Undoubtedly, the conventional lore, exponentially propelled by the documentary The Devil and Daniel Johnston, builds a towering mystique around Daniel Johnston – a troubled genius, a volatile and mysterious persona, a songwriter informed by mental illness, a musician catapulted to international success thanks to smart product placement by way of Kurt Cobain. But seeing him live is something else entirely. Seeing Daniel perform in an intimate setting like the Good Folk Festival on Saturday stripped away that mystique entirely. Continue reading ‘Daniel Johnston – 11.22.08 – Mellwood Arts Center, Louisville’
Interestingly enough, I had the pleasure of seeing both Battles and Don Caballero play within a few months of each other last year at the ol’ music venue I used to help book and promote. This is significant as guitarist Ian Williams (pictured above, courtesy of Radio Free Chicago) brought his non-soloing fingertap riffage to Don Cab for years before Battles, and conventional lore suggests that the disbanding of the original Don Caballero lineup was not pretty. So the venue’s other talent buyer and I joked that Battles might have been supremely bummed if they knew we were playing the field with two of our favorite math rockers. If they read this blog, I guess they know now. Me and my big mouth.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Battles yet, you can get a quick sample of their live show with the recently released (albeit on the other side of the world) EP Lives. Continue reading ‘Battles – “Tonto” and “Bad Trails” Live’
Good gawd, ya’ll. The bootlegs keep coming in, but this time from the official source. WFMU just posted their archive of Growing’s performance at the absolutely immaculate All Tomorrow’s Parties. The attractive photo above is also from your menacing friends at Beware of Blog. Continue reading ‘Growing at ATP’
Alright, as promised, here’s the full set from My Bloody Valentine’s Aragon performance on Sept. 27. Continue reading ‘My Bloody Valentine in Chicago – Full Concert Recording’
No need for any commentary here – behold three choice tracks from last weekend’s My Bloody Valentine concert / religious sermon in Chicago. The audio quality is outstanding, so I assume this recording is directly from the soundboard. I plan to have the entire set up soon (probably Monday or Tuesday), so look out for that. That reminds me… yeah, why don’t you subscribe to the Decibel Tolls RSS feed, so you’re the first to know when I unload shipments of awesome on this blog? Continue reading ‘A Few Tracks From My Bloody Valentine in Chicago’
Once again, “woj” emerges victorious with another quality recording of WFMU’s broadcast of last weekend’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. This time, he comes bearing gifts of the Brain Jonestown Massacre and Spectrum (a.k.a. Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom). Continue reading ‘Brian Jonestown Massacre and Spectrum at ATP’
I’m not going to review the My Bloody Valentine show, at least in the traditional sense. Any show review more than a couple of paragraphs long while taking itself very seriously is innately stupid. At that juncture, such writing is fodder-saturated music critic masturbation, an attempt at trying to connect multiple points together and relate them to a particular concert or band when all you’re really doing is trying to show the world how smart you are. Fuck that. Unless it’s the Concert for Bangledesh, a live show is nothing more than a band who wants to rock it out in front of other people besides themselves and their recording engineer. It’s as simple as that. A long review also, statistically speaking, permits the phrase “rocked the [insert venue name]” to rear its ugly dome at some point, which I will not stand for.
So instead, I’d like to stave off the pretense and simply construct a grocery list of thoughts, then provide you with a couple of videos to czech out. First, I want to talk about my day today. How was yours? Well, great, that’s good to hear. Well, mine’s been busy. Besides uploading videos and returning missed calls, I’ve been taking time to learn American Sign Language. Continue reading ‘My Bloody Valentine – 9.27.08 – The Aragon, Chicago – Videos and Setlist’
