Results tagged “concerts”

            

Public Enemy came to D.C. Wednesday on a mission–not to fight the power, but rather to use the band's influence to fight youth homelessness in the District and the rest of the country. The evening began at the Sasha Bruce House, where Chuck D, Flavor Flav and the rest of the iconic hip-hop group toured the facility and hosted a pre-Thanksgiving dinner for more than 30 homeless youths.

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When someone is so excited about forming a band that they write a song about the exuberance of that experience, it’s easy to see them putting on a great live show. Because let’s face it, anyone who proclaims, “Look at us! We formed a band!” is clearly the sort of pop culture loving being that would flaunt how happy they are to be in a band for as long as humanly possible. It also suggests that the person writing such a song is not necessarily someone who by conventional standards appears to be a person in a band.

              

Last night D.C. wanted the best and they got the best, as the local faction of KISS Army invaded the Verizon Center to see Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, and two other guys not named Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, slap on the makeup and rock 'n' roll all night.

WMATA sent out word today that it will be keeping the Metro system station open late on Tuesday night in order to accommodate U2 fans coming home from FedEx Field. All stations except Morgan Boulevard will be exit-only after midnight, but those who enter at Morgan Boulevard after midnight will find both trains waiting for them at that station, and additional trains at all transfer points on the Blue Line to take them to their destinations, Metro spokesperson Steven Taubenkibel said.

            

It's hard to take your eyes off of Maja Ivarsson, lead singer of The Sounds, while she is performing, and not because of her blonde hair, leggy physique or hot pants and track jacket clothing ensemble. She's a cross between Debbie Harry and Mick Jagger, somewhat of an uncoordinated hot mess, strutting across the stage, all slinky and sinewy. She's no slouch when it comes to controlling a crowd either, as she had a rapturous audience eating out of her hand all night.

              

At this point in their amazing and improbable career, I'm not sure there's much that hasn't already been said as far as reviewing a concert by The Flaming Lips. Anyone that has seen them live in the last 10 years or so knows about the confetti canons and balloons, the crowd surfing inside a giant bubble, the costumed dancers pulled from the audience, the lighting setups and the various costumed mascots that pop up every now and then. You know that you're going to hear "Race For The Prize," "Yoshimi Part 1," "The WAND," "She Don't Use Jelly" and "Do You Realize" and a bunch of other songs. So it's a credit to the band (and the audience for that matter) that it can all seem so new and fun as it happens. Yes, you can nitpick at the setlist, but then you'd be missing the point. Just sit back, enjoy the show and sing along with everyone else. And if you weren't there, don't fret. Wayne Coyne told the audience they were recording last night's show -- so at some point in the future you might be able to hear what you missed.

A lot has changed for Guy Garvey and Elbow since I spoke to him in April of last year, ahead of their gig at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. Their album The Seldom Seen Kid has been an unqualified success, selling in large quantities and raising the band's profile to a new level. Awards soon followed: the group won the UK's prestigious 2008 Mercury Music Prize, Best British Group at the 2009 Brit Awards and picked up a few Ivor Novello Awards along the way. Oh, and let's not forget the opening slots for Coldplay and U2. The show at Sixth and I was one of the best I saw in 2008, so expectations (and ticket counts) were higher for last night's show at the 9:30 Club. I ran into a friend on the street on the way to the club and told him I hoped this show would be grittier and rock harder, since the band were playing a proper rock club this time around, but sadly this was not to be.

              

Some things in life are always true. Seeing Paul McCartney in concert, even at age 67, is one of them. Sir Paul wowed a near-capacity crowd at FedEx Field on Saturday night with a mammoth, Beatles-centric 35 song set that also included hits and album cuts from his Wings era and solo career. Yes, he played (by my very unofficial count) at least 11 of those 35 songs at the then MCI Center in 2005, but not even I am going to complain about that.

              

Just like the biggest summer movie blockbusters tend to be mindless affairs full of car chases and loud explosions, summer concerts are sometimes best enjoyed with big, dumb rock songs being played at high volume with thousands of people singing along. That was certainly the case last night as Stone Temple Pilots closed out their short July tour under the stars at Merriweather Post Pavilion. The crowd was far from a sell out, likely owing to the band's appearance at last year's Virgin Festival, but what those in attendance lacked in numbers they made up for in volume and sheer fanaticism.

           

Friday night's two sold out Michael Jackson tribute shows at the 9:30 Club were eerily timed and enthusiastically attended. The band itself, Who's Bad, was... also enthusiastic! Okay, so some moments were unintentionally hilarious and others were just plain odd (the slideshow of pictures of Jackson throughout the years, interspersed with stock photos of orphans springs to mind), but for the most part they gave a crowd of people eager to remember the recently deceased legend exactly what they were looking for -- and that, of course, was the "Thriller" dance. A huge scene developed outside as people waited to get into the late show, and we were there to document a few of the best Michael-inspired get ups we saw on the scene.

              

Last night I joined over 23,000 or so other people and made the trek out to Bristow to see No Doubt at Nissan Pavilion. Gwen Stefani and the Boys are back out on tour for the first time in five years, and judging from the crowds they've been bringing in, people really missed them. I can't say I was ever a fan of the band, but I certainly was impressed with their show last night (and Stefani's abs. As flat as you may think her stomach is, it's flatter in person). I'm sure it was everything a No Doubt fan could ask for. Since they have no new material to promote (save for a newly recorded Adam & the Ants cover of "Stand & Deliver) the band focused on their hits and threw in a few other covers for good measure. "Hella Good," the second song in the set, was particularly impressive, leaning more on Tony Kanal's slinky bassline than the recorded version.

Every long-lived pop musician who achieves success as a young artist eventually confronts the legacy problem: How much of your back catalogue do you take with you when you hit the road to promote your new music?

As an addendum to our earlier post looking at how today's Live Nation "no service fee" promotion actually played out, check out the screencap below, provided by DCist reader Damon. As you can see, tickets to the June 13 George Strait concert also include a $4.75 per ticket "venue fee" in addition to a parking fee. We were not charged the "venue fee" for tickets to the July 28 Depeche Mode concert (though our parking fee was higher, at $6 per ticket), but it does appear some Nissan Pavilion concerts in this promotion do carry such a fee.

         

At the end of 2007, one of the blogosphere’s more ubiquitous concertgoers named Grizzly Bear his number one show of the year. Initially, this announcement prompted me to kick myself for using that particular set as a bathroom/lunch break at that year's Pitchfork Festival. However, as time passed, I started to question his judgment. Grizzly Bear’s breakout 2006 release, Yellow House‘s combination of stunning harmonies and instrumentation and tedious meandering makes it a difficult album to complete in one listening, and this year’s highly lauded Veckatimest seems like it would make the perfect soundtrack to the poppies scene in The Wizard of Oz. There’s a sense of enchantment, ethereal choral harmonies and a sinister undertone, but it’s also highly conducive to putting the listener to sleep. As such, I kept waiting for the moment during Grizzly Bear’s set where the show would lose my interest.

CNN.com is already busting Live Nation's chops for still charging some kinds of fees during today's "No Service Fee Wednesday" promotion we told you about earlier this week, so we thought we'd try out going through the ticket buying process to see for ourselves.

After weeks of speculation and much too much time spent obsessively reloading the 9:30 Club Forum, Post Rock and even the Baltimore Buisiness Journal, we finally have confirmation. There will be a Virgin Mobile Festival this year. Now we just need to know the where, the when, the who and the how much. With that in mind let's take a look at the latest internet chatter:

Every concertgoer, no matter their musical preferences, can agree on one thing: service charges are way the eff out of control. Say, for example, you wanted to buy a pair of tickets to see Tori Amos at DAR Constitution Hall on Aug. 1. You have no real choice but to go to Ticketmaster.com and cough up $45 for each ticket, plus an $11.15 "convenience" charge per ticket, plus another $1.50 each for something called the "building facility charge." They even try to charge you $4.75 for the privilege of printing your own ticket at home, and then, in the checkout process, add on an extra "order processing charge" of $5.60, bringing the grand total for two people to attend this single concert to a whopping $125.65. It's hard to fathom how getting ripped off to the tune of more than $30 qualifies as "convenience."

>> The week kicks off with what promises to be a fantastic and unusual concert at Iota, where two solo multi-instrumentalists give you the opportunity for a break from anything approaching "standard." Ben Sollee is the headliner, primarily a cellist who also incorporates banjo, guitar, and percussion into his repertoire, and blends folk and jazz in a way that made him a perfect match for a project a few years back with Abigail Washburn and Bela Fleck. Opening up is Anni Rossi, a violist who I once saw open for Carla Bozulich at the old Warehouse Next Door, who delivered one of those opening performances so surprising and transfixing that I had to make a beeline for the merch table as soon as she left the stage. One caveat here: Rossi, who recently signed to 4AD and released her first record for the label, is frequently compared to Joanna Newsom, and while her voice has an entirely different timbre, she's inclined towards the same sorts of odd vocal gymnastics, leaps, and yelps that that comparison might suggest. Which is to say that she might be an acquired taste for some, but if you're into that sort of thing, you just might be blown away. 8:30 p.m., $12.

             

A man cannot live on indie rock alone. So it's with great pleasure that I look forward each year to the DC101 Chili Cookoff. It's the unofficial start of summer and the kick off to the concert festival season. Yes, the lineup doesn't exactly skew to what I imagine is on a typical DCist reader's iPod, but the vibe at the show is always second to none; great food, copious amounts of alcohol, rowdy fans and crowd surfing galore. Much better than going to a show and standing there with your hands in your pockets the whole time, right? Plus, it's all for a good cause, with proceeds supporting the National Kidney Foundation. According to the NKF, last year’s Cook-Off raised over $1 million dollars for the foundation.

      

Thursday was a big night for indie rock, as Illinois were at DC9 while Peelander-Z played at The Red and the Black, which might explain the small turnout at the Black Cat for The Dears, Great Northern, and Eulogies. It was a shame, as all three bands put on good sets.

              

Can't say I've paid much attention to Chris Cornell since I got sick of seeing the video for "Black Hole Sun" on never-ending repeat on MTV in the late '90s. Audioslave had a few good tunes, but not enough to make me stop and take notice. So I was basically a blank slate heading into the 9:30 Club last night for Cornell's solo show. Sure, I had heard the (mostly negative) buzz about his new Timbaland-produced solo album, Scream, but I hadn't heard note one of the music, so for the first time in a long time, I went to a rock concert without any sort of expectations or idea as to what the night would bring. Would he play his older material? Would he have backup singers doing synchronized dance moves?

              

Spring is here, but it sure felt like summer inside a hot and sweaty 9:30 Club last night. Bloc Party packed their arena worthy show inside the cozy confines of 815 V St NW and banged out a show to remember.

We know: You hate U2! Hate them. Bono, especially. For all the celebrity charity campaigners in the world, he's one who has actually gotten results, persuading even ultra-right-wingers like Rick Santorum and Jesse Helms to get on board with debt forgiveness and HIV-treatment-and-prevention efforts in the world's most impoverished countries. Held his band together, sans lineup changes, since 1977. Married to the same woman for more than 25 years, a father of four, and not a single knocked-up supermodel on his resume. What a douche!

          

Nada Surf's fifth album is the aptly titled Lucky. After their label refused to release their sophomore record because it "didn't hear a single" -- thereby refusing the band an opportunity to follow up on their mega-hit "Popular" -- many bands would have just walked away. Nada Surf, however, refused to cave and turned their focus to Europe, where The Proximity Effect became a small hit -- eventually allowing the band the buy back the album's Stateside rights and release the record themselves. A recording contract with Barsuk Records arrived shortly thereafter, and the group's been able to release three more records.

             

Joining the ranks of resurrected Boston institutions such as the Red Sox, the Celtics and The Pixies, the newly reunited New Kids on the Block stopped by the Verizon Center last night on their tour promoting their reunion disc, The Block, which actually reached #2 on the Billboard album chart. Yes, Donnie, Danny, Joey, Jonathan and Jordan are quite a bit older than their mid-1980s heyday and their dance moves are a bit more robotic these days, but it didn't matter to the capacity crowd in attendance last night. The set was a mix of old material and new, but it was the big hits like "You Got It (The Right Stuff)" that got the crowd on their feet. And judging by the number of vintage NKOTB shirts I saw, plenty of the audience was there the first time around.

              

So you were at the big R.E.M. show last night?

On the heels of a press conference with Mayor Fenty this afternoon, NBC4 is reporting that Fort Reno Park in Northwest D.C. is now open after soil samples found that arsenic levels were "well within safety limits." Previously, satellite imagery analyzed by geographer Dr. Terry Slonecker appeared to show that arsenic levels in the park were very high, causing the National Park Service to close the park. About a week later, soil tests showed the levels were safe, and Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh and Mayor Fenty vowed to reopen the park.

            

As we touched on earlier today, there were plenty of concerts around the area this weekend that weren't centered around inclement weather. On Friday, you had your choice of a three-hour, catalog spanning marathon by the Cure at the Patriot Center in Fairfax as well as a raucous set by the Drive By Truckers at the 9:30 Club. Saturday night's big event was the Kanye show, but during the day over 21,000 people made their way to the site of the old Convention Center to rock out for a good cause at the 29th annual DC101 Chili Cook-Off, benefiting the National Kidney Foundation.

Eels singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett (aka. E) is extending an olive branch, of sorts, to President Bush, who according to Everett has blasted the band's music in the past as "a bad example for the kids of America."