All the Concerts Fit to Print

The Femmes played a great show! It was the Harley stage at Summerfest, so it was back to balancing on the benches. It's been a few years for me, so my calves were feeling it the next day.

They started out with the usual, "Blister in the Sun" and "Kiss Off". After that they mixed it up a bit, including several new songs. The audience didn't get into them very much, of course, but soon they were back on track. They played an assortment of audience favorites - "American Music", "Gimme the Car", "Country Death Song", "Prove My Love", "Gone Daddy Gone", "Black Girls", "Jesus Walking on the Water", "I Held Her in My Arms", "Old Mother Reagan", "Freak Magnet" (I love that one!). Newish songs included "Good For / At Nothing" off last year's EP, Happy New Year, "I Could Be Anything" from their new album and "Rules of Success" from Something's Wrong. They also did "Color Me Once" which appeared on The Crow soundtrack. Probably my favorite of the night! As usual, they ended with "Add It Up". Checking with Setlist.com, I see that the first song of two in the encore was "Memory." They also did "Love Love Love Love Love" and "Issues" (all new songs) plus "Life Is an Adventure."

Ritchie played acoustic bass for the first half, and then electric for much of the second. Gano switched between electric guitar and electric banjo a lot. He played fiddle for two songs, and acoustic guitar for at least one. John Sparrow played a small kit - snare, tom and Weber Kettle, with two cymbals. He played cajon once or twice. Blaise Garza played tenor and subcontrabass saxophones. Also a melodica and the occasional percussion. Jeff Hamilton on electric guitar, mandolin and ukelele. When I first saw him with a trumpet during Black Girls, he was using it as a bottleneck slide, but I did see him blow it. Special guest Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies flew in for the show. He played accordion. I think he came out for the third song, and stayed. The various Horns of Dilemma members played various small horns, including an alto trombone. A couple of those guys filled in on bass and cajon in places.

The guys seemed to be having fun. That always makes it a fun show. The crowd slowly thinned out over the course of the show, so I ended up having about three spots to dance on by the end of the show. I was using most of it for "Color Me Once". Backing vocals were usually a bit off key. The sound wasn't always mixed well enough that I could hear all the instruments. Though the big sax sounded great, sometimes it was hard to hear when it was doubling Ritchie's bass. It was usually hard to pick out the accordion. Ritchie had a couple of good solos. He's added space for solos in a few songs, and plays the hell out of them.

My only complaint about their shows is that they only play for 90 minutes.

Opener was Midwest Death Rattle. They didn't sound as dark as you'd think based on their name. Good, solid rock. I need to pick up the album.




Gano and Hearn

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Celtic rock band, Lenahan, at the Irish cultural & Heritage Center. Band leader, Tom Lenahan, played bagpipes. After the intermission, he started outside. We heard the chilly October wind, over the sound system, and then he started playing and came inside.

Don't remember this one either. Was this the one I ran into Nate? Or was that the previous show?

Mould's Workbook was one of my most favorite albums, and I think I had Bob Mould at the time, and liked it a lot. This was The Last Dog and Pony Show tour. I feel really stupid for not remembering something like this, but I can't remember if he played solo or had a band. All his later shows were solo, and the next time I saw him, it seemed significant that he was solo.

I wasn't all that interested in Candlebox,I had just seen them a couple of months prior, but they were okay. Sponge was decent, but I still could have skipped them. Our Lady Peace, however, I was really excited about. I loved Naveed. I was up front on the floor of the arena. I was dancing through their short set. I think some of the alternative/hard rock fans were looking at me funny. After they were done, I went up in the stands and had a seat for the rest of the night.

Phil went. Jamie, a guy I worked with, was also there. He said he was crowd surfing all night. All the surfers get passed forward and then pulled down at the stage by security. Jamie said he kept going back around, and one particular guard was getting annoyed at him.

Swamp Ophelia tour. Fifth row, balcony. I went by myself, but ran into an acquaintance, Nate.

Kim Zick and Connie Grauer, who played on "Dead Man's Hill" on the album, joined the band for that song. Their band, Mrs. Fun, opened, along with Big Fish Ensemble.

01. strange fire
02. the wood song
03. joking
04. language or the kiss
05. reunion
06. power of two
07. fugitive
08. galileo
09. dead man's hill
10. least complicated
11. this train revised (with sheila doyle and michael lorant)
12. ghost
13. land of canaan
14. chickenman (with michael lorant)
15. love will come to you
16. touch me fall
17. closer to fine

I went down to Rosemont by myself for this one. Main floor, near the back. I don't remember if there was an opener.

Gabriel always has a very theatrical show. There was a round stage out in the middle of the arena floor, which was connected to the main stage with a catwalk, that had a moving belt floor. He began the show with "Come Talk to Me", one of my favorites from Us. He was singing it into a phone inside a red English-style phone booth. He came out of the booth, holding the phone, and he went down the catwalk on the belt, straining against the phone cord the whole way.

During "Digging in the Dirt", one of my most favorite of his songs, there was a giant, sculpted face on the b-stage. Gabriel had a small camera mounted on a gooseneck, pointed at his face, for extreme closeups. He crawled over the big face, with the video screens switching back and forth between him on the face, and the extreme closeups of his face. He'd nod his head sharply, and the view would change to a different part of his face. Wild.

His band was Tony Levin, Manu Katché, David Rhodes, Shankar and Paula Cole. I don't think I knew who Paula Cole was at that time - nope. Her debut album was in 1994. Gabriel gave her her big break. I had seen Levin, Katché and Rhodes before, but that was from out too far to get a good look.

One of the two greatest shows I have ever seen. U2 at the World Music Theater, Illinois.

U2 was playing in Madison, but neither Phil nor I could attend. He had already promised to pick up tickets for whomever wanted to go, and I was going to see the show at the World, several nights later, so we both went down to the MECCA box office to buy tickets. Phil did well in the lottery, and got great seats - among the best he'd ever gotten. Steve and some other friends of Phil sat adjacent to the b-stage at Camp Randall. Phil still laments that he missed it. My seats were decent too.

I had gotten home from work, eaten supper, and was sitting around thinking there was something I was supposed to be doing. Out of the blue, it hit me - U2! I don't know how I remembered that, but there it was. I swore a lot. I ran around the house trying to get ready, and find my tickets, and try to figure out where the World was, and how to get there (I can only imagine what my mom and sister were thinking). I found it in my road atlas (fortunately, it was a big enough attraction that it was actually listed!), and jumped in the car. I flew. I made it to the freeway exit in exactly two hours. Eight o'clock. Show started at 7:00. It took me another half hour - or was it a whole hour - to get off the off-ramp, across the bridge, down the road, into the parking lot, park and get in there.

There were two opening acts. I was barely into Illinois when The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy went on. I liked their song "Television, the Drug of the Nation" (which was why they were hired for this tour), and would have liked to hear more, but I wasn't too disappointed to miss them. I felt similarly about the second band, Big Audio Dynamite II. Maybe even more ambivalent. They were ending their set as I walked across the parking lot. I made it to my seat well before U2 came on. My seat was to the right, not too far from the stage, the b-stage was to my left.

All the excitement of the previous show, taken from the small indoor stage to the big outdoor stage. Twice as many video screens. Trabants on crane arms, Bono trying to call president Bush, mesmerizing belly dancer, a message, audiovisual overload. It was just huge.

( setlist )

New Year's Eve, 1991. The Femmes were playing at the high-class Performing Arts Center. All velvet seats and everything. I've got two tickets, but only one was used. I wonder who I'd planned on taking.

I parked in a nearby parking lot, where a company was renting out its space to make a few extra bucks. The guy who was parking cars asked me who was playing. And then what they sounded like. I told him they were described as acoustic punk, and he asked what that sounded like.

I still wasn't completely up to speed on the Violent Femmes at this point. There were still a couple of albums I hadn't heard yet, and this show marked the first time I had heard "Jesus Walking on the Water" and "I Hear the Rain". Caleb, the sound guy, was playing sax from the sound board in the back, but I don't recall a big, raucous noise jam, as later shows would feature the Horns of Dilemma.

Conductor Neil Gittleman was hosting a talk after Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. I was familiar with ELP's version of the suite, and wanted to know what the original sounded like. I was mildly amused to hear that Gittleman had heard ELP's version first, as well.