The Decemberists

Regina Spektor

Ben Harper

The Police

BORAT!

Bands Caught: Brazilian Girls, Kings of Leon, The Nightwatchman, The Roots, Tool, Aesop Rock

Bands We Wanted to Catch but couldn't: DJ Shadow, The String Cheese Incident, STS9, SuperJam, Gillian Welch, Michael Franti and Spearhead

Brazilian Girls: Expect material from us about these guys. We were hooked and bopping, listening and jamming on accident because one of our campmates recommended. Researching them now.

Kings of Leon: Only song I'm familiar with is "On Call", which I'm totally in love with right now. They put on a decent show. Their music is rockier than I expected, as my only impression/expectation was knowledge of that song.

The Nightwatchman: I listened, two of us went and had a look while Tom Morello warbled. I'm not too impressed by the solo stuff. It's not even that I miss Rage, which I do, but I don't blame this on Morello. I just don't particularly enjoy his folky solo stuff. Sorry.

The Roots: What a fucking amazing show. Never seen them live, not even too familiar with their stuff. This is why Bonnaroo represents a golden opportunity. They rocked out. Seriously rocked it, jammed, it was wild. Loved it.

Tool: My first time seeing Tool live. I've heard some people say their performance was weak. I think the only weak part of it was that they cut the set short by 30 minutes, but considering I lost my Tool virginity, and I was well impressed. The laser light show, the volume was excellent (some of the performances at Bonnaroo really lacked in the loudness department) and the…..guitar solo by Tom Morello was awesome! Sort of hoped/expected it, but it really tickled me. I don't remember the setlist, but I know it was what I wanted from Tool.

Aesop Rock: Caught a bit of this performance. Been a fan of Aesop Rock for a few years now. This was after Tool, and exhaustion set in. I guess I'm an old lady, sorry.  

Pictures from Bonnaroo Friday:

Tool

More soon…. 

I'm not really sure how to do a write-up on a music festival that lasted a whopping 4 days. I'm a person that admires and needs organization, and I'm sure you'd want the same if I ended up writing one big garbled description of all that went on. 

I think I'll do this by days.

Bonnaroo Thursday

Well, we actually got there Wednesday night. We drove up from Florida Wednesday during the day, and arrived late night at the pit-stop Walmart. The one where all the hippies go to buy and sell, including beer.

We were lucky enough to get in that night, and we set up camp, going to bed at about 3am.

Woken up by the sun at around 7:30, we set off for Centeroo at about 10:30ish. We were camped at a site called Camp M, or Pussy Galore. I'm not sure which one. We were in the pod that was located Southeast of Centeroo. It was about a 20 minute walk, which none of us minded. We got to Centeroo in time to see the gates open for the first time, and were in in about 10 minutes, after a light search.

We were all pretty unfamiliar with the bands first scheduled, so the first event we took part in was Lewis Black's standup. My first time attending stand-up comedy, and as Lewis Black is one of my favorites, I was quite chuffed to catch him live.  

Here's a link to the Thursday schedule. 

Me and my posse, which consisted of my boyfriend Wade and my friend Sean caught a little bit of Mute Math, and had every intention of catching Clutch and Rodrigo y Gabriela, but we were so exhausted we barely made it back to camp before those shows played, so we missed them. The rest of my group caught them though, and reported that Clutch was good and the bit they saw of Rodrigo y Gabriela was impressive. Oh, and we did catch a good bit of The New Orleans Klezmer Allstars, which were quite good. Me and Wade both agreed that the guy playing violin/fiddle/whathaveyou was a bit off, though. Our only complaint.

Pictures of Bonnaroo Thursday:

Me and Sean are sooper excited to be in the car for 10 hours.

Planet Roo

Waiting in line for Lewis Black.

• Yet Another Comedy Tent

• Prestage Lewis Black

Whoopwhoop Lewis Black 

The New Orleans Klezmer Allstars

Coming up next, Bonnaroo Friday….

Hullo all, 

Couple of things to get out of the way.

1. Downloaded the beta PC version of Safari, and I'm happy to say that the site looks and functions well in it. Always good stuff there, browser-compatibility and the like.

2. I'm leaving for Bonnaroo tomorrow. I'm going to post a couple more times today, and then new material will be back in action after I get back, crash for about 16 hours, and find where I left my head. Expect lots of pictures.

Damon can be reached at damon [at] lovethemusicreviews [dot] com. He'll take care of you while I'm gone, which will be about 6 days.

I'll be checking email until tomorrow morning, and that's it. I'm not going to Bonnaroo to get on the computer in an internet cafe, I'm going to check out the music, and not work.

Wish me the best o' the luck. Have the fun.

Love yourself,

Jen 

Hello fellow Bonnaroo-goers,

The schedule has been released. Awesomeness is here.

Bonnaroo also lets you personalize what you're going to do, that's here.

Check it out! 

This has been both the busiest and most satisfying concert season I've ever had, even with all the lateness and missing opening acts.  This exciting season of loving continued recently with my second Ozma concert in less than a year.  Before I get going on the concert, lemme just say again that Kilby Court rocks my socks all the way off.  There.  I said it.  Again.
First act of the night was former Something Corporate guitarist William Tell.  He plays nice poppy guitar-based musics, sometimes piano-y ones.  It reminded Dave of an edgier Counting Crows, although I'm sure he's forgetting just how raw and emotional Recovering the Satellites was [I'm not alone on this, right?].  What I thought of was when Weezer toured with The Fray a few years back, if those two bands somehow merged.  But without Weezer's quirky sense of humour.  Anyhow, I've included his single "Fairfax" for your consideration.
Next was a Portland group called Kaddisfly.  These guys really upped the energy level of the show, lemme tell you.  When I saw the guys and the set up I was half worried that we were in for thirty minutes of screamo sludge.  Not so!  The band is really quite interesting to watch; Christopher Ruff [vocals/piano] really made the most of that tiny stage, running about, smashing his cymbal, shaking his maraca, etc.  He also played an emergency flashlight.  Way cool stuff.  Speaking of multi-instrumentation, one guitarist played guitar [obviously], keyboards, and drums during the same song.  An impressive feat.  Kile Brewer [bass] is both a very nice guy and an obvious Primus fan.  Not that he said anything, or has thunder thumbs, but his five-string sits about belly high, not around his knees, he plays technical bits, and even has the Les Claypool stance going.
Usually you can kind of get a feel for what a band's about before they start playing, but New Years Day threw me for a loop.  The guitarists, Keith and Mike, looked very metal with their long hair and all blackness.  Keith even had some metal band's shirt on [the more metal the bands get, the harder their fonts are to read, so I couldn't tell who].  Then Adam and Russell [drums and bass, respectively] were in nappy tuxedo shirts, which indicated a genre more ironic than metal can muster.  During warm up we heard snatches of both NoFX and Rage Against the Machine songs.  Turns out they play music that's hard to categorize, not because it's so highly stylized that you don't have words for it, but because it's so simple.  You don't want to just call it rock because we have all these subgenres that go to waste if we do.  So, if I must, I guess they're a little pop punk.  Even littler emo tones.  Their singer's a girl, too, so that puts them in whatever category people put those bands in.  But the important thing is they put on a great show and Keith looks like Alan Ruck.  And if it's important to you, Ashely Costello is pretty cute, and Adam Lorbach used to be in Home Grown.  Their first album just came out, I kinda got flirted into buying it, so you'll get a review of that pretty soon.

Then there's Ozma.  They've got a new album out on Tuesday.  Hearing songs from it live made me realize that Ozma is a lot like AC/DC: they aren't all that interested in musical evolution, just rocking out; new albums are mostly an excuse to go back on tour.  And I really mean this in the best way possible.  I was going to buy the new Ozma record so I could be hip and review it before it's released proper, but, as I said, I got flirted into buying the NYD album.

Verdicts!

William Tell: Fairly good California pops.
Kaddisfly: Heady hardcore, kinda progressive.  Excellent live energies.
New Years Day: Very probably going to be hot business in the near future.  Super fun.
Ozma: Still rocking socks.  Also, Daniel Brummel is still the sweatiest manbeast ever, but he's learned his lesson and started wearing black.
Overall Final Verdict: Amazing tour, only a few dates left!

P.S. Sorry this one's a little wordy.  I'll do better next time.

Related Links:

Ozma Official MySpace // Buy CD

Kaddisfly Official Website // MySpace // Buy CD

New Years Day Official MySpace // Buy CD 

William Tell Official Website // MySpace // Buy CD

Related Audio:

New Years Day - I Was Right

[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/01%20I%20Was%20Right.mp3] 

Kaddisfly - (Noyabr) Empire

[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/07-kaddisfly-(noyabr)_empire.mp3]

William Tell - Fairfax

[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/William%20Tell%20-%20Just%20For%20You.mp3] 

Ozma - No One Needs To Know

[audio:http://lovethemusicreviews.com/audio/02%20No%20One%20Needs%20To%20Know.mp3]