Ten Shows: Part I

For the next few posts I’m going to engage another aspect of my music experience through the years: concerts.

A smattering of memory lurks about from the first show I ever attended: The Beach Boys at Universal Amphitheater in Hollywood, CA. I was with my parents and older sister and likely 8 or 9 years old at the time. I recall beach balls being bounced about throughout most of the show and what may have been an inebriated Brian Wilson saying he “forgot the goddamn words” to a song he was trying to pound out on the piano. It also may have been the first time I smelled marijuana—I vaguely remember a group in front of us sharing (what I thought at the time was) a cigarette, my parents likely looking on in dismay as an unfamiliar scent wafted about.  

Overall a pretty respectable experience for my first concert.  

How many shows have I seen since? I have no idea. I kept track for many years, collecting ticket stubs and making scrap books, happy to shell out $20-$30 on a shirt to add to my ever-expanding collection. Concerts were a package deal in my teens and twenties—you partied in the parking lot, you saw the show, you got a shirt, and in rare cases you could score a recording of the gig at some point to preserve the memory for a lifetime. 

The older I got the less important the mementos and parking lot-partying became. Bordering on snobbery now, I am fairly particular about the shows I’ll attend. Put simply some artist’s whose albums I enjoy are just not all that great of a live act. Sure, the concert “experience” is just that, an experience, but I just won't cough up $30-$100+ on a band that has some great albums but puts on a so-so live show. 

Segue to my subject—the 10 best concerts I’ve attended. I’m going to blend some criteria (performance, overall experience, etc.) for this one due to cloudy memories and the less-discerning ear of my youth. I don’t think I knew a bad performance from good one as a teen, thus what I thought was an amazing performance by, say, Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza in 1992 may have been mediocre at best. Regardless, a great time at a concert is just that, even if performance-wise a band was lacking.

I’m also going to diverge from my usual modus operandi and split this list up over several posts to keep from losing those of the shorter attention span. I know how it goes...

 Again, in no particular order, although I will save the best few for last:

Phil Lesh & Friends/Bob Dylan & his Band—Ventura County Fairgrounds, CA 6/30/2000

This was the 2^nd show of a run of concerts I hit with my wife and some friends in the summer of 2000. Making good money and having no kids yet, we were free to indulge in impromptu just about anything back in those days. With a couple of weeks of vacation to burn, we drove up and down the state of California, camping, partying, and doing what all twenty-somethings should get an opportunity to do.

 We had hit the first of two Lesh/Dylan shows in Irvine and puttered up Pacific Coast Highway in my ’73 VW bus to catch them in Ventura. A literal caravan of vehicles with a cadre of friends snaked its way up the California coast from L.A., one in our entourage picking up a few hitchhikers near Rincon as we made for a campground not far from the concert venue at the county fairgrounds in Ventura. 

After setting up camp, everyone piled into my van and we headed to Seaside Park.

Sufficiently primed in the parking lot after partaking in the usual pre-show reverie, we headed into the venue. The place was certainly more suited to hosting a demolition derby than a rock concert. The stage sat in the middle of a dirt rodeo/race track surrounded by a rickety grandstand. A plume of dust kicked up as a hoard of Deadheads filtered down towards the stage. 

Dylan went on well before sundown and delivered a respectable set, actually annunciating more than he’s known to and picking mostly well-known songs from a hit-rich repertoire while mixing in just a bit of newer and more obscure material.

 The show overall was fantastic—Phil jammed well into the late hours, noodling away and sounding fluid and comfortable with his then-incarnation of ‘Friends.’ The music was cerebral and psychedelic, hitting song after song from the Grateful Dead’s vast catalog. Phil’s band took the tunes to a level that, at times, sounded like a reborn version of the Dead circa 1969.  Much to everyone's surprise, an Amtrak train roared past outside the grounds just behind the stage sometime during Phil's set, adding an exceptionally surreal, if not storybook quality to the concert. If only they had been playing Casey Jones… 

After the show we crammed back into the bus and I eased it slowly back towards the oceanfront campground. Working my way through the finicky gears we buzzed along, covering the short distance without incident only to find the entrance to the campground blocked and locked. Apparently (obviously) no one noticed the overly-conspicuous sign posted both inside and outside the campground that stated no entry after 11:00 p.m. Shit. 

Yet the exit was unfettered save for a row of those tire-puncturing retractable teeth that of course had their business-end facing our direction.  Not to be put out so easily, we managed to strategically jam branches and rocks into the teeth and depress them just enough so that I was able to squeeze two of the VW’s wheels along the non-booby-trapped edge of the exit while the others rolled harmlessly over a pile of rocks and sticks. 

Much to our neighboring camper’s displeasure, victory (and a roaring campfire and plenty more booze) was ours. 

Top 10 Albums of the 90's -or- What I Listened to When I Wasn't Listening to the Grateful Dead

The 90’s are absolutely a defining yet bi-polar era in regards to my taste in music. I graduated from high school in 1993, so it was obviously a key time for me  as far as music goes—being full of all that teenage angst and whatnot. But I was based in Japan with the military from October of 1994 until the late summer of 1997, and of those roughly 3 years out of country I spent nearly 2 of them deployed aboard an aircraft carrier. There was no internet access (on land or at sea,) and in fact the World Wide Web was really just a novelty to me at that point—something I had heard about and saw in ports like Singapore and Hong Kong a handful of times. Access to new music and the verities of American pop-culture were limited to magazines and what little American television programming we could get in Japan. My point being, I didn’t have the daily MTV-level of exposure during those years.

Not that it would have mattered. By 1993 or 1994 I was a wholly-absorbed Deadhead. I shunned most new music in favor of collecting (via U.S. mail; on cassette) bootlegs of the latest Grateful Dead shows in the U.S. I drove my roommates absolutely bonkers with hour upon hour of Garcia-driven noodling.  Being a deadhead in the military was a bit incongruous to say the least. Hell, I could write a book about that subject actually… oh wait I did.

But I digress. Unlike my 80’s list, most of these albums I actually bought brand new and loved in the 90’s. It’s heavy on early 90’s material due to the aforementioned Dead Zone I was in for many years. It’s also heavy on hard rock/metal. That said there are a few 90’s gems in there I came to appreciate in the subsequent decades of the new millennium. So here you have it. In no particular order:

Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual*                             

Jane’s is the only artist that appears on both my 80’s and 90’s lists, and Ritual is one of my favorite albums of all time—top 10 for sure and possibly top 5 depending on my mood. I remember listening to Ritual over and over again my sophomore year in high school. Entranced by the quiet intricacies and haunting melodies of songs like Three Days, and absolutely awestruck over the power and ferocity of the opener, Stop, Ritual is just a solid, diverse, well-produced album; everything on it is amazing. *Except Been Caught Stealing that is. I feel like that song was some sort of truck stop bathroom abortion that managed to cling to its momma’s leg. How it was written or remained on the album I can only speculate. The dog barking? WTF is that? I think I disliked that song even more due to its popularity at the time. I mean, of all the songs on that album…? Really…? The rest of the album thankfully smothers it.

Skinny Puppy— Too Dark Park 

Too dark what, you ask? Sounding more like a science fiction horror movie soundtrack than a conventional album, Too Dark Park is a multilayered viscera cake, full of blood-curdling gravelly vocals, hypnotically throbbing drum tracks, and a plethora of horror film dialogue samples all slathered together with an industrial array of synthesized noise that, at times, surprises you with a buried, finger-snapping hook. Honestly I think the reason I loved this album so much is because my mom hated it so much.

Phish—A Live One          

I bought this album while on liberty in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I had heard of Phish and I knew a lot of Deadheads were getting hip to them, yet it was coincidence that I found this album just a month after Jerry Garcia died. Among Deadheads there’s a contingent that hates Phish—I didn’t know this until years later nor did I ever get why there was such a vehement dislike of the band by some heads, but as those first few notes of Bouncing Around the Room bounced around the bar (I had talked the waitress into playing a few tracks) I was immediately hooked on Phish. I never came to love them as much as the Dead, but Phish is an amazingly talented band, Trey Anastasio being one of the greatest rock guitarists of our time.

Pantera—Vulgar Display of Power          

This album is just pure adrenaline-fueled aggression funneled through a hardcore metal band from Texas. Although I didn’t appreciate it until years after I had bought it, the production quality on this album is absolutely stellar. Dimebag Darrell is one of those guitar players that is (or was) immediately recognizable by tone and playing style—those crunchy chorus riffs often imitated but never matched. Cruising about in the scalding summertime heat of Hemet, California in my 1970 VW, I used crank that album as loud as the VW’s tinny little speakers could go. Distorted and trebly it was in the soundtrack of my summer in 1992.

Alice in Chains—Dirt     

Another summer of ’92 soundtrack (that was a great summer by the way,) Dirt, is Alice in Chains at their best. The album has more substance and better songwriting than the previous release yet retains the raw, hard rock sound that was lost on subsequent albums—all good albums mind you, Dirt just stands far above the rest. Layne Staley’s drug-inspired lyrics are blatantly foreshadowing given the unsurprising circumstances of his death.

Snoop Doggy Dogg—Doggy Style            

This will likely surprise those of you that actually know me. I never cared much for rap in the 90’s. I did have a Run DMC tape and Licensed to Ill in the 80’s, but as my listening tastes gravitated towards alternative music I was one of those people that said things like “you can’t have ‘crap’ without ‘rap.’” I ended up with an MP3 of Doggy Style about 5 or 6 years ago and I love it. I don’t know why I love it—it’s vulgar, immature, and misogynistic. It glorifies murder, drugs, and that whole gangsta lifestyle, but damn it’s got good hooks.

Rage Against the Machine—Rage Against the Machine                

I was stationed in San Diego in early 1994 when I picked up this album. I had actually seen Rage play for about 10 minutes on the side-stage at Lollapalooza II at Irvine Meadows in ’92 (have I mentioned the summer of 1992 was a good one? Yeah…) I don’t remember them making a particular impact on me then, but when I bought the album… Holy. Shit. I remember reading the liner notes, and there was something to the affect that “no synthesizers were used, etc. etc.” Tom Morello made all that funky noise with just a guitar? Rage was also a pioneer in incorporating rap and hip hop into metal and arguably spawned a genre.

Tom Petty—Wildflowers             

Tom Petty has never been one to break ground in the music world. The songs he and the Heartbreakers compose are not revolutionary by any stretch and they fit nicely into a sort of adult contemporary/classic rock radio genre while appealing to a younger crowd (at least in the late 80’s/early 90’s.) So why is there a Petty album on my list? And why this particular album? Petty may have not been groundbreaking, but his song-craft is solid, more so when he leaves the Heartbreakers behind. Every song on Wildflowers is superbly written and exquisitely produced. Revolving around and interweaving themes of love, lust, alienation, and, well, life, the content of the album is easy to relate to while being listenable and enjoyable in every regard.  

Cake—Fashion Nugget                

The first time I heard The Distance, I remember thinking, “what kind of Jock Jams crap is this?” My opinion of the song was certainly tainted due to the fact that the first time I heard it I was at sea, trying to get some sleep whilst my berthing-mates unwound playing spades and cranking various albums of which I had no desire to listen. 10 or so years later the album found its way into my possession and I realized what an absolutely superb album Fashion Nugget is. I mentioned on my 80’s post I’m a sucker for rock songs with non-traditional time-signatures. Nugget has that. And they have a trumpet (or is that a fugal horn?) And they do the raddest freakin’ cover of a Gloria Gaynor song I have ever heard. Okay, it’s the only cover of a Gloria Gaynor song I’ve ever heard but you get the picture.  

White Zombie—Route 666; Devil Music Vol. I    

For the last album on my list (even though it is in no particular order) I take it back to my High School days. This is the only White Zombie album I own or care to own. It’s a blend of fat guitar riffs, a driving rhythm section, and kitschy horror-movie samples. This is a well-crafted metal album that makes fine use of clean studio production and vivid songwriting imagery while keeping the old head-a-banging the entire time. My favorite sample: “do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with?” I’ve wondered that myself sometimes…

I’ll throw in a few honorable mentions this time:

Depeche Mode—Violator          

They continued the trends of Black Celebration and Music for the Masses with Violator. Great production and great songwriting.

Temple of the Dog—Temple of the Dog               

Grunge era Seattle super-group with Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder on vocals? What more can I say?

The Black Crowes—The Southern Music and Harmony Companion         

I love this album for the same reasons I love Wildflowers.

Metallica—Metallica (the black album) Leaving any hint of sophomoric production quality behind, Enter Sandman is probably one of the best opening tracks for a metal album ever.

Top 10 Albums of the 80's (In my opinion of course)

I was the recipient of a mass email from a friend recently asking everyone to name their 10 favorite albums from the 80's. My response follows:

10 albums… tough. Maybe I don’t think the 80’s were any worse than any other decades as far as quality rock goes- I mean, yea, there’s some crap in there, but for every Flock of Seagulls or Dexy’s Midnight Runners there’s a Vanilla Ice or Bay City Rollers from decades that bookend the 80’s. I will admit though, save for a few gems,  literally none of the big hitters from the late 60’s or 70’s put out much of anything good in the 80’s. I guess they were all in rehab.

That said, I had a hard time whittling it down to just 10. Several of these albums I didn’t come to appreciate until well after the close of the decade (I’m not sure what the average age of the recipient list is but I graduated in 93.)

So, here’s my take in no particular order:

·         The Smiths- Meat is Murder        I got this on cassette from my sister’s boyfriend for Christmas in 87 or 88. I credit this album and the next one on the list for steering me down the alternative music road.

·         The Cure – Head on the Door     I had a tough time deciding between this and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss, Me. I think the diversity and song-craft on Head is superior though. They really cover all the bases on this album: flamenco-ish guitar, screaming rock anthem… and a song in 6/8 time? C’mon! The Cure is one of the most underrated bands ever.

·         Depeche Mode—Music for the Masses So I realize I’m on the mid-late 80’s Brit-Alt music tear here, but this album and Black Celebration were by far DM’s most mature and well-written to date. They left a lot of the cheesy synth-pop behind for more meaningful lyrics and a darker sound.

·         Van Halen—1984             There’s just too much good stuff on this album. I always thought David Lee Roth was a clown but I’ve come to appreciate his shtick for what it is— good, fun, 80’s rock.

·         AC/DC—Back in Black    I remember figuring out what Givin’ the Dog a Bone was about. Cue Beavis and Butthead laugh… This album is not only top 10 for the 80’s, it is top 10 of all time on my list.

·         Minor Threat—Out of Step          This album is the epitome of punk rock alienation. Ian Macaye is pissed off at the world, and this album, the first of the “straight-edge” hardcore genre represents everything good about punk rock. The songs are simple yet well-crafted. The studio production is sparse but clean. Too much of the California and D.C. punk rock sounds like shit; Minor Threat kept it real but also made it sound good.

·         Jane’s Addiction—Nothing’s Shocking   I wanted to cheat and use Ritual, but Nothing’s Shocking is an epic album all its own, and at the time, Jane’s represented a genre all their own. No one else sounded like them, and to think they were playing the same clubs in L.A. around the same time as other L.A. bands like… Poison… shudder.

·         Soundgarden—Louder than Love             All things considered I think Soundgarden was the best of the Seattle scene bands, Alice in Chains a close 2^nd. Louder than Love was much, well, grungier than their subsequent releases. It had a garage band-quality to it that personified grunge before it was, well, grunge.

·         Metallica—…And Justice for All  The song One is the Stairway to Heaven of metal. I hear a lot of critique that the production quality of this album is lacking and that it is thin in places. Maybe, but Justice is a pinnacle album for Metallica. They were maturing and getting away from some of the trite lyrical content of previous releases, but were not mega-stars yet, staying true to their roots as such that even the hardcore metalheads could forgive and even appreciate the first few minutes of One.  

·         Grateful Dead—In the Dark I couldn’t not put this album on my top 10 list. Sure, the Grateful Dead were never known for great studio releases. That is not to say they didn’t record good albums. There were a handful of Dead albums in the 70’s that are as good as anything CSN&Y or The Eagles put out, they just never had a reputation for being a studio band (duh.) In the Dark contains the band’s only top 10 hit (Touch of Grey) and is overall, a well written and produced album which caused their popularity to skyrocket in the late 80’s. Yes, my name is Jeff, and I’m a Deadhead.