I thought that this article was kind of sad to read.  The main gist is found in the first paragraph: "internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who do not seriously appreciate songs or musical performances."

I had hoped that the arrival of MP3 players and satellite radio would mean a new-found appreciation for music, but the easy availbility of it may mean the opposite.  http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/10/060110164416.p4z0rnx6.html

I hadn’t thought about this potential outcome back in February of 2005 when I made this post about "Music Overload."

So how do we go about making sure people appreciate the work behind the art that is music?

It amazes me how many people still don’t know who the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is. 

Not you too.  How dare a reader of my blog not know who they are!

Ok, first of all, just go to their web site, and listen to the music in their intro and you might recognize them.   If not that, you may know them as the band who did the hard rock version of "Carol of the Bells," the real name of which is " Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24."  (the song is now my ring-back tone on my cell phone) I remember hearing this song years ago on the radio and trying like hell to find out who it is.  I finally picked up the CD "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" and quickly fell in love with it.

Somewhere along the way, my parents heard it and they loved it as well.  Now they are possibly bigger fans of them than even I am. 

Seriously – if you want some different but beautiful holiday music, please give TSO a try.  It is emotional, powerful, visceral music.

And if you ever get a chance to see them live – DO IT!  WOW!  This was my third time seeing them, and the fist time in an arena.  Amazing stuff!!  The lightshow was breathtaking  – definitely the best I have seen since Pink Floyd.   The entire light rig moved – a LOT, from stage to roof of the arena – and the light show was perfectly timed to the music, which is tough, since the music is fast with a lot of stop-and-starts and quick blasts of music. 

In the first half of the show they played all of  "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" and  in the second half of the show, they featured an assortment of tunes from other  albums, an unreleased album, and a few cover songs (one of which is still bothering me.  They played it right after Led Zepplin’s "Rock n’ Roll").  During the second half, they pulled out the pyros – flame throwers that put Rob Zombie, KISS, and Ozzy (Combined!) to shame – and massive spark showers.   It was a little freak at first, considering RI’s track record with concert pyrotechnics.

All in all, a visually breathtaking show and a musicall satisfying one.  I even got to see Alex Skolnick, formerly of Testament, play Christmas songs.   During a quiet moment of the show while he was tooling around with an acoustic guitar, I came very close to yelling out "PLAY INTO THE PIT!" but couldn’t bring myself to do it.  If only John, Lynn and Erock had been there, I probably would have done it!

So I thought that Saturday night’s Aerosmith show was as much of a perfect set list as they could play on this tour.   However, check out the show that they played in Providence tonight:

01. Helter Skelter
02. Walk This Way
03. Same Old Song and Dance
04. Cryin’
05. Livin’ On The Edge
06. No More No More
07. Jaded
08. Shakin’ My Cage
09. Sweet Emotion
10. Seasons Of Wither
11. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
12. Dream On
13. Lord Of The Thighs
14. Kings And Queens
15. Baby Please Don’t Go
16. Train Kept A Rollin’ (Slow)
Encore:
17. Back In The Saddle
18. Draw The Line

That makes me sick.   They played Kings and Queens.  Granted, it is only one song different, but what a song to have in there.  That is my last favorite Aerosmith song that I would love to hear played live but haven’t yet.  I feel like I want to cry – they played it two night after I saw them, and they were only 15 miles away.

I almost went down there tonight to try to get a shirt, since I’ve missed getting one the last two shows.  I didn’t go since when I called the Dunkin Donuts center they said they didn’t have a stand set up in the lobby area where you don’t need a ticket to get in.  And I figured I would probably end up buying a ticket and spending the night there, and I’ve spent enough time and money on Aerosmith the last two weeks. 

Shoulda went…

So I really had NO complaints about the Aerosmith concert at Mohegan Sun.  Unlike some of the other fan club members who were complaining on the club discussion boards about too much 80’s and 90’s stuff being played, I do like hearing "Dude Looks Like a Lady," "Rag Doll," "Janie’s Got a Gun," and "Love in an Elevator" since those are some of the songs that got me into the band in the first place.

However, even with that being said, last night’s show was amazing.  They played more older, "classic" tunes and jammed a lot more – more than I think I’ve ever seen them jam before.  Here’s the set list from last night’s show:

01. Helter Skelter
02. Walk This Way
03. Same Old Song and Dance
04. Cryin’
05. Livin’ On The Edge
06. No More No More
07. Jaded
08. Shakin’ My Cage
09. Sweet Emotion
10. Seasons Of Wither
11. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
12. Dream On
13. Lord Of The Thighs
14. Baby Please Don’t Go
15. The Other Side
16. Train Kept A Rollin’ (Slow)

Encore:

17. Back In The Saddle
18. Draw The Line

Yeah, Aerosmith OPENED the show with "Helter Skelter" – that was an unexpected surprise.  They do a great job with the song, though the audience got more excited once they went into "Walk This Way."   

When they started playing "Jaded" I just went "F**K!!!" and I thought John was going to bust a gut laughing.  I just didn’t need to hear that song last night – that is one new song that I can do without hearing – that and "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing" of course…  The first part of the set had  me a little nervous that they were going to go back to the set of the opening night – which again was fine with me, but I was there to hear some of the other songs they had thrown in the mix since then – and the second half lived up to it.

Any Aerosmith show that has "No More No More," "Seasons of Wither," "Lord of the Thighs," "Train Kept A Rollin’," "Back in the Saddle," and "Draw the Line" in the set list is a GREAT one.  The energy was amazing, they did the best version of "Dream On" that I’ve ever heard them play, and the jams during "Baby Please Don’t Go" and "Lord of the Thighs" were awesome.  Great version of "Draw the Line" too – nice and tight with the slow part not too drawn out. 

Seats weren’t as good, but I’ve always also been a fan of being a little further away so you can take in the entire production and light show, as seen here:

OK, so here is my public admission: I went to see Hanson at Avalon in Boston Friday night.  That’s right, I went to see Hanson of "Mmmmmbop" fame.  Scary, eh?

Now, there is a good reason for doing this – my best friend John wanted to go see them and needed someone to go with him.  He likes their music, and being a good gay man, really likes the boys in the band.  I was a little concerned that I was going to be the only straight male in the whole place, or that it would be filled with teeny-boppers or something.  Well, I was in for quite the surprise.

Turns out the main audience for a Hanson concert would be women between the ages of 18-30.   There were probably 600 people at the show Friday night, and I swear that at least 550 of them – possibly as many as 575 – were all women in that age range.  So oddly enough, while I went there expecting John to be the only one enjoying the "eye candy" and me being in a living hell, John really really only had the boys on stage, and was surrounded by a throng of screaming girls pressing up against each other – pretty much his hell/my heaven.

However, when you get that many women in one place, two things start to happen: first of all, as a guy, you actually start to feel uncomfortable.  You’re way outnumbered, and any "sexual energy" that might normally be there is destroyed by the sheer amount of estrogen there.  Secondly, you simply feel like you are someplace you’re not supposed to be – a bachelorette party, the girl’s locker room, or one of those all-women sex toy parties.

Something else that happens when you get that many women together at a concert is that they scream.  A LOT.  LOUDLY. Ear-piercingly, ear-bleeding loudly.  And then you have the drunk girls, one of which was behind me…. yelling "I LOVE YOU" into my fucking ear all night, and spilling her drink on me.  I thought that the first fight I would ever start at a concert was going to be at a goddamn Hanson concert.

So what about the music?  I have to admit, they were good.  They are a lot more raw, rocking, and funky in their live performances than they are on record.  Even their first-album material gets a make-over with a heavy dose of gritty rock n’ roll.  Their voices will always harmonize, so it takes the edge off of the songs making for the girl-friendly rock, but when they lose the harmonizing, their individual voices are a lot better and more interesting than I would have thought. 

They did great cover versions of "Long Train Running" by the Doobie Brothers and "Feelin’ Alright" (the Dave Mason song best known by the Joe Cocker version) that really showed off their chops.  The guitarist out of the three Hanson Brothers (sorry, still don’t know their names) really stepped up to the plate on the latter, belting out the song with a voice far more gravelly, grittier and more interesting than I would have ever thought.  However, he still needs to lose the "white boy overbite and head-bob" that he does while playing his guitar.  You know the one I’m talking about…

So after all the commotion on the AeroForce One discussion forum about the opening night set list, I wondered what would be MY "ideal" set list for an Aerosmith concert.  I tried to be realisitic about it – they are gonig to play "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing", so I left that in there.  Otherwise, this is what I would love to hear, and in this order:

01. Walk This Way
02. Same Old Song and Dance
03. Rag Doll
04. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing
05. Rats In the Cellar
06. Lord of the Thighs
07. Seasons Of Wither
08. Shakin’ My Cage
09. Sweet Emotion
10. Janie’s Got A Gun
11. Draw The Line
12. Love In An Elevator
13. Dude (Looks Like a Lady)
14. Kings and Queens
15. Dream On
16. Last Child
17. No Nore No More

Encore:

18. Back In the Saddle
19. Train Kept A Rollin

If I was able to switch in something else for I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, I’d go with another ballad – either "What it Takes" off of Pump or "Home Tonight" off of Rocks.   Or they could swap in "Rattlesnake Shake" or any song off of Honkin’ on Bobo.

Well, I did it.  I saw Aerosmith and had fan Club (AeroForce One) tickets for the first time.  It was my ninth time seeing the band, but the first time getting the fan club tickets.  It was worth the wait 🙂  We got there and they told us that our seats had basically gotten eliminated during the stage construction, so they moved us up to the area between the catwalks, 16 rows from the stage.  Andrea looked at me and asked if I was going to be alright.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive the night once I saw where we were sitting.

A picture is worth a thousand words as the saying goes, so here is a photo of how close to Steven Tyler I got:

and a picture of me in front of Steven:

This was the set list for the night:

01. Walk This Way

02. Same Old Song and Dance

03. Cryin’

04. Livin’ On The Edge

05. Angel

06. Dude (Looks Like a Lady)

07. Jaded

08. Shakin’ My Cage

09. Sweet Emotion

10. The Other Side

11. Janie’s Got A Gun

12. Rag Doll

13. I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing

14. Walkin’ The Dog

15. Dream On

16. No Nore No More

17. Love In An Elevator

Encore:

18. Seasons Of Wither

19. Helter Skelter

Not a bad set list at all.  I LOVE Seasons of Wither, so that was cool to hear that live again.  However, the highilght by far was "No More No More" a long-time classic favorite of mine that I had never heard live.   Some people on the AeroForce One discussion boards complained about the set list and how there was too much "MTV era pop" on there.  Well, those songs are the songs from youth, so it’s fine by me.  Though I would still love to hear "Kings and Queens" live and I read on the boards that they did "Nobody’s Fault" on the Kiss/Aerosmith co-headlining tour.

It is kind of funny how much hatred hard-core Aerosmith fans have for the song "I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing," the band’s only #1 hit… its a ballad not written by a band featured in sappy moment in a mediocre movie, so the old-timers and purists pretty well despise it and view it as their "beer run song."  I mean, I don’t care for it for all those same reasons – Aerosmith’s #1 single should be "Sweet Emotion" or "Walk This Way" not that ballad.  But that’s the way it is, and I’m just glad that the band can stay so vital that 30 years later they can release a song that hits #1 for the first time and then come out with a blues album (Honkin’ on Bobo) that is acclaimed by critics and fans alike.

In any case, hopefully I didn’t embarass my date for the show too much (Andrea’s damn lucky girl, eh?  She gets to hang out with me AND gets 16th row seats to her first Aerosmith show) – I was pretty much a complete wildman the entire concert – I warned her before that I may start to act like a 12 year old girl at a N’sync concert.  I don’t think she believed me until she actually saw it happen.  However, it looks like she is having a good time:

So I was out doing a bunch of errands and going on a mini-shopping spree to get a bunch of stuff I’ve been waiting to buy.  One of these things took me to South Attleboro, MA, a lovely little surburban area of strip malls and the like.   The weather was gorgeous today, so while driving around, I had my windows down and the tunes cranked up.  Of course, I was listening to my usual selection of depravity…  when I got to the Bristol Place mall in South Attleboro, I happened to be listening to "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)" by W.A.S.P.   So I parked my car, got my stuff together, and rolled up the windows, all while this song is playing, rather loudly…

When I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by not one, not two, but THREE minivans with families and their mothers just GLARING at me. 

Whoops…

Sometimes there’s just no avoiding labels. When you go to see 13 heavy metal bands in a
28 hour period, it’s official: you’re a metal head. You’re also very tired and devoid of any
hearing ability.

On July 14^th I went to see the W.A.S.P. show at
The Webster Theater in Hartford. What a GREAT venue! Terrific acoustics (you can actually hear
your own clap reverberate in between sets if you’re down towards the front of
the stage!) and a great set up with multiple bars, multiple viewing areas, room
for sitting and standing, and places to rest your ears between bands or go
catch some local acts in an attached bar in the same building. They have a great line up of classic hard
rock and metal bands coming through – makes me pine for the days of the Strand
and Lupo’s in Providence.  We need more music venues in Providence!

Opening for the W.A.S.P. show were Metal Church, LA Guns, and Steven Pearcy (former lead singer of RATT).  Metal Church was good – a solid
showing of 80’s style heavy metal and speed metal, very much in the style of
Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and early Metallica. LA Guns also put on a solid show, bringing out some classic late 80’s
and early 90’s hair metal classics. One
bit of constructive criticism for Chris VanDahl, the lead vocalist… I, among
others, have no right to criticize your physical fitness, but for the love of
god man, we don’t go around with low-riding jeans and an open leather vest on. If you have even the slightest bit of a beer
belly-style gut, you should NOT be wearing those things!!!

CORRECTION – on November 6, 2005 I received an email from Chris VanDahl correcting me on the above point of my constructuctive criticism, pointing outt hat it wasn’t HIM up on the stage, but rather Phil Lewis.  Sorry man!  I’m sure you would have better sense if you had been up there.

I thought that Stephen Pearcy was an odd choice for the last
opening act – I mean, he is just the former lead singer of a band, but he put
on a great show. Again, getting back to
the sartorial facet of the show… Steve
was wearing a black shirt that appeared to be tied up in the front…. like
Daisy Duke style almost. It made him
look… well… it made him look like a freakin’ go-go dancer in a gay club or
something. Dear god man… you’re
singing about chicks and rock n’ roll… lose the tied shirt front!

Onto the headliner act… W.A.S.P. is a band that I was familiar with more by name than anything
else. A recent post illustrated the
deepest interaction that I’ve had with their music. However, their stage shows are supposed to be
legendary, so I figured “what he hell – why not go?” John was kind enough to put together a
two-disc sampler of their best stuff (he’s a much bigger fan than I was) which
helped a lot with being able to recognize and sing along with the songs.

W.A.S.P. lived up to its crazy reputation, with Blackie
Lawless being front and center as a classic energetic frontman, terrorizing the
crowd with music and props. The most
famous of which is his microphone stand, a skeletal monstrosity which he climbs
up on and hangs off of. During the song “Kill
Your Pretty Face” he did exactly this – climbed up on the microphone stand
(which is spring-loaded so that it bounces and sways menacingly) and sang the
song from there, lit only by black lights to the front and some rays of lights
from the back. Very atmospheric and evil
looking. Then he turned it up a creepy
notch by putting some glow-in-the-dark body paint on him. But he didn’t just put it on – it looked like
he was cutting himself, and all of a sudden this day-glo green goop was all
over him. It didn’t seem like much of a
stretch for Blackie to have something other than blood coursing through his
veins. By the end of the song, as the
music climaxed, Blackie was swaying heavily on the mic stand, his arms and face
covered in the fluorescent body paint, singing “kill your pretty face.”

After that song, John turned to me and said "I think we may
have just been inducted into the church of Satan…"

So after the evening full of heavy metal mischief, it was
off to Ozzfest the next day. Erock had
to work until noon, so we didn’t get to The Tweeter Center (props to Shadows
Fall for making a comment about how it will always be “Great Woods” for those
who remember) until about 1:30/2:00. We
saw, in order:

• As I Lay Dying
• Killswitch Engage
• Rob Zombie
• In Flames
• Black Label Society
• Shadows Fall
• Mudvayne
• Iron Maiden
• Black Sabbath

Which makes for a pretty good line-up for the day, eh? The highlights were definitely Rob Zombie and
Iron Maiden, followed by Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall. Zombie played a stripped down set – just him,
a drummer, a guitarist, and a bassist, with minimal pre-recorded sound effects
for the intros and outros of the songs. Seeing
Rob Zombie without all the pyros, dancers, props and massive stage sets proved
that he can really rock (though the other stuff is pretty damn cool too).

Iron Maiden did a great set, doing only songs from their
first four albums. The only downside to
that was that they didn’t play “Fear of the Dark”, which would have been
perfect since their performance straddled the dusk hour. However, they did open up with “Wrathchild”
one of my personal favorite Maiden songs, especially the ’99 version found on
the Ed Hunter Greatest Hits collection, which features Bruce Dickinson on
vocals.

I love it when a band opens up with one of my favorite songs
– it almost makes me relax for the rest of the show, knowing that I don’t have
to wonder if they are going to play it or not, and just enjoy what they do
play.

Sabbath was good, and Ozzy looked really good – thin,
energetic, lively. His voice was pretty
decent too, though some of the set list might need to be rearranged (this was
the first show on the tour), since some of the high notes found in “Children of
the Grave” were too high for him to reach after being on stage for an
hour. Which reminds me – I wish that
Black Sabbath had played a shorter set and let Iron Maiden play longer. That would have been welcome. I love Sabbath as much as anyone, but while
this is only my second Ozzfest, it is the fourth time I’ve seen Ozzy and third
time seeing Sabbath (also saw them once with another lead singer, whoever the hell
he was), and while hearing “Iron Man” and “Paranoid” live in concert are among
my top concert experiences of all time, just how much Sabbath do we need? And when they pull out the deep track stuff,
most of the kids in the audience don’t know it – I think that John and Erock
were one of 10 people in the audience that knew the song “Dirty Women.”

Who the fuck chose Mudvayne to go before Iron Maiden? I’ve never seen a band who can turn a heavy
metal act into something so boring. They
opened up for Zombie/Ozzy a few years ago on the Merry Mayhem tour (which
spawned the infamous “Bubbles!??! I can’t have fucking bubbles!! I’m the prince of fucking darkness!!” quote
on the Osbornes) and we found them relentlessly repetitive and boring there –
and they haven’t improved any. The lead
singer looked like a fucking fan boy impersonating Darth Maul and every goddamn
song sounded alike. This isn’t a “I’m
getting older, so I don’t like new music” rant – I like some pretty fucking
heavy stuff, but there’s only so much Mudvayne I can take before I just find it
fucking boring. They are actually good
at what they do, but they appear to be able to do only one thing – play ludicrously
loud and fast while the lead singer screams over the music.  They’re called chords guys – there’s a good
number of them out there… try some different ones, will ‘ya? Taking the Ramones and making it louder,
faster, heavier, and more scream-filled doesn’t qualify as original!

As far as the general atmosphere and people at Ozzfest goes –
well, it’s Ozzfest…. What the fuck do you expect? The place is full of raging freaks! But that’s part of the charm, I guess. I hope that the kid we saw being carried out
of the pit at the second stage is alright, and I hope the other guy who walked
out of there covered in blood figured out where it was coming from and/or who’s
it was! What these people were thinking,
moshing and crowd surfing in that weather, I don’t know! It was so hot and disgusting in the audience,
I can’t imagine what it was like in the pit! Erock and I couldn’t wait to get out of there and get some cold water
and fresh air.
 
Speaking of interesting Tweeter Center
experiences… they can take their “Hamburger Deluxe” and shove it up their
ass. Dried out piece of meat served with
nothing on it. Didn’t help that it was
accompanied by warm ice-less soda and the condiment stand had been raped and
pillaged. It’s an all day festival – you’d
think they would be better prepared!!

This entry is not as graphic as the title would indicate. However, it will illustrate what an intensely type-A personality music freak I am.  Which means you should still be afraid…

A few weeks ago I heard a song from the band W.A.S.P on XM radio’s The Boneyard. 99.9% of the time, XM always has the name of both the artist and the song on the display, but every once in a while, they miss one of them.  This was one of them.  Part of the song’s chorus had the lyrics "No you can’t take it, no you can’t that away from me" which sounded familiar not only in because of its words, but because of the phrasing of it as well.  But for the life of me, I couldn’t place it.  I was actually thinking it might have been a cover song, so I spent some time online trying to track down the name of the song, typing in combinations of the lyrics and the band name.  I finally came up with it being the song "Kill Fuck Die" or "KFD" for short.  I downloaded it off of iTunes and listened to it a few times and still couldn’t place it. 

Now, I’m going to see W.A.S.P. on Thursday night with John, and the only song I have by them is this "KFD" song – so he made me a compilation disc of their best songs so I can be famliar with the material (I’ve been to too many concerts without knowing anything about the band), and while just listening to "KFD" again, I just got it!  And I can NOT
believe I couldn’t place this before. 

The chorus
of “no you can’t take it, no you can’t take that away from me” in "KFD" are the
same lyrics AND are sung in the same phrasing as in the first part of the
chorus of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole.”

Yes, I’m quite excited about figuring this out.  That  is probably kind of sad, I know, but hey, it makes me happy.   Most of you are probably worried about me in some way – either because I listen to this music, or because I get excited about such ridiculously trivial information, but that’s just the way I am.  the rest of you who aren’t worried, know exactly what I’m talking about!