--There were no cameras allowed tonight, so instead I live-blogged the first two sets from my phone, and kept a setlist for the Pretenders set--
Unnatural Born Singer
Why do I keep going places when I know Juliette Lewis is going to be there?
Just because someone can act like Janis Joplin and be a screaming disheveled trainwreck on stage does not give one the artistic cache to make people buy you as a musician. Juliette Lewis just strikes me as an actor acting like a musician they like.
[music | Eddie Murphy & Rick James - Party all the Time]
Twenty years ago, my boss saw Depeche Mode at Great Woods, with Nitzer Ebb opening. Last night I thought that that must have been the show to see. An archived Globe article tells me I'm wrong. Nitzer Ebb would have made a much better opener than Peter, Bjorn and John, though. PB&J just pretty much annoyed us. The best part of their set was my SMS conversation about it. ("they're playing "Party all the Time", swear to god". "Hey, they're doing the Jitterbug into my brain". "PB&J (HAH) are doing Erasure covers".) before it devolved into Scandinavian bands that should have been on the stage instead. "Hey, at least the Ace of Base girl was stacked, the PB&J guy is kind of doughy, but it's just not the same".
Update: My copypasta review at Last.fm has gotten a couple of comments which made a really good point. Looking back it looks like we didn't enjoy or somehow regretted this show. Negative, it was awesome, it could have sounded better, and I'm willing to accept that it might have been our position in the venue. Let me know if you were in the middle and it sounded great to you. I still have high hopes for the CD!
I've recently had to think about the mechanics of making idiot-proof backups on Linux and OSX. The specific machine I'm backing up is a Linux host with a 40GB drive. Historically only about 10% of the drive has been used, and the user has an IMAP mailbox, so all the mail is safe already.
[music | Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Tower of Song] -- note: This isn't as much worth chasing down as it sounds, more just "fun".
¿Quien es mas Macho: Leonard Cohen, o Nick Cave?
Tonight's Leonard Cohen show will certainly have been the coolest show I go to this year. As people have been saying all tour, he just keeps going and going. This show clocked 3:15 including a 15 minute intermission. The arrangements were spot on, and at 74, he can run and skip around the stage better than I could. I am horrible at remembering sets, songs I know happened were:
Everybody Knows
Tower of Song
First We Take Manhattan
Boogie Street (Robinson)
A thousand Kisses Deep
Waiting for the Miracle
Democracy
Suzanne
Take this Waltz
Anthem
The Future
I'm your Man
Perfect Offering
Chelsea Hotel
Hallelujah
If It Be Your Will (Webb Sisters, awesomely)
Bird on a Wire?
Closing Time (laughs)
I Tried to Leave You (bigger laughs)
Fill in what I'm missing if you could, that would be swell.
I guess we need to move to Londonderry now. Tupelo Music Hall was a pretty damn good little venue, except for the whole "having chairs" thing. The Tupelo Guy said at the beginning that this would be about the most energetic band you'd see at the venue, which is probably for the best, because honestly all you want to do is dance, but you just can't.
