Tag Archives: cool things that only Nikhil gets to go to

Deltron 3030 at Stern Grove, San Francisco (30/6/2013)

1 Jul

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Deltron 3030 is a supergroup consisting of producer Dan the Automator, rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and Kid Koala. Their first and only album Deltron 3030 is a space rap opera that laid the seeds from which the Gorillaz were to grow. Their second album, Event II is set to be released this fall and they have started touring again. Today, they played the Stern Grove festival and they were incredible.

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The set started with half an hour of Kid Koala all by himself. With no laptop and no headphones, he took us all to school in the art of turntabling. He started with a homage to Louie Armstrong that could have slipped into Future Shock with no questions asked. From there he dropped an eclectic set featuring a Jay-Z beat, his four-year-old child’s favorite song and “a song for the 50-year old women out there”. In case you couldn’t tell, it was great fun.

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From there we had a lengthy break for set-up and then Deltron 3030 came out to 3030 from their eponymous album. This is my personal favorite Deltron song and it was excellent live. The song is marked by the soundscapes it presents and the backing symphony did a great job in setting the atmosphere. It was the trio though that owned the stage. With Del rocking a Star Trek shirt, Dan’s conductor guise and Kid Koala’s infinite charisma, they were by far the stars of their own show, as well they should be.

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The set was a pretty equal mix of Deltron 3030 and Event II songs, which was an interesting mix of familiar and brand new. Dan the Automator had to teach us the chorus of one of the songs before it started and then cued us in so that we could sing along. Of course, for Deltron songs, the crowd came in knowing the words. 3030, Virus, Mastermind, Positive Contact and Memory Loss all had the crowd pumped from the opening bars. The new songs gave this concert a freshness I have rarely experienced. If the purpose of this tour is to hype Event II, then it worked for me. I am definitely stoked for its upcoming release. Having said that though, the standout moment of the concert came with the encore when they dropped Clint Eastwood, a song both Del and Dan played pretty large parts in.

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Deltron 3030 was a landmark album and sounds as innovative now as it did nearly fifteen years ago. All three of the artists are rulers of the underworld in their own right and together they are unmatched. Their live show only bolstered my respect for them and I am very excited to see what will come next. This is the standard to which rap concerts should be held.

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Metric at Fox Theatre (18/4/2013)

6 May

For those who have never heard of them, Metric are a wonderful indie rock group headed by Emily Haines and James Shaw, who also perform as part of Broken Social Scene. They are one of those bands which justify indie rock as a whole by releasing album after album of solid, intelligent music. Versatile and honest, their music is a pleasure to hear. Seeing them live though was a whole different experience. It was without doubt one of the two best concerts that I have ever been to.

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The opening act was a Nashville-based rock act known as Mona. I had never heard them before and their performance made it abundantly clear why exactly that was. About the only thing that can be said to their credit is that they did have a very eclectic set list. Unfortunately, they could not even manage a jack-of-all-trades performance, coming off more as a four-to-six-of-all-trades performance. These things are regrettable, but they do happen. Let us pass on.

Metric

Metric live is a very different beast from Metric recorded. Their albums are often quite soft, but their concert rocked hard from can to can’t. There was improvisation a-plenty, there were guitar solos and distortions, they were almost an entirely new band, but in a really good way. We don’t go to concerts just to sing along to what we already know. We go to see the performers put on a show, and that should always result in something new.

Live shows are where many bands fail as their music just is not suited to the setting, but Metric put enough rock into their music to assuage any such worries. Emily Haines is an excellent front to the band, displaying enough energy to electrify a theater full of people nearly made catatonic by the opening act. This was an incredible performance in every way. It was mostly hits, but there were a few songs in there that I had never heard before. Their encore was also quite noteworthy. They started with the ever-fun Black Sheep from the Scott Pilgrim movie and also dropped in a really good version of Gold Guns Girls and a very intimate acoustic two-man Gimme Sympathy. Also, the lighting were incredible and it does make a difference.

All told, this was a great concert and I will definitely see them again when they next come to San Francisco. They may be very different in their shows when compared to their recordings, but it makes for a much better live experience. I enjoyed myself, and it seems inconceivable that anyone there did not.

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Dinosaur Jr. at The Fillmore (10/10/2012)

16 Oct

Dinosaur Jr. are gods of their own little corner of alternative rock. It is a slightly dark corner, somewhere a little older and a little dirtier than the Las Vegas strip club that was Nirvana breaking into the mainstream, but an important corner nonetheless. In that little room with no floor, only pavement and with pixies playing in the dust of old cocaine, alternative rock learned much of what it was going to become. Cults still visit to sacrifice guitar strings and torture amplifiers to the ghosts of Neil Young and Sonic Youth albums. People sensible enough to live in San Francisco just hit The Fillmore instead.

Before I get into the concert, I apologize for the poor quality of the photos.

Shearwater

Before Dinosaur Jr. came to the stage though, we were treated to Shearwater, a band which I will admit to never having heard of before this concert. They were actually pretty good. A little inconsistent, but pretty good. I saw a hipster-looking girl quite literally fall in love with the lead singer. I may never see them again, but she has enough photos to keep her company until the end of time. As should you. Check them out.

As would mark the night though, they had a few sound problems themselves. One guitar pretty much failed to respond at some key moments. On the flip side though, it seemed to mostly have been intended for noise and I did get to see a guitar rage-trashed, which was almost worth the price of admission itself.

Anyway, they are quite good alternative rock. They have that shimmering, washing over you sort of sound that works so well when heard live. The crowd loved them from their first song onwards. Them telling a few stoned idiots to shut the fuck up didn’t hurt either. Pick up Animal Joy, they seemed to play most of their songs from it, and they were awesome. It is undoubtedly a band better heard live though. You need the drum to kick through you and the vocals and guitars to subsume you. However you do it though, listen to them. They are worth hearing.

Dinosaur Jr.

Dinosaur Jr. was, as Shearwater did promise us, mind-blowing. They came out, looking older and rather impossibly grumpier than they should and launched directly into the music. The song list was mostly from I Bet On Sky, as expected, but Little Fury Things came out somewhere around the second song, which was much sooner than I expected. There were also a couple more songs from their early days, including Just Like Heaven, and even a song from back before Dinosaur Jr. was formed. I’ll admit that they didn’t break into a Billie Holiday cover in the middle of the set, but it was certainly as varied as anyone could want.

I have only heard two Dinosaur Jr albums; I Bet On Sky and their classic You’re Living All Over Me, and that was most of their set, but they jammed hard on every song they played. So much was improvised that despite having heard something like four fifths of the songs they played before, two thirds of the music was brand new and the entire thing was excellent. Live music never feels like a recording, but this was a whole new beast that just happened to be wearing familiar clothes. J Mascis’ skill with the guitar has never been questioned, but nothing highlights as clearly as being able to completely tear apart old songs in a live performance.

However, much of the music’s novelty is due to the failure of the sounds crew. The vocals were incredibly soft at the beginning for both Mascis and Barlow, and while Barlow’s improved, J Mascis would not deign to do something as menial as fixing his vocals. In fact, were it not for the fact that I saw him sing, I would not have thought him capable of speaking. Lou Barlow had some fun chatting with the crowd, which included a mention of a certain band from San Francisco that forced them to change their name, but J Mascis never approached the mic for anything but singing. He even cut Lou Barlow off a couple of times, playing right through the chatter. One got the feeling that Dinosaur Jr. is happy enough with what it is, and feels no need to beg you to make it bigger.

Appearances aside, the sound was poor and the vocals non-existent. Dinosaur Jr. to start with is a noisy band, but the vocals do something to soften the sound. Take that away, and the performance becomes pretty loud. Add to that the facts that their improvisations were even noisier and that I stood about 20 feet closer to the stage than I should have and it took me three days before my left ear stopped ringing. Mere noise is easy though. The fact that this was good music through and through is what makes that feat impressive.

This may have been a different sound from the recorded one that drew me there and I may have had to fill in the words myself, but this was one of the best concerts that I have ever been to.

-Nikhil

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