see/hear more live music

All in one venue – bought my tickets for July 14th! Psych Furs and Fixx are good, but the one I’m most excited about is The Alarm. This is going to be great.

I saw The Cat Empire last night (thanks to Ophelia for introducing them to me). Great show – so much energy and they looked like they were having fantastic fun performing. They bill themselves as Rock, Ska and Latin, quite an eclectic mix, and that’s exactly what they delivered. There were six musicians on stage, superb, all of them, the keyboardist and the drummer particularly. There appears to be two lead singers, one of whom has an incredible vocal range and other one is just fricking hot! Sings good too. Their first American CD is going to be released 2/6/07 and they deserve to become huge here in the States. Great fun – I’d love to see them again.

After Thanksgiving festivities I stayed up by myself and watched U2’s Rattle and Hum. That has got to be the best concert movie ever. I haven’t paid much attention to U2 in the last 10 years or so. I’d forgotten what a great band they are and how fantastic Bono’s voice can be. I saw them in concert once. They are, their concert was, and that movie is: brilliant.

Then the very next best concert movie ever has to be Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads. It starts out with David Byrne, a guitar and a boom box on an empty stage, and song by song it adds an instrument, a visual aid, a backup singer, or another Talking Head. The whole movie builds like foreplay, then it crescendos and climaxes into exhilarated exhaustion.

Then there is my Radiohead. Thom Yorke and company are musical geniuses. I have not seen them live yet, but all of the concert footage I have ever seen is quirky and bizarre; it does not bring justice to their perfection. Beyond that, their recordings are sublime. Thom’s voice is the most incredible instrument ever created.

Went to Las Vegas this past weekend for an impromptu family wedding, replete with a singing Elvis. Does that count as live music? The legitimate musical experience I had was seeing the Blue Man Group on Saturday night. I took my oldest daughter and we both enjoyed it very much. More than just music it was an overall sensory experience. I would highly recommend it. They have an upcoming tour and are playing here in San Diego in November. It would be interesting to see how their show translates to a different venue, rather than their customized theater in Vegas.

Going to see Benedetti & Svoboda this weekend. They are incredible flamenco and classical guitarists local to San Diego. How they are not international superstars is beyond me.

My husband and I are going to see the Fab Four (tribute band) this weekend with our friends. Definitely not my thing, but I like the Beatles just fine and I know I will appreciate the musicianship.

The last concert I saw was the Sisters of Mercy several months ago. That was a pretty fun event. They have an aging goth audience (myself among them, not so goth anymore), and it was a great people watching experience. My poor husband was drunkenly molested by an exuberant dancing gay man. I think my favorite part of the evening was watching my friend Chris, also drinking, not so much dancing or gay, unable to control his glee seeing the Sisters play, and kept whooping “Whoo whoo whooooooo” and giggling like a little kid. The music was definitely touching him.