Summer Concerts Abound, Gas Prices Be Damned!

by Jeff Boule in Concert Reviews, Editorials, Musician Reviews, Reviews, Uncategorized, bands to watch

As someone penning for this blog has already asserted, the summer concert season is upon us. For this reviewer, it is a highly pregnant season with many, many promising, quality, not-to-be-missed performances. You can pretty much rest assured, if I am interested in these shows, they are not your run-of-the-mill American Idol loser tours (read: I got your diversity right here!).

First on our plate, is Devo, Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia July 28th. The eventful aspect of this show is the complete rarity of their East Coast performances. The last time they came close by (New York city) was 2002. For those of you who don’t know Devo, if you are familiar with the Dell commercial where the women dressed in black, white and red are building an engine, they are accompanied by a new Devo song “Watch Us Work it”.

Next up, King Crimson in New York City, August 14, 15 and 16. This tour is reported to be a celebration of the 40th Anniversary of The Mighty Crim. They are doing a series of multiple shows in Chicago, NYC and Philadelphia. I am going to NYC in the hope that the audience won’t be filled with as many Yokels as the Philadelphia appearance of the Adrian Belew Power Trio was. Whether King Crimson continues or not is entirely up to the audience, specifically their behavior, NOT attendance. But unlike a set of shows to be named later, these multiple performances will be fairly similar, perhaps a song or two may change set to set, but I see no significant reason to attend more than one show.

Just shy of two weeks later, a live performance by someone who has been featured in this review, NIN, August 29th in a large commercial arena in Philadelphia. This will undoubtedly be an awe-inspiring performance. My primary question is how much of both “Ghosts” and “The Slip” will be included in the song list for the evening? My secondary question would be how are you going to handle Adrian Belew’s parts from the “Ghosts” tracks he appeared on? My last question to Trent would be, your last two albums were quality, are you back on drugs?

Answer me, these questions three…

Then, after the season fades, a show so worthy of inclusion, it must be mentioned. Killing Joke, featuring the original line-up, Jaz, Geordie, Big Paul Ferguson and Youth will be doing two shows at the Filmore in NYC, Saturday Oct. 11 and Sunday the 12. Youth has done some NIN remixes, to touch back on the previously mentioned show. Why does Killing Joke rate two shows worthy of seeing but not King Crimson? Simple, the KJ shows are going to be two separate performances with two separate song lists. The Saturday show will include full performances of their first self-titled album, and the album “What’s THIS For?” Then on Sunday, they will play songs from the “Democracy” album and they will be playing many of the songs that were released on the Island Singles series from 1979 and 1980.

So in celebration of these amazing shows, this reviewer is going to try to find some recent, at least representative live discs to review. From the period that is either adjunct to the materials being promoted (as in the case of Killing Joke) or a hearty representative of the band live (Devo, King Crimson), as there are no recent live recordings from most of these bands. The most recent live King Crimson only features two of the members that will appear in August. A live disc that was recently released may have three of those members, so that would be a better choice to review than the most recent thing.

This series begins next week, I must apologize for the brevity of this post but Mr. Webmaster himself has usurped my original concept. On happier news, I will be reviewing the shows mentioned above, and while I know a posthumous review is of little value, at least you can find out what you missed.

Can’t cheese-off the boss… see you next week with “DEVO NOW IT CAN BE TOLD, LIVE AT THE PALACE 12/9/88“!