Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Potpourri: Holy Sh!t!

The last couple weeks have been loaded with exciting music news, and I thought I'd gather a bunch of it into one place for all you lovely people. I know, I truly am benevolent and wonderful. So, in roughly chronological order:

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Smith Westerns at Detroit Bar, 2/12/11

Maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention before, but Detroit Bar has really been bringing in some good shows the past year. They've always been an excellent local showcase, but since 2010 I've seen Surfer Blood, The Hold Steady, The Besnard Lakes and now Smith Westerns there, to say nothing of bands like Sleigh Bells, Autolux and Yo La Tengo that I missed. It has occasional sound problems, but it's small, it's loud, it's cheap and it's close. On Saturday, it lived up to every bit of that description.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Against Me! at the Music Box, 1/30/11

As I get older, my concert experience changes.  A lot of that is just me being older and fatter (well, definitely older), but some of it is just the types of bands I'm into now as compared to back in my early concert-going days.  Back then, the idea of a mosh pit seemed, if not appealing, then certainly comforting.  I figured out early on that it distracted too much from my enjoyment of the show, but it was still fairly awesome to have one nearby.  Getting knocked over repeatedly by a skinhead during the Offspring, slipping on the beer-soaked Palladium floor during the mad rush to the stage when the Sex Pistols came out; even standing between the pit and my more timid friends at a Queens of the Stone Age set at Detour--these are some of my fondest concert memories. So it was nice to be back in that punk rock type of environment when Against Me! took the stage at this show.