I made a GIF! And of course it’s of Pelle and The Hives!

ZZ Top. Legends.

The Soft Pack @ the Black Cat.  Their new album “Strapped” is a departure from their previous work (saxophones!) but I really dig it.

A few thoughts after seeing Noel Gallagher in Boston on Saturday night, done bullet style due to my incredibly busy day today:

• Great show, but even better crowd. A friend suggested grabbing a beer at a bar called The Tam, which was one block down from the venue. This turned out to be an amazing decision. I got there at 6 p.m. to see some other friends and by 7 p.m. it was full of Oasis fans putting songs on the jukebox and singing along. It was SO MUCH FUN. They kept it up at the actual gig. It felt like a soccer match. Lots of rowdy people having a good time. Only one person in my immediate area sat down the entire night. Best!
• The Wang Theater was magnificent. So ornate. Great acoustics. It was marvelous.
• Noel sounded brilliant, although I wish he would be a little more lively on stage. His voice sounded great and his band was also excellent. I was very impressed with his drummer, who was way up high in the mix. Better than any Oasis drummer not named Steve White or Zak Starkey.
• The set was the usual one and it worked fairly well. The new songs sounded great and it was a real treat to hear “Half The Word Away” and especially “Talk Tonight.” The only real mis-step in the set was “Soldier Boys and Jesus Freaks” and “AKA..Broken Arrow” late in the set. Those are the two weakest songs on the HFB album and Noel shouldn’t play both of them. The energy in the hall lagged noticeably then, it was bathroom break time. Noel should drop Broken Arrow and play something like “Cast No Shadow” or “Stay Young.”
• WOULD IT FUCKING KILL HIM TO PLAY SOMETHING OFF OF BE HERE NOW?
• Oasis material seemed to either be mega-hits like “Wonderwall,” “Supersonic” and “Don’t Look Back In Anger” or choice b-sides like the aforementioned “Half The World Away,” “Talk Tonight” and “It’s Good To Be Free.” We also got the new b-side “The Good Rebel” which the Boston Globe described as an “organ-fueled ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ played to the beat of ‘Ticket to Ride.’” Truth!
• I appreciate Noel playing something off of Heathen Chemistry but I’ve never been a big fan of “Little By Little,” which opened the encore. I would have loved to see Noel go a bit more rock at the end and play “Waiting for the Rapture” and “Lord Don’t Slow Me Down.” But that’s just me.
• Lastly, after going to this gig I realized how truly burnt out I am with going to concerts. It’s probably been a good 6 to 8 months since I’ve left my camera at home, went to the bar to pre-game and then gone on to the gig to sing my brains out. It felt SO GOOD. I wanted to go around and hug everyone in the venue. I miss liking concerts. I only work at concerts these days. And that’s not me complaining, I love taking photos at the gig, it just seems like it’s taken a lot of the joy I otherwise get from concerts away from me. So this 24-hour road trip that I took strictly for pleasure really recharged my batteries, which was something I sorely needed. Thanks Boston, for showing me a great time.
• Saturday was the 19th time I have seen Liam and/or Noel perform. 
• In the end, this was my big takeaway for the weekend:

Jim James of My Morning Jacket performing at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Quite possibly the best photo I’ve taken all year.

My Morning Jacket @ Merriweather Post Pavilion on Flickr.

A show of the year candidate for sure. 3 hours, 24 songs!

Feel free to reblog this, but do not use this photo elsewhere. Thanks!

Beady Eye on Flickr.

I really love this one. More to come!

Feel free to reblog this but please do not re-use this photo elsewhere without my permission. Thank you!

Liam Gallagher of Beady Eye on Flickr.

Liam Gallagher - The man, the myth, the legend. The suede chukka boots and the white towel.

More photos & gig review tomorrow!

Feel free to reblog this but please do not re-use this photo elsewhere without my permission. Thank you!

After reading J. Freedom Du Lac’s excellent oral history of the 9:30 Club, I couldn’t help but chime in with my favorite shows. True, I haven’t lived here very long compared to some of my friends (I moved here in July of 2004, and if memory serves my first show at the 9:30 as a D.C. metro area resident was The Delays playing to a 1/4 full room during an early Friday night show). That said, I have seen quite a few shows I will never forget.

7) LCD Soundsystem - May 2007 
Right or wrong, D.C. has a very buttoned-up and reserved reputation, and most of the time it is well deserved. But not at this show. This was 90+ minutes of bodies moving inside a packed club and it was beyond awesome. I didn’t even want to go to this show but decided to go just to see what all the buzz was about. We went early and got a great spot upstairs on the rail and had a blast at this show.

6) Nethers, Cedars and Bicycle Thieves - Jan 2006
Yes, this gig probably looks the most out of place on this list, but this gig will always have a special place in my heart. At this point I’d been in D.C. for a year and a half and was finally starting to feel at home in my new city. This bill of all local bands featured two bands (Cedars and Bicycle Thieves) that Catherine & I had booked to play the first ever DCist Unbuckled concert and I was excited to see them play the 9:30. I had every intention of skipping Nethers since I didn’t know a heck of a lot about them, but my girlfriend at the time (now my incredibly awesome wife) told me “Let’s go see the openers. You never know, they might become your favorite band.” I was very skeptical but did it anyways and wouldn’t you know it, Nikki’s voice totally did a number on me and Nethers did indeed become one of my favorite bands. I went on to see them play another four or five times in 2006 and dropped their name on my blog as often as I could. Sadly they disappeared for a while before popping back up and releasing a sophomore slump busting second album. But they never toured behind it and I never heard from them again. Come back Nethers, I miss you!

This was also one of the first gigs I shot with my old Canon Powershot G6 and I was pretty happy with the results. This was one of the gigs that convinced me that I might be pretty good at this photography thing.

5) Scott Stapp - March 2006 
The infamous Scott Stapp show, which produced the finest piece of music writing ever on DCist (as far as I am concerned). The funniest part of the night (and believe me, there were many of them) was DCeiver going around and talking to people before the show trying to get into the head of what exactly makes a Creed fan. He kept telling people he was a field rep for North Face but no one noticed he was wearing a Patagonia jacket.

4) Paul Weller - September 2008
I was hot off seeing The Modfather play a brilliant set at the 2008 Virgin Festival in Toronto , so to see him twice in one week was just too good to pass up. Weller played a two hour set heavy on his excellent 22 Dreams but also taking care to highlight all points of his career, stretching from The Jam to the Style Council and up through his solo career. He whipped the club, mostly old-timers (I love going to gigs and not being the oldest person in attendance) into a sweaty, frothy mess. Highlights were a punchy “Shout It To The Top” and the set closing Beatles cover of “All You Need Is Love.” A perfect ending to a perfect night.

3) Arcade Fire - January 2005
Not sure what to say about this show other than it really felt like you walked into a rock concert and ended up going to church. This was before YouTube, internet video and the glut of music photography (of which I am admittedly a big contributor) so I really had no expectations going into this show as far as what to expect. All the other music blogs that had seen the band said they were amazing, but what unfolded was a show that continually left me thinking “Why aren’t all concerts like this?” But of course, they can’t all be like this show. If they were, I’d have a serious sensory overload problem a few times a week. If memory serves, the band started the show in the crowd (without warning) and went on the play an incredibly intense set, full of energy and enthusiasm. Here was a band that could not be doing anything else other than playing their music to large crowds and were incredibly happy to be doing just that. That segue from “Neighborhood #3(Power Out)” into “Rebellion (Lies)” was just like making the jump to light speed.

The other thing I remember about this show as at the end of the last song of the night, the band, while still playing, all hopped off the stage and walked to the back of the venue, up the stairs and around the balcony to their dressing room.  They kept playing the entire time and continued to do so in the dressing room as the house lights came up and people started filing out of the club and into the night.  We happened to be standing by the dressing room at the time, so we got to listen to them keep playing while everyone else left.  

The one downside of this show was I think it ruined the band for me. I saw them the following year at ACL and it was such a let down. Which is not to say that they played a bad show, more that the same show on a much larger scale simply didn’t have the same kind of impact.

2) James - September 2008
Point blank, this was one of the best shows I have ever seen, period. I have been a James fan since the early-90’s and had been incredibly disappointed the two times I had previously seen them, both at festivals when the band doggedly played hits-free sets that mainly focused on whatever album they were promoting at the time. I honestly felt like I was never going to get the show I wanted out of James. But then they go and release the brilliant “Hey Ma” album in 2008, which ranks right up there with the best things they’ve ever done, and then come to the 9:30 Club and play the new stuff along with all the old hits I always wanted to hear. But the reason this show is so special to me is all the other James fans in attendance that night. At the end of “Sometimes (Lester Piggot)” (which is one of my 10 favorite songs ever) Tim Booth let the crowd take over singing the chorus at the end of the tune. Only the crowd (including me) didn’t stop singing. We kept it going for a good five minutes. The band had already switched out instruments to play the next song. But we kept singing and eventually the band joined back in and we all ended the song properly. I had never seen such a spontaneous thing on such a mass scale happen at a show. It was incredible. Everyone on stage had the biggest shit-eating grins on. They were amazed. And to top it off, they played “Laid” next. Pure pandemonium.

Just to give you an idea on how many amazing shows I saw in 2008, this was only the fourth best gig I saw that year.

1) Radiohead w/ Pulp & Michael Stipe - June 1998
This was such an amazing night. I traveled to D.C. from NYC for the Tibetan Freedom Concert at RFK and ended up sitting in the section directly behind where people were struck by lightning. Later that evening we were sitting around my friend Adam’s apartment listening to the radio (seriously, that’s what we did in 1998!) when we heard WHFS announce a “Special Secret Show” on the air so we immediately got up and hustled over to the 9:30 Club and were early enough to be part of the lucky few (800 people, or so I am told) that were admitted when doors opened at midnight. Rumors were flying fast and furious about who would actually play and what would transpire that night. Pearl Jam were rumored to be doing a full set, along with Radiohead and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I distinctly remember Adam turning to me and saying “You know the best thing about this? We have absolutely no idea who is going to come out onto that stage.” He was right. It turns out Micheal Stipe came out first and did a few songs acapella (including Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” if memory serves) followed by Pulp (Jarvis!!) doing a short four or five song set. Radiohead followed them, playing a  full set and pretty much making that night one of the best shows I have ever seen. Seriously, take a look at this setlist!! People would kill to see this set nowadays:

Airbag / Talk Show Host / Karma Police / The Bends / Climbing up the Walls / Fake Plastic Trees / How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found / Just / No Surprises / Lucky (with Michel Stipe) / Paranoid Android / Creep / Street Spirit

But the thing I remember most about that night? Looking up and to the left, there on the main dressing room balcony, arm in arm, swaying to the music were Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, who had just gone public with their romance.

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing The Soundtrack of Our Lives perform a small, acoustic gig here at the House of Sweden in Washington, D.C.  It was AMAZING.  You know all those people that say TSoOL is one of the best live bands out there?  They are right.  Last night’s gig is definitely going to be in the Top 15 of 2010 when it’s all said and done. “Sister Surround” sounded especially resplendent on acoustic guitars. The backing vocals really shined through.

Check out my photos from the gig and Dave McKenna’s review of the show over on the Washington Post’s Click Track blog.