Re: Look! Look! My area has culture & taste!!

Post Edited (02-12-10 18:39)

Way cool, Ned. No sarcasm from me. Will you be going to any of those shows?

You live in Scranton? Visit the Anthracite Heritage Museum?

Say it isnt so, Ned. You dont like concerts either? Isnt this like the second admission on this board in the last week that people dont like going to shows? Why are we all here?

BTW, if Wilco played all the coal miner songs off the 3rd Uncle Tupelo record, would you go?

I think I've mentioned this on this board before, but I vowed never to go to another R.E.M. show after seeing them at Clemson's Littlejohn Coliseum in 1988 or so with about 15,000 frat boys who went totally apeshit - lighters in the air and all - when they launched into what I believe was an ironic cover of Lou Gramm's "Midnight Blue." Of course, that was pretty much at the height of their popularity and they probably don't play the same venues anymore and all those frat boys are old fucks like me now, so maybe I'll reconsider that vow....

For me, the factors that tend to ruin shows are:

1) The ubiquity of personal electronic devices and the morons who cant resist consulting them continually regardless of what transpires around them.

2) Frat boys. I was raised to hate them and have hard a hard time shaking it. A loud, muscly twenty-something meathead with a backwards baseball cap spooning his gf the whole show is not someone I care to share a communal experience with.

3) The inordinate amount of time it takes bands to get their shit on the stage and ready to go after the previous bands. A mutual drumset should be mandated by federal law.

4) The inevitable upward trend of ticket prices after all ticket companies and concert promoters have consolidated into one vile monopoly: LiveNation-TicketMaster-ClearChannel, whatever its current name is.

Admittedly, #3 is kind of nitpicky and 4 has nothing to do with the experience once you get in the door. Really #1 is the worst. Otherwise, I love shows even though Paganizers comments on bringing dates to shows rang depressingly true.

p.s. I recommend you go see Wilco. Really, how often does a big alterna-band come to Scranton?



Post Edited (02-04-10 20:23)

Nosepail - I'll see your #3 and raise it with the irritation of witnessing a band actually getting their shit set up on stage in a fairly timely manner, then sitting at a table in the corner of the club for an hour and a half till long after the advertised start time for the show, then finally leisurely mounting the stage and farting around for another 20 minutes tuning their instruments which apparently went out of tune sitting around for the hour and a half it took the band to get on stage after tuning up the first time, then of course they can't be bothered to get their shit together until the third song or so, and end up spending five minutes between each of the first three songs tuning some more and asking to be brought up more in the monitor then dropped down in the monitor then brought back up again.

I've noticed that behavior more and more over the last few years and it makes me want to tear my hair out. Then when you compound it by there being two bands on the bill it makes it even worse.

It's not so bad in the bigger, more commercial clubs where the management is uncool and apparently won't put up with it. But in the more indie oriented clubs this bullshit has become the norm. Doors 8 pm, Show 9 pm routinely translates to Opening Band 10:30 or 11 pm and Headliners at 1 am. And while I guess that works for the bands and the college kids who can just skip their morning classes, I'm an old fart who works for a living and I don't want to bother with that nonsense anymore.

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I will see a band only if they are playing in my apartment.

I could maybe go for that, but then I'd just have to clean up after them. So that would irritate me, too.

I've taken to somtimes calling clubs and saying something like, "I really want to see this band, but I have to work and I want to know what time I can get there and still catch them, can you not dick me around and tell me what time they'll be hitting the stage?"

Sometimes I'll get a close to accurate answer and save myself an hour or two of time. Which I then waste, but at least I'm not swilling overpriced beer.

Jay

Great minds, blasmo.

I was going to reference the Anthracite Heritage Museum earlier, but I was afraid of Schruting up the joke, so I kept it to myself.

I have a friend who had to go to Scranton for a business trip, and he specifically visited this just to get a brochure. He wound up having a really good time, although the only other people there for the museum were a bunch of 2nd graders.

I will see a band only if they are playing in my apartment.

Post Edited (02-12-10 18:40)

I'll assume there was a typo (and you meant you could not care less about Megadeth; blechh) so that I can focus on Wilco. I own a couple Wilco albums and occasionally put them on. I never get through them and like maybe one track per album. To me they're like a poor man's YLT. I had the opportunity to see them awhile back and they were excellent. They're a live band. Your mission: Go absorb and report back.

Brothers Karamazov. I read this last year on a Russian kick that included Crime & Punishment, a couple Tolstoy and some Chekhov. My copy also had a similar blurb on the cover. Afterward I found out that such theological/existential analyses have long been popular but decided that they are accurate only to observation during relevant periods in specific societies and/or else highly personal. There are specific scenes but in general I didn't get that as the over-arching theme from the novel except in as much as one brother's a monk and Dostoevsky lived in a time/place where the subject was all but inescapable. There's the scene where the soldier lived an "immoral" life but under christianity's own rules, repents on his deathbed and is "saved". And there's the long grand inquisitor parable, etc. but these themes crop up in all that I read of this group of writers. I thought "hmm, funny that I didn't see it that way" but then did a trip with a lit prof and this came up. When I asked him about it he rolled his eyes, so, guess I'm not the only one who thinks that it isn't the specific point Dostoevsky was hammering. (I realize people have spent lifetimes claiming the opposite). Dostoevsky came from a time/place where morality was thought to stem from christianity rather than vice-versa; where a peoples were struggling with the role of government as regards to the R-orthodox hierarchy.

In my experience, the club management tells the band management "don't go on yet, we need to sell drinks" or "drink sales are slowing, go finish your set so I can send my people home".

Around here, smaller clubs seem to be prompt but the larger ones survive on drink sales. There's always oversold shows clashing with the fire codes, too. I've been to several where the fire marshall showed up and threatened to fine.

Shows start promptly in this region. The worst I've seen is on the coasts where you can go a couple hours after ticket time and miss nothing*. In NYC bands might go on up to 6 hours after door time, IME. I once saw a band in NYC come on at 2 freaking AM. I don't understand how that can't hurt business.

*I had a guest from the east coast and I got tix for (I think it was) X. He insisted that we wait a couple hours and didn't believe me re: the cultural difference. We walked in to see the encore and then the house lights.

About 15 years ago, due to circumstances beyond my control (my roommate and his girlfriend were having issues, if memory serves) I arrived to a Sugar show late. When I walked in the venue, Bob and the boys were blowing the roof off...absolutely shredding their way through a 10-minute version of "A Good Idea"...

I turned to my friend and yelled, "This show is going to be great!"

Of course, it was the last song of their second encore. Show over.

Post Edited (02-12-10 18:40)

I like going to shows. I just wish most of the other people who did didn't.

Nah, that's not true. Mostly. There have been some shows completely wrecked by some idiots in the crowd but not all that many (you haven't experienced the Cowboy Junkies until you've seen them in a room surprisingly full of drunken frat boys. Have no idea what they were doing there as it was hard to picture the bellowing blockheads as fans of the band, but I think Margo Timmins had made People's list of 50 Most Beautiful People that year so that likely explains it.)

Had thought about going to see Asobi Seksu tonight - they're playing a "special acoustic show" here at the Old Rock House, a place that serves truly excellent wings. But now they're predicting fairly heavy snowfall for tonight and I stopped to consider if I really was all that interested in seeing a shoegazer band play an acoustic show and decided the answer was no.

I have to concede this is becoming more and more the pattern in my advancing age - I get myself all fired up about going to a concert, then when the day arrives I grasp at whatever excuse I can think of not to.

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I get into a four way with Angela, Kelly, & Pam, doing lines of cocaine (bought from Creed) off Pam's buttocks.

Help yourself. Erin and I will be down the hall.

And anyone (at least who's never seen him) who passes up a chance to see Ray Davies can consider himself no rock 'n' roll fan, methinks.

Post Edited (02-12-10 18:41)

Post Edited (02-12-10 18:41)

see ray davies... he's getting old... jeff tweedy will probably live to be 150 so you'll have plenty of chances to see wilco...

Hear, hear, Ned.

On my only acid trip I spent some time marvelling over Lou's "What's
Good."

Under the influence I was surprised to understand that life IS like mayonnaise soda. Life IS like space without a room. And seeing eye chocolate is NO good.

I couldn't understand how I had missed the utter clarity and truth of these lyrics, and why I had dismissed them as throwaway lines.\

The next day, and ever since, I have been unable to recapture that precise understanding of "What's Good."



Post Edited (02-05-10 11:00)

I turn 40 in a month. I've made a vow to myself to plow through Dostoevsky with the help of Joseph Frank before I turn 41:

[news.stanford.edu]

I still go to 10-15 live shows a year. I'll concur with the all of the aforementioned complaints. Although, when I saw The Hold Steady in Athens a couple of years ago, I gotta admit, the frat boys in attendance were surprisingly attentive, agreeable, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Weird.

Sometimes, I question if it's worth the effort or not. Especially when I end up at an all-ages show at The Masquerade (I feel like Quincy, M.E. in the classic punk/slam dancing episode). Then again, when I'm into the show enough to focus solely on the performance, it's worth it.

I saw Edie Brickell & That Band She Used To Front ... in Scranton. Or was it Wilkes-Barre? Is there even any distinction? It was a good show.

Pretty sure it was Scranton. We were all high as kites at the time.

When you're on a 4 band bill and you're the first band on, you stall as much as you can to avoid playing to an empty room, especially during daylight savings when it can still be light outside.

g'day itch.
just listenin to church, just now. kilbey said 'its already yesterday' which means aussies get the best waves WAY before all you leftovers.

good on ya pally.

scranton,pa.
home of everyones nephew and lotsa classik beatles capitol era pressings!

No wucks. Enjoy the footy mate.