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Courtney Barnett / Lucy Dacus / Samia (The Mann Center for Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, July 28, 2022) [CANCELLED BECAUSE OF RAIN–WHILE WE WERE THERE]

July 28, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[CANCELLED: July 28, 2022] Courtney Barnett / Lucy Dacus / Samia

My wife and I were pretty excited about this show,  We’ve had tickets to see Courtney Barnett a couple of times recently and they’ve all been cancelled.  We have seen her before and she is great live.  So this–a small stage outside on a lovely summer night–sounded amazing.

Add in Lucy Dacus who I have seen a number of times and my wife has seen once, and it was a great night.

Opening for the pair was Samia, a singer I don’t know, but whose name I have heard a lot.

It’s fair to say I don’t love The Mann Center.  The venue itself is amazing, but the whole getting there and parking scene is dreadful.  And so it was tonight as we arrived on time, but by the time we parked, the Samia set was in full swing.  As we were walking to the entrance, we heard her play “Stacy’s Mom,” which was her last song.

And since someone has done the dirty work for me, I’ll let Rocking the Burbs give the report:

As Lucy Dacus’ 7:30pm set time approached, workers began covering up equipment with tarps and plastic on the stage. Shortly after, it was announced that everyone should take shelter in the TD Pavilion to ride out the impending storm. Over an hour later, the rain and lightning finally arrived – at that point, most felt confident that the show would eventually re-start albeit with shortened set durations. The rain finally did stop, but Dacus’ gear was drenched in the process – the announcement came at 9:30 that the show was cancelled. Well, that was unexpected.

It certainly sucked that we waited that long to find out that it was cancelled.  At that point even if it had gone on, how late would we have been there?  We probably should have just left.  But whatever.

The craziest thing is that we were going to look at merch but decided to wait a little while.  We decided to look just as we were ushered under the Pavilion.

It was an unforgettable night, to be sure.

Posted in Cancelled, Courtney Barnett, Lucy Dacus, Mann Center for the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA, Samia | Leave a Comment »

The Linda Lindas (The Foundry, Philadelphia, PA, July 26, 2021) [rescheduled]

July 27, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 26, 2021] The Linda Lindas [postponed from July 21, 2022]

I was excited to take my daughter to see The Linda Lindas since she is the same age as they are.  She didn’t really know their music (I heard about them when they played at a library in LA), but I thought she’d enjoy the show and the venue.

But when the show was postponed (it was pretty cool that it was only postponed five days), the new date was on a night that she has a 4H commitment.  So she couldn’t go.

So, I went since I wanted to see them while they were still buzzed about.  If you know them at all, you know that they are four teenaged girls who made a great punk song called “Racist Sexist Boy” about their experiences with a racist sexist classmate.  They did a pandemic-era show at the L.A. library and made huge news.

The foursome are great musicians, they write rocking, relevant (to them) punk songs and, most important, they have a ton of fun.  At the time of our show, the drummer, Mila de la Garza, was possibly not yet 12.  She played a solid drum, sang her heart out, drew a cat under her nose like a mustache and had a great time. Continue Reading »

Posted in Bacchae, Bikini Kill, Philadelphia, PA, The Blue Hearts, The Fillmore Philadelphia, The Foundry, The Go-Go's, The Linda Lindas | Leave a Comment »

Coheed & Cambria / Alkaline Trio / Mothica (Liacouris Center, Philadelphia PA, July 27, 2022) [DID NOT ATTEND]

July 27, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[DID NOT ATTEND: July 27, 2022] Coheed & Cambria / Alkaline Trio / Mothica

I’ve been a fan of Coheed & Cambria for a while.  Not a huge fan–I like them more in theory.

They are a complicated prog metal band and it takes some time to get into their new stuff.  Plus, their music is all part of a lengthy story.  Lead dude Claudio Sanchez has a grand vision and it’s easy to get left out of it.

But I wanted to be a part of the grand vision so I grabbed a ticket for this venue which is on the Temple University campus.

But by the time the show came along, I had been to a couple of shows already this week and this was a big one, with three bands in a venue I didn’t know anything about.

Plus, we were seeing Lucy Dacus and Courtney Barnett the following night [had I known that it would be rain-cancelled, that might have changed my mind].

UPDATE: I saw a person wearing a shirt for this tour in Salem, MA just after Halloween.  He told me I was a fool for not going.

Initially Dance Gavin Dance were supposed to open however, in June, this was revealed

Dance Gavin Dance removed from Coheed And Cambria tour following sexual assault allegations

Instead, Alkaline Trio were put in place.  I don’t really now them, although they’ve been around forever.  They’re a punk band from Chicago.  I guess they are always a three-piece.  Their sound is pretty good although it’s very simple compared with Coheed.

Mothica is the project of McKenzie Ellis, a singer from Oklahoma City.  She’s got a kind of dark electro emo goth vibe thing going on.  I imagine she’d be fun live.

Markit Aneight posted the Coheed show online:

 

 

Posted in Alkaline Trio, Coheed & Cambria, Dance Gavin Dance, Liacouris Center, Mothica, Philadelphia, PA | Leave a Comment »

Bacchae (The Foundry, Philadelphia, PA, July 26, 2021) [THE LINDA LINDAS] [rescheduled]

July 26, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 26, 2021] Bacchae [postponed from July 21, 2022]

I was excited to take my daughter to see The Linda Lindas since she is the same age as they are.  She didn’t really know their music (I heard about them when they played at a library in LA), but I thought she’d enjoy the show and the venue.

But when the show was postponed (it was pretty cool that it was only postponed five days), the new date was on a night that she has a 4H commitment.  So she couldn’t go.

So, I went since I wanted to see them while they were still buzzed about.

The opening band I hadn’t heard of.  They are called Bacchae (a good start for a intellectual show, right?).  They are a Washington D.C. based punk band with really smart lyrics.

They released their last album just in time for the pandemic. Continue Reading »

Posted in Bacchae, Philadelphia, PA, The Fillmore Philadelphia, The Foundry, The Linda Lindas | Leave a Comment »

Mitski (Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia, PA, July 24, 2022) [rescheduled]

July 25, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 24, 2022] Mitski [rescheduled from March 25, 2022]

I saw Mitski back in 2018.  She sold out Union Transfer and while I enjoyed the show very much, I remember being disappointed that I was so far back and behind so many tall people that I couldn’t really see her performance all that well.

In that time, Mitski has taken off even more with the young people.  Both of my kids love her (as does a large section of the youth).  When this tour was announced, there was no question that I would get four tickets for my two kids and one of their friends.

I figured it wouldn’t be that hard, since she was playing at a pretty huge venue.  But the presale sold out in like 5 seconds.  And the main day sale also sold out in like 5 seconds.  The bots were all over this tour.  It was so obnoxious.

My kids really wanted to see her but there was no way I was spending a ton of money on her, so we were SOL.

Then a few days before the show was to happen, it was postponed because of COVID.  It’s not often that we are happy that things are postponed, but this one worked out very well for us., because a rescheduled date meant a possibility of new tickets being made available.  I put my name on the waiting list.  But didn’t really have much hope. Continue Reading »

Posted in Franklin Music Hall, Mitski, Philadelphia, PA, The Weather Station | Leave a Comment »

Beach House (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, July 23, 2022)

July 24, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2022] Beach House

I’ve been a fan of Beach House for a long time. I wasn’t sure if they were a band I wanted to see live, but then it turned out that everyone in my family was enjoying them independently of me.

Both of my kids had been listening to a few of their songs and I knew that S. liked the songs she’d heard too.  So I thought it would be fun for us all to go see them live.

I got us GA tickets because the closest seated tickets were kind of crappy.  I suppose seated would have been fine because the Beach House show was pretty much designed for you to not really see the stage very well.

The lighting was such that it had a presence in the room.  You could practically feel the weight of the colors as they fell from the stage.  The three band members were placed in a row across the stage.  with Alex Scally on the left playing guitar, Victoria Legrand in the center on keys and James Barone on drums on the right.  The band was backlit for the entire show so that they were in shadow and silhouette.  I am fairly certain I never saw any of their three faces all nights.

Whether it was white lights shining down from the ceiling, a wall of stars on a deep blue background, or waving searchlights through dense fog, the atmosphere changed with every song.  The details were different but the overall vibe remained one of a kind of smothering warmth almost like a weighted blanket.  Continue Reading »

Posted in Beach House, Mary Lattimore, Philadelphia, PA, The Met Philadelphia | Leave a Comment »

The Weather Station (Franklin Music Hall, Philadelphia, PA, July 24, 2022) [MITSKI] [rescheduled]

July 24, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 24, 2022] The Weather Station [rescheduled from March 25, 2022]

Back in March, Mitski was forced to postpone a few shows, including Philadelphia, because of a COVID case in her touring party.  She rescheduled her shows in the summer.

Unbelievably, I was able to get tickets for this show and I was a hero to my kids.

We arrived early and the line to get in was around the block and half way down the street.  But it was warm and pleasant and the mood was good on line, so we didn’t mind the wait all that much.

We finally got into the building a few minutes before 8PM.

Everyone wanted merch.  It’s Mitski, after all!  Since I had seen her a few years ago, I offered to wait on line while they all found a spot as far up as they could get (which wasn’t very far).  My son and his friend went off to the left, but my daughter hung out with me. Continue Reading »

Posted in Franklin Music Hall, Mitski, Philadelphia, PA, The Weather Station | Leave a Comment »

Peeesseye / TALsounds (Johnny Brenda’s, Philadelphia, PA, July 24, 2022) [DID NOT ATTEND]

July 24, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[DID NOT ATTEND: July 24, 2022] Peeesseye / TALsounds

Peeesseye is an experimental band co-founded by Chris Forsyth, who has gone on to do some amazing work on guitar.  I’m going to let Ars Nova Workshop summarize them better than I ever could:

Peeesseye was formed in 2002 in Brooklyn by Chris Forsyth, Jaime Fennelly, and Fritz Welch. Though their instrumentation changed as often as their sound, the core elements were always Fennelly’s combination of harmoniums, oscillators and feedback, Forsyth’s alternately spacious and cutthroat guitar playing, and Welch’s hyper-mutated vocals and possessed percussion.

They persistently kept listeners off balance over the course of the ensuing decade, both through chameleonic stylistic shifts from one release to the next as well as with the unpredictable eclecticism of the music itself. Gestural lowercase formalism might explode into blaring noise, sprawling psychedelia shatter into raucous free improv, back porch minimalism mutate into avant-trickster performance art—all engaged with a sense of emotionally engaged intensity that forged a unity in their often evolving sound.

The group splintered geographically and musically after a final show in Antwerp in 2011, with Fennelly pursuing theatrically Kosmiche synth gleam as Mind Over Mirrors from bases in Washington State, Chicago, Maine, and North Carolina; Forsyth carving out his own territory as a bandleader and lyrical guitar anti-hero upon relocating to Philadelphia in 2009, most notably with his Solar Motel Band; and Welch shifting from music/noise/sound to various performance scenarios to visual art extrusion in his adopted hometown of Glasgow, Scotland.

After more than a decade apart, Peeesseye is reconvening for two performances to mark the 20 years since they first made noise together.

I love Forsyth, but i didn’t know much about Peeesseye.  I assumed it was hard to listen to, but I still really wanted to go to this show.

Then it turned out that I got tickets for Mitski that night–with the whole family on board.  So I had to miss out on this bizarre evening.

TALsounds is the ambient solo moniker of Chicago-based experimental artist Natalie Chami, who is also a member of the trio Good Willsmith, one half of the duo l’éternèbre, and a co-founder of the Screaming Claws collective.

The music seems to be synthy and chill.  Almost a direct opposite of the noise of Peeesseye.   Although some of the songs add some texture, it is mostly synth playing.

Posted in Chris Forsyth, Johnny Brenda's, Peeesseye, Philadelphia, PA, TALsounds | Leave a Comment »

Mary Lattimore (The Met Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, July 23, 2022) [BEACH HOUSE]

July 23, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[ATTENDED: July 23, 2022] Mary Lattimore

I’ve been a fan of Beach House for a long time.  When  they announced the opening bands, I was pretty psyched that we were getting Mary Lattimore (I don’t know any of the other artists).

I saw Mary Lattimore open for Parquet Courts about four years ago and I was blown away by her amazing harp playing.

Mary Lattimore is kind of the go-to harpist for rock albums.  She has played on all kinds of albums including two from Philly local Kurt Vile (Smoke Ring For My Halo & Wakin on a Pretty Daze).

The show wasn’t very crowded yet and I told my family that I wanted to get pretty close to the stage for this set.  So I moved in and had a really nice view of Mary’s hands as she played.

Mary’s songs are instrumental and they are beautiful, but also sad and thoughtful.  She had videos projected behind her (they were weird and looping and grainy).

She played about five songs, giving a brief introduction to each one.  She told us that she wrote “For Scott Kelly, Returned to Earth” for astronaut Scott Kelly and even sent him a copy, which he listened to in space, which is pretty wild.

One thing I love about Mary is that she plays all parts of her harp.  She taps the side and makes percussive sounds.  She also has an effects pedal and is able to morph and loop the sounds that she makes.  Plus, she uses all of the notes.  Even the tiny high notes.  And the low low notes (those were remarkably deep).

After several songs she announced a guest.  A young girl named Delphine came out.  She sat at her small harp with incredible form.  Then she and Mary played a duet of Mary’s “Wawa by the Ocean.”  It was lovely and adorable.  And once you got over how adorable it was you realized how good Delphine was.

Then Mary said that Delphine’s father was going to come out and do a song with her.  And Delphine’s father was Kurt Vile!

What a surprise.  I mean, maybe not 100% surprise as Kurt does tend to make a random appearance from time to time, but we never seem to get anything like that at our shows.  So he sat there with his guitar and they played “Ghost Town” the Kurt Vile song.

We had just seen Kurt so this was like a really delayed encore and that was a lot of fun too.

Overall, I feel like the audience could have been a little more respectful of the harp, but whatever, the harp is a hard sell for a rock crowd.

I’m just glad I got to see her again.

(sort of setlist)

  1. The Warm Shoulder
  2. For Scott Kelly, Returned to Earth
  3. Otis Walks Into the Woods
  4. It Feels Like Floating
  5. Wawa by the Ocean (with Delphine Vile)
  6. Ghost Town (with Kurt Vile}

 

Posted in Beach House, Kurt Vile, Mary Lattimore, Philadelphia, PA, The Met Philadelphia | Leave a Comment »

Japanese Breakfast / Yo La Tengo / Cate Le Bon [A Make the World Better Benefit] (The Dell Music Center, Philadelphia PA, July 23, 2022) [DID NOT ATTEND]

July 23, 2022 by Paul Debraski

[DID NOT ATTEND: July 23, 2022] Japanese Breakfast / Yo La Tengo / Cate Le Bon

Everything about this show was geared for me to enjoy.

I love Japanese Breakfast and have seen them twice (the las time was fantastic).

I have been a fan of Yo La Tengo for years but have never seen them live.

I have wanted to see Cate Le Bon for a few years now and have had a few shows cancelled on me.  [Although I will be seeing her in October].

Plus, this is a benefit show for Make the World Better.

Their motto is “A park should be a place where you see joy every single day. That’s what we’re trying to do.” — Connor Barwin

We believe community-based redevelopment projects have a unique ability to strengthen neighborhoods by creating a sense of ownership over public spaces. We engage residents in all phases of a project, from concept to construction to ongoing programming and upkeep. We design with and for the community—pushing beyond typical play space design: we’ve built community garden plots and a media lab; we have painted murals and all of our projects have included green stormwater infrastructure.

However, we had tickets to Beach House and all four of us were going, so this show was shut out.

I’ve never been to the Dell Music Center.  It’s an outdoor venue near The Mann Center which probably means parking sucks.

Posted in Cate Le Bon, Chris Forsyth, Dell Music Center, Garcia Peoples, Japanese Breakfast, Johnny Brenda's, Make the World Better, Philadelphia, PA, Purling Hiss, Yo La Tengo | Leave a Comment »

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