Concert Review: The Afghan Whigs @ Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH (11/19/1998)

In the late summer of 1998, I finished my college internship and was an official graduate of Bowling Green State University. In September, I packed up a moving van and relocated from Buffalo, New York to Columbus, Ohio. It's the last major move I've made, as Columbus has been my home ever since. I moved without a job to start but instead the idea I was going to make music with my college friends, Keith and Jason.

One of the reasons I wanted to make music was because of The Afghan Whigs. I had discovered them a few years early upon the release of their fourth album Black Love, which remains to this day one of my favorite all-time records. So the move was timed well. Upon first arriving, I caught Wilco and The Tragically Hip together at a free show in Bicentennial Park. A month later, Soul Asylum would play a costumed Halloween show at long-gone Mekka. Getting to see the Whigs on tour supporting what would be their just-released fifth album 1965 made me pretty sure I'd made the correct decision to make the move, even if it meant working a temp retail job while the band got off the ground.

At the time, I didn't know the long history of the Whigs and Columbus. How they had cut their teeth diving here in the late 80s/early 90s playing places like Apollo's with bands like Royal Crescent Mob, Scrawl or Barbed Wire Dolls. I had been to the Newport Music Hall a few times to see bands, and this time I was going to see one of my favorites with the added assist that a former college radio cohort had gotten us backstage passes to meet the band.

The band was, of course, great. Dulli was on fire, with the band expertly backing him up. They played a heavy amount of new tunes, plus tracks from every record I knew while tossing in a few choice covers (Prince and Rolling Stones, off the top of my head). Highlights were many, but getting Marcy Mays of Scrawl on-stage to sing "My Curse," which does on the record, was a magical sight.

After the show, I managed to get a promo flat, which was signed by everyone in that incarnation of the band (except Dulli), and hangs on my wall, along with the backstage pass and concert ticket.

If you want to read a more detailed write-up of the show, OSU's The Latern has their review online.

Concert Review: Hot Rod Circuit and Ultimate Fakebook at Bernie’s, Columbus, Ohio (8.31.00)

This one is sort of a cheat, because I was actually a part of this bill. The Stepford Five opened for Hot Rod Circuit and Ultimate Fakebook at Bernie's, thanks to meeting the gents of Ultimate Fakebook a month earlier at the Blind Lemon in Cleveland, where we also shared a bill (along with Mars Electric). We got to talking, as bands occasionally do waiting around before, during and after the bands played, and we ended up being added to this bill.

Both Hot Rod Circuit (If It's Cool With You, It's Cool With Me) and Ultimate Fakebook (This Will Be Laughing Week) had really great records out at the time with a couple of years under their belt, while we were still pretty green half way through our second year as a band. From what I recall, it was just going to be UFB and us, and then HRC were added to the bill. Memory doesn't serve me well here, not sure if this was a one-off for them, or if HRC and UFB ended up doing more dates together.

Concert Review: Smashing Pumpkins & Queens of the Stone Age @ Bogart’s, Cincinnati, Ohio (4.12.99)

If you were to ask me for my top five current bands in 1999, at the time The Smashing Pumpkins would have been on that list. I was not on the Gish train, it wasn't until the single "Today" from Siamese Dream slid into heavy rotation on MTV in the later half of 1993 that I got on board, scooped up Gish, and started buying everything I could get my hands on. If a UK 3-song single appeared in the bins of either Madhatter's or Finder's in Bowling Green, I was grabbing it. I obsessed over Pisces Iscariot - "this compilation is better than most bands regular albums!" - and fully digested Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The Aeroplane Flies High single box? Purchased. Huge left turn with Adore? Not a problem.

After the turmoil of 1998, the death of Jonathan Melvoin and departure of Jimmy Chamberlain, I wasn't sure what to make of the band, as they seemed to heading down the road of collapse. However, in 1999, it was announced Chamberlain had rejoined the band, reforming the original lineup, and the band was heading out on a nine-date tour dubbed "The Arising!" with Queens of the Stone Age as the opener. There are a lot of things, in retrospect, that changed after this tour. First, it was D'arcy Wretzky's last tour with the band, soon replaced by Hole bassist Melissa Auf de Maur. Second, Queens of the Stone Age were largely unknown, and just over a year later would release their second album, but first as a true full band, Rated R. Queens when on to become the hard rock band of the 2000s, and it could be argued that this tour was a preview of the passing of the torch. How so, you may ask?

Retro Concert Review: Josh Rouse At The Black Orchid, Chicago IL (1.19.06)

(Note: this was going to be just a straight-up concert review, but then it got derailed by my brain)

Back in 2006 I traveled to Chicago, IL. to take in a concert by Josh Rouse at the Black Orchid. That sentence, by itself, is completely average and mundane. I was in my twenties, in a band, and going to see live music was something I did almost any weekend. I had actually been to Chicago once before, briefly in 2003 to play a venue called The Note with my band The Stepford Five and our friends Miranda Sound, along with a pair of Chicago bands (Woolworthy and Light FM), on a short tour put together by Donewaiting.com. I managed to do the tourist thing and grab a Chicago Dog at a place around the corner from the venue, but that was the extent of the sightseeing as we had gigs the day before and after that required lots of driving.

Here's the part, in dusting off my memories of this trip, that are putting my brain through a bit of a workout. I went with a girl named Amy (not her real name), who I had met through the music scene here in Columbus and we hung out a bit. We weren't best friends or dating, just a casual "hey, let's hang soon" sort of thing, usually with a group of people. She was a grown-up compared to me, owning a house and having a real job, and liked to go to the Short North galleries that featured local artists, something I wanted to do, but wasn't finding the time to do so. She also listened to music I didn't. She introduced me to Kanye West, thanks to a loud sing-along of "Gold Digger" in her VW Beetle along with several of her female friends on our way to one of the nicer bars in town I never hung out in. She also introduced me to Josh Rouse.

Corona for the Cure Benefit Show 3.10.18

Last night I got a chance to do something I've always wanted to do - play a set of Afghan Whigs tunes live. Though my current occasional cover band gig is with RVM playing 1990s Pearl Jam tunes, lead singer and guitarist (and former The Stepford Five cohort) Keith Jenkins new outfit Rival Cities was set to take part in a benefit show called Corona for the Cure at the Big Room Bar, owned by CD102.5. Each set consisted of a band or solo performer covering a band or artists lost to cancer, with sets covering Warren Zevon, the Ramones, George Harrison, The Tragically Hip, David Bowie, and more.

Concert Review: Wire at Ace of Cups, Columbus, OH (9/18/17)

I’ll be honest, I haven’t kept up with Wire like I should, which is dumb because I’m now just discovering all their ’00s releases and it has been a revelation. That said, when it was announced these post-punk legends were playing a bar in Columbus a few months back, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to see them. My wife agree to go knowing nothing about them other than me dropping the nerdy knowledge that their tune “Three Girl Rhumba” was the basis for the guitar riff in Elastica’s 1990s hit “Connection.”

So, this show was genuinely one of discovery, because aside from the opener “Ahead” and a few other tunes, most of the night was unfamiliar to me, which is not a bad thing. Actually, one of the joys of this show was being able to watch bassist Graham Lewis work his craft, who I would put up there with Peter Hook as being one of the most innovative and distinctive bassists of the post-punk era. Having never seen them live, one thing I took away was how much Lewis up-plucked his picking hand on the strings, which gave his notes a bit more pop and attack.

We left mid-song during the end of the set, and my wife and both remarked how small we felt, having spent the night in the balcony sitting in stools, and then having to make our way to the front door via the first floor crowd. I’m not sure if I’ve started shrinking, but it felt like we were walking through a forest.

Concert Review: The Black Halos and L7 @ Little Brothers (6/1/00)

There was a time in my life that I went to a rock show nearly every weekend, and even on workday weekdays. This is a perfect example.

I knew who L7 were, but never listened to them. I was never into Riot grrrl bands that L7 was loosely associated with, so I had no idea what to expect other than loud, and they were loud. Not ear-shattering Hum or Dinosaur Jr (from what I’ve been told) loud, but loud still. It didn’t stick with me much beyond that night.

The Black Halos, on the other hand, were touring their first album. The Canadian glam punkers were an explosive mix of the New York Dolls, Stooges and MC5. Words like dirty, scuzzy and scummy would probably be terms of endearment rather than insults. That said, the band did not disappoint live, replicating their album along with a choice cover of the KISS song Deuce.

We’re they mind blowing? No, but they were a good rock band, and that’s all you can really ask for, really.

L7 SETLIST
Andres
I Need
Bad Things
Human
Drama
Living Large
Monster
Shitlist
Fuel My Fire
Stick To The Plan
Crackpot Baby
Rockin’ Machine
Non Existent Patricia
Shove
Fast & Frightening
Little One
Pretend We’re Dead

Concert Review: The Swell Season and Bell X1 @ the Palace Theatre (9/22/08)

He doesn’t know it, but Glen Hansard and I go way back. Back in my college radio days at WFAL, we received an album in the Fall of 1995 called Fitzcarraldo by a band called The Frames DC.

I didn’t understand what the “DC” meant, maybe they were from the District of Columbia? Wrong on that account. Turned out they were an Irish band and there was already an American band with that name, so the DC was added to avoid confusion. Good enough.

The album struck a chord with me right way, songs like Angel at My Table, Monument and Say It To Me Now were quick favorites that I’d spin on shifts and pester friends about. But there was no info, no other releases that I could find (at the time), and the band seemed like an anomaly. Little did I know that thirteen years later, I’d see the lead singer step out on a stage with only an acoustic guitar and belt out a solo rendition of Say It To Me Now without a microphone.

Yes, you read that right, he sang it, or rather, screamed it at the top of his lungs like his life depended on it to a captive audience, all the while pounding on his well-worn acoustic guitar. It was a fantastic sight to take in.

The Swell Season, touring on the soundtrack for the independent film Once that starred Hansard and his bandmate Markéta Irglová. Although the set focused mainly on album material, songs that would make up their 2009 release Strict Joy were also included, as well as a Van Morrison cover.

SETLIST
Say It To Me Now
Falling Slowly
The Moon
When Your Mind’s Made Up
I Have Loved You Wrong
Leave
Astral Weeks
Happiness
Low Rising
Lies
Red Chord
Encore:
The Hill
If You Want Me
Blue Shoes
War Pigs
Fitzcarradlo
People Get Ready

Concert Review: The Tragically Hip @ the Newport Music Hall (7/20/00)

For a Tragically Hip fan as myself, the setlist below is pretty good. New stuff mixed with old favorites, can’t complain. Unfortunately, except for the last song, I missed the entire thing.

The show was to be a date with a girl whose name I can remember, with a stop at WG Grinders (romantic, eh?) just down the street prior to the start of the concert. Doors were at 7:30, so with a the opening act probably going on around 8pm, and the Hip going on sometime around 9, we figured we could get there just before the Hip played and avoid standing around.

We hung out at Grinders and ate, and when the time came walked down to the Newport. As we entered, I heard the strains of the Hip from the stage and realized they had already started. I quickly realized what song they were playing, New Orleans Is Sinking, which struck me as odd considering that was usually a set-ender. And then the set ended.

Turns out, there was no opener. The band went on promptly at 7:30 and were finishing their set. I’m not sure what compelled them to play so early, as most bands finished up around 11pm at the Newport, but not in this case.

Of the many Hip shows I’ve been to over the years, this was, without a doubt, the shortest.

SETLIST
My Music At Work
Chagrin Falls
Courage (For Hugh Maclennan)
Opiated
Fireworks
Sharks
Springtime In Vienna
Long Time Running
Puttin’ Down
Gift Shop
Lake Fever
Poets
Wheat Kings
Train Overnight
At The Hundredth Meridian
Freak Turbulence
Flamenco
New Orleans Is Sinking