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last/next concert ?

The last concert that I went to was a week ago on Monday – Daniel Barenboim playing four Beethoven piano sonatas at the Royal Festival Hall, London, as part of his eight-concert performance of all 32 sonatas.

It was extraordinary – the first time that I've ever witnessed a genuinely great classical musician play.

Full of contrasts – light and shade, ferocity and gentleness, loud and quiet, passion and calm. A really wonderful experience.

My next concert will be this Friday, when I go to the Barbican in London to see the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of Valery Gergiev, and performing extracts from Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet, Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and Debussy's La mer.
 
Celtic rock most recently. Uncle Hamish and the Hooligans from Asheville NC and Enter the Haggis from Toronto.
 
My first concert will be on September 29 of this year at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Celine Dion will be performing. I'm not too thrilled to go because I didn't like her most recent album. I really hope she plays her earlier music.
 
I saw Celine 9 years ago here in Chicago. I hope you have a good experience because when I saw her, she talked too much instead of singing.

Let me know how that goes
 
It has been six or seven since I saw my last concert. It was either Robert Cray or The Reverend Horton Heat.
 
heh last band i saw was called EXTREME NOISE TERROR and im going to see FLEAS AND LICE in a few weeks........:D silly names..
 
Im going to Bon Jovi's consert at Ullevål Stadium, Oslo, Norway 18th of June:cool: Have any of you been to their resent conserts? I really hope the play alot of stuff from other records then their last one, Lost Highway.
 
So I went to the Roskilde Rock Festival in Denmark again this year. One week... well, four actual days of music, the rest is just hanging around getting shitfaced. But yeah, there was music, and some of it was pretty damn great.

Pascal. Swedish garage rock band. First time I saw them they hadn't released an album and played 35 minutes. Second time they had one album out and played 35 minutes. This time they've got two albums out and played 35 minutes. No wonder, the way the lead singer screams his head off. But they've got the repetitive 3-chord thing down, and when they close with a cover of Judas Priest's "Painkiller" it's pretty damn good. 3/5

Radiohead. It takes them a while to get going - I like the recent albums, but on stage a few too many of the songs sound more like really great intros than great songs in themselves. But then they hit "Exit Music" around the hour mark and the gig really shapes up from there, with great versions of "Everything In Its Right Place", "Paranoid Android", "Idioteque", "Exit Music (For A Film)", "Street Spirit" and "2+2=5", and ends with Thom leading the crowd in a sing-along (Thom Yorke leading a sing-along?!?) on "Karma Police". Good stuff. 4/5
Youtube: Karma Police

Band of Horses. I'd heard maybe one of their songs beforehand, but I walk out a fan. Love seeing a band go up on stage and not only have fun, but be completely dedicated to the music as well - this sort of high-emotion rock really demands nothing less, and they delivered. 4/5
Youtube: The Funeral

Seasick Steve. Apparently Steve used to be both a trucker and a homeless man; these days he's around 70 and making a living playing streetcorner blues with enough attitude to win over the crowd completely. He swigs Jack Daniels straight from the bottle, tells stories, plays a one-string hobo guitar and flashes gang signs; I love it. 5/5
Youtube: One True

Grinderman. Nick Cave's noisier side project really shouldn't be on the main stage at 10.30PM; not that they don't make an effort, but with only one album under their belt and a few too many songs that rely more on energy than hooks they can't really hold the crowd for the full hour their set lasts. But it's a lot of fun to see 50-year-old Nick rock out like a madman, and some of the songs really get the crowd going even before they encore with the most incredible version of "Tupelo" I've ever heard. In a smaller venue, it might have been great. 3/5
Youtube: No Pussy Blues

Joan As Police Woman. On record, I love Joan Wasser; on stage, at least this stage, she flat-out sucks. She stumbles onto stage in high heels and glitter dress like she's PJ Harvey in '95, but she has neither Polly Jean's energy nor the effortless laidback cool of her own albums; unfocused, badly played, and just... dull. 1/5 Left after 30 minutes to go catch the last 45 minutes of...

Solomon Burke. Another of the 70+ crowd, and yes, it's easy to dismiss Solomon Burke. You can make fun of the fact that he weighs about 5,000 kilos and spends the entire show seated on a huge red-and-gold throne, but that feels cheap. You can point out that since he's managed to get through over 50 years in the music industry with hardly a single classic track that everyone knows, his set consists pretty much of the same songs that every bad cover band plays: we get "Johnny B Goode", we get "Proud Mary", we get "What A Wonderful World"... but who cares? The guy's got an amazing voice, and he knows exactly how to work a crowd. When he stops "Lucille" mid-chorus and orders his musicians to take off their proper jackets and ties and move closer to the audience, you know he's done it a 1000 times before and it still works; we keep him on stage, we get encore after encore until the management has to shut off the PA because he simply won't stop entertaining us. Brilliant. 4/5
Youtube: What A Wonderful World

My Bloody Valentine. Oh man. I've seen quite a few loud concerts in my life. I've seen heavy metal, I've seen punk, I've seen Beethoven's 9th. And nothing has even come close to what MBV do to us here. It's physical, like injecting yourself with noise. Kevin Shields and the gang haven't toured in over 15 years, but they walk up on stage like it's another day at work and literally blow us away. Guitars guitars guitars guitars, that start out at "WAY too loud" and then turn it up for every song until we're all made up of nothing but distortion and feedback and Bilinda Butcher cooing "Oooo, a-oooo". They finish up with a 30-minute version of "You Made Me Realise" that goes so far beyond tinnitus that I really don't know if I should report them to the police for aggravated assault, or sell everything I own and follow them on tour. Afterwards, it takes me several hours to even walk straight again, and a couple of days for the howling in my ears to stop. MAN. 5/5
Youtube: Only Shallow

Neil Young. They put MBV on 30 minutes before Neil, so I miss the first 45 minutes or so, and being utterly drained and half-deaf from the previous show I can't really appreciate this as much as I should. But Neil puts on a great show, mixing the popular stuff (almost half of the Harvest album, including a great "Words (Between the Lines of Age)") with his trademark self-indulgent perversions (23 minutes of the brand-new "No Hidden Path"... well, it's a damn fine song). Then he finishes up with one of the best Beatles covers I've ever heard, a thoroughly Neil-ified "A Day in the Life", rips the strings off his 50-year-old guitar and leaves the crowd screaming for more. The old man's still in it. 4/5
Youtube: All Along the Watchtower

Slayer. Another band who might have done better on a smaller stage; watching them on the main stage in the early afternoon sun on a Sunday might be a good substitute for church, but... Anyway, even if I only see the first 45 minutes before I have to run to the next show, it's enough to make me realise that I need more Slayer records. They hammer every song into the audience's heads, they go through more tempo changes than should be allowed, and they wear Slayer t-shirts with no hint of irony. Slayer like, rawks, dude. 3/5
Youtube: Raining Blood

Cat Power. Last time I saw Cat Power AKA Chan Marshall in concert, she was hunched over her electric guitar, drinking vodka like water, seemed terrified that we would hate her, and sang her songs like she would die if she didnt get them out. Now she's quit drinking and is in therapy, she's gotten herself a band, she's doing just about every song from her new cover album and she's... still clearly uncomfortable on stage, but working it in a way she didn't do before. So what if it's not as scarily intense as it used to be? Self-destruction is overrated, and she's still a great singer even if I sort of wish we'd gotten to hear more of her old material. 3/5
Youtube: The Greatest

Bonnie "Prince" Billy. A great songwriter with all of ONE hit to his name ("I See A Darkness"), so obviously he won't play that one. Instead we get 90 minutes of pitch-dark Tom Waitsian country about sex and death, but with enough of a sense of humour to make it captivating rather than just depressing. He builds his simple, backyard/junkyard songs into fanatical sermons and it's only fitting that 7 days of nothing but sunshine ends when the weather gods dump a thunderstorm on us just as Billy's set really takes off. He signs off by telling us to have fun at the Jay-Z concert that's going to close the festival ("and don't forget that Jay-Z's penis has been inside Beyonce Knowles!") but we realise that nothing can top this and head home. 5/5
Youtube: The Brute Choir
 
I'm leaving for the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago tomorrow morning and here are the bands we'll be seeing:

Friday, July 18 (in conjunction with All Tomorrow's Parties/Don't Look Back):

6:00 p.m. Mission of Burma performing Vs.
7:15 p.m. Sebadoh performing Bubble and Scrape
8:30 p.m. Public Enemy performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

Saturday, July 19:

12:30 p.m. Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar
1:00 p.m. Titus Andronicus
1:25 p.m. A Hawk and a Hacksaw
1:30 p.m. Jay Reatard
2:00 p.m. Caribou
2:20 p.m. Icy Demons
3:00 p.m. Fleet Foxes
3:15 p.m. **** Buttons
4:00 p.m. Dizzee Rascal
4:15 p.m. The Ruby Suns
5:00 p.m. Vampire Weekend
5:20 p.m. Elf Power
6:00 p.m. !!!
6:25 p.m. Extra Golden
7:00 p.m. The Hold Steady
7:30 p.m. Atlas Sounds
8:00 p.m. Jarvis Cocker
8:25 p.m. No Age
9:00 p.m. Animal Collective

Sunday, July 20:

12:30 p.m. Mahjongg
1:00 p.m. Times New Viking
1:25 p.m. High Places
1:30 p.m. Dirty Projectors
2:00 p.m. Boris
2:20 p.m. HEALTH
3:00 p.m. The Apples in Stereo
3:15 p.m. King Khan & the Shrines
4:00 p.m. Les Savy Fav
5:00 p.m. The Dodos
5:20 p.m. Occidental Brothers Dance Band International
6:00 p.m. M. Ward
6:25 p.m. Ghostface Killah & Raekwon
7:00 p.m. Spiritualized
7:30 p.m. Bon Iver
8:00 p.m. Dinosaur Jr.
8:25 p.m. Cut Copy
9:00 p.m. Spoon
 
The last... hmm... I think it was The Spill Canvas.
My next will be a festival particularly with German bands. I will see Emil Bulls, Disco Ensemble, blackmail and Madsen.
 
I've bought tickets for Airwaves and after that Leonard Cohen. I'll probably go to some other gigs before these two though.
 
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