediately) but the got down to business pretty quickly. New material is really too mellow, though I enjoyed it. "Pattern Recognition" was well played, but things didn't get good until the encores.







More and bigger versions can be found here:

http://homepage.mac.com/jroby/sonic_youth/sonic_youth.html

Video of the encore is here:
http://homepage.mac.com/jroby/sonic_youth/encore_video.html

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Justy,

Thanks for the photos Justy.
I like the second and third Sonic Youth ones the best. The green color tint on the second one in particular.
And of course the Violet Kim

I like the second one too, because the strobe lit like four times in however long I had the shutter open, so you got four overlaid images that are all pretty crisp.

I can't wait 'til Saturday Night!
The appearance on Letterman tonight might hold me over until then.

Be Your Own Pet Rocks Hard!!
High, HIGH! Energy
Even though you were late getting back from dinner! But at least you stopped and got a box

Sonic Youth: Amazing!!!
All I had was a disposal Polaroid but if the photos turn out I'll post them.

Eric's Trip, Thanks! If you're reading this you guys are the best! I really needed that.

Good to hear... I think the performances suffered only a little because it was the second show of the night.

Where did you see them, Eric? Asheville?