Green Day @ Webster Hall, 5/19/09

This show was an absolute blast. Apparently, Green Day have evolved into a six-piece live band. I had no idea. Thankfully, they didn't play the entire new album because the first set felt a bit flat at times (although I could have gone for my favorite new track "Horseshoes and Handgrenades"). "Jesus of Suburbia" was intense and I'm amazed that I can still remember words from songs that I haven't heard in 15 years. "80" was far and away my favorite song from Kerplunk. Such nostalgia...

I actually took some pics last night and will get them up here soon.

SET 1:
21st Century Breakdown
Know Your Enemy
East Jesus Nowhere
Before The Lobotomy
Last Of The American Girls
Murder City
Viva La Gloria (Little Girl)
The Static Age
21 Guns
American Eulogy (Mass Hysteria/Modern World)
See The Light

SET 2:
American Idiot
Jesus Of Suburbia
St. Jimmy
Longview
Coming Clean
At The Library
80
Basketcase
She
Surrender [Cheap Trick]/ Bastards of Young [The Replacements]
King For A Day/Shout [The Isley Brothers]
Minority

Updated with some photos:

Dark Night of the Soul: The CD That Wasn't

Absolutely ridiculous.  This is an awesome album that people should go out of their way to hear. Unless I missed it, I haven't seen how this is planned to be released in the States but I am definitely curious to see the photographs that Lynch has put together.

'Revenge' (featuring The Flaming Lips)
'Just War' (featuring Gruff Rhys)
'Jaykub' (featuring Jason Lytle)
'Little Girl (featuring Julian Casablancas)
'Angel's Harp' (featuring Frank Black)
'Pain' (featuring Iggy Pop)
'Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)' (featuring David Lynch)
'Everytime I'm With You' (featuring Jason Lytle)
'Insane Lullaby' (featuring James Mercer of The Shins)
'Daddy's Gone' (featuring Nina Persson)
'The Man Who Played God' (featuring Suzanne Vega)
'Grim Augury' (featuring Vic Chestnutt)
'Dark Night Of The Soul' (featuring David Lynch)

Wilco (the Album) stream

Stream the album on Wilco World.

Green Day

Green Day, for a period of time in the early nineties, was one of my favorite bands. I owned (still do, actually) 39/Smooth and Kerplunk and was proud of that. I lost interest in them around the time of Insomniac only to give them another shot (along with the rest of the world) with American Idiot. I've never seen them live before so when I saw that they announced a show at Webster Hall this week, I had to give it a shot. 60 bucks later, I got a ticket. This is a band that's sold more than 60 million albums playing in a 1400 capacity venue. I am pumped.

Franz Ferdinand @ Roseland, 5/7/09

This has been a crazy week.  3 shows, our co-op board interview, and one of my all-time favorite players gets suspended for 50 games.  I'm exhausted.  

Wow, Franz Ferdinand put on one hell of a show. There really isn't much to say beyond that. They bring a UK arena rock swagger that can even make Roseland appear to be a great venue.

Bite Hard
Dark Of The Matinee
No You Girls
Tell Her Tonight
Michael
Turn It On
The Fallen
Walk Away
Twilight Omens
Do You Want To
Take Me Out
What She Came For
40
Outsiders
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Ulysess
Lucid Dreams
This Fire

Ben Harper & The Relentless7 @ Webster Hall, 5/5/09

To paraphrase Ben Harper last night: "I've heard a lot of requests for Sexual Healing and Burn One Down. I ain't going to play any of that shit anymore. I'm not a human jukebox." He says before busting into a flawless version of Queen's "Under Pressure." That's not exactly an easy song to pull off but they absolutely nailed it. 

This may be a new band for Ben Harper but he still has nearly 20 guitars at his disposal on stage. They led off the night with Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times" and BHIC tune "Better Way" before rolling through all of the songs from the Relentless7 album (with one Fight for Your Mind track for the die hards in the audience) . They took songs from a pretty good album and made them great in a live setting.  It's part of what makes Ben Harper such an amazing performer.  After technical difficulties marred "Fly One Time" he asked the audience whether it was ok to do it again.  They did and it was well worth it.  It's one of the better songs on the album and BH wanted to get it right.  

Setlist:
Good Times, Bad Times
Better Way
Number With No Name
Shimmer and Shine
Lay There & Hate Me
Why Must You Always Dress in Black
Skin Thin
Fly One Time x2
Keep It Together (So I Can Fall Apart)
The Word Suicide
Boots Like These
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Another Lonely Day
Faithfully Remain
Under Pressure
Up To You Now

Dark Was The Night @ Radio City, 5/3/09

Photo by Rev Avissar @ Tripwire

My hat is off to Bryce and Aaron Dessner for putting together an incredible 3+ hours of music last night.  Dirty Projectors started the night with a few songs, the last of which was the David Byrne collaboration "Knotty Pine."  I like that song quite a bit but the others didn't do much for me.  My Brightest Diamond was out next to sing an incredible version of her Nina Simone cover, "Feeling Good" with The National as her backing back.  Matt Berninger then joined to kick off a 4-song set.  They began with "Slow Show," and then a piano driven new song called "England," followed by "So Far Around the Bend" and then another new song called "Vanderlylle?? Crybaby" featuring a rare (for the National) guitar solo from Justin Vernon and backing vocals from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond).  Both of the new songs were excellent and now has me completely pumped for a new album.  Dave Sitek was next to perform his DWTN tune. I saw Kyp Malone before the show but he didn't make an appearance on stage. David Byrne closed out the first half performing three songs from past Red Hot compilations: "Don't Fence Me In," "Dreamworld: Marco de Canavezes" - with Justin Vernon, and "Waters of March (Aguas de Março)" - duet with Feist (pic above).

Bon Iver started the second half with a four song set. I loved the song that he did on DWTN but prior to that I've never really taken much interest in his music. He completely won me over last night. He's an immense talent. In addition to "Brackett, WI" he performed "Blood Bank," "Big Red Machine" (also from DWTN) with Matt Berninger, and "Flume" (also with The National). Feist followed with a 4 song solo set including "Train Song" with Justin Vernon and Sharon Jones brought down the house with the Dap Kings. Good cause. Good times. Now if I could only find my No Alternative cd...