This is the "something completely different" I mentioned a couple months ago: The year 2015 in the concert life of The Everlasting Dave. It was a year worth writing about, as I crossed a few bands off the top of my must-see list, saw some bands I hadn't seen in many years, and saw my two favorite bands for the second time each. Some people go to church every week. I go to a rock show every couple months. Best I can tell, there's no difference.
Our story begins in June with my first-ever trip to FirstMerit Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island to see suburban white girl rapper K-Flay, godfathers of emo Dashboard Confessional, and creepy uncles of emo Third Eye Blind. It rained hard all day and night- that's bad!- but they had reasonably priced Budweiser tallboys- that's good! I spent part of K-Flay's set in line to spend 40 bucks on a Dashboard Confessional hoodie, and I'll just call that time well spent, because "suburban white girl rapper" is not something I'm interested in in a post-Iggy Azalea world. I mean, K-Flay isn't nearly as bad as Iggy from what I saw, but better safe than sorry. I was only there for the Dashboard, a band I've been hot and cold on over the years as their catalog is wildly inconsistent. It's been several years since their last new album, and that's given me the time and perspective I needed to figure out that Dashboard Confessional was a big part of my college years and their music has aged much better than I ever expected. I listened to them semi-ironically when I was 20-ish and happy, I listened to them when I was in chemo because I needed something mellow yet meaningful, and I listened to them when I was getting ready to drop out because nostalgia. I love sincerity and soul-bearing in the music I listen to, and that's 100% of what they do. I'll say this for frontman Chris Carrabba, too- not only is he really, really, ridiculously good-looking, he also knows everyone who loves his band fell in love with them because of their first two albums. Too many bands and artists peak early and spend the rest of their careers running from it. Half of Dashboard's set came from that early stuff, and apart from my standard "I hope they play this random song I know they won't play" song, I got most of what I was after. Dashboard was one of the top bands on my concert bucket list, and they didn't let me down. Here's the last three songs, with special guest vocals by the dude filming it. The last one, "Hands Down" (10:00), is their best song by a mile. I'm one of the poncho people on the left.
This is something that only gets admitted on a blog with no readership, but there was a time when the night's headliner, Third Eye Blind, was my musical triple crown winner: favorite album, favorite song, favorite band. Hey, I was 16, and like everyone who's 16, I was self-absorbed and convinced my problems were unique, important, and without solutions. 3EB was four adult men whose music supported that conclusion. I've seen them several times, and one great thing about having a shameless narcissist as your lead singer is the concerts are always energetic, moving, and unintentionally comedic. As they took the stage to strobe lights and a partial cover of Underworld's "Born Slippy" (more nostalgia!), I got my dose of comedy. Lucky for me, as I saw them for the first time in fifteen years, they were touring on a solid album and a dream setlist. Some of the highlights of the new album, but not too many, mixed in with a murderer's row of great songs from their first two albums. In fact, my biggest complaint would be the absence of a new song you'll find on my year-end top 10 songs list, possibly at the top. Well worth the rain. Here's part of a new one, "Dopamine", followed by the aforementioned favorite song of 16 year old Everlasting Dave, "Motorcycle Driveby".
So many memories in that song. Depressing, adolescent memories. So that was EmoFest.
Our next stop takes us to Grant Park for Taste of Chicago, where Saint Motel opened for another 90's alternative rock radio stalwart and band on my concert bucket list, Weezer. (Side note: I assumed I had seen Weezer at some point in the late 90's. I had not. I did see a band pretending to be Weezer at a Halloween show in 2004, though.) Saint Motel is one of those poppy, slightly funky, not-quite-rock groups whose songs are on commercials. I enjoyed their set, but I didn't need any more than the 40 minutes they got. Weezer, though... Oh my god. I would have been in for a three hour Weezer set. They clearly love playing together, the set was a compilation of 21 years of hits, and frontman Rivers Cuomo kinda looks like a pre-cancer Walter White. Also, like Third Eye Blind, they were touring on a surprisingly good new album. I don't even know which vids to add from this, as every song was good. I'm gonna go with two songs that came out in the decade-plus I didn't care about Weezer, but now appreciate as I should. I missed out on two decades of good shows by not caring about this band the way they deserve. Oh, and on this night, the rain waited until Weezer was almost done before it started to come down.
A few weeks later, I found myself in Wicker Park for one of those Chicago streetfests, full of overpriced craft beer, random food, arts and crafts, a surprising number of dogs, and one big name band who inexplicably agreed to play on a tiny stage on a closed-off city street. This time around, that band was Veruca Salt, who I had just seen for the first time a year before. More so than Weezer, but less so than Third Eye Blind, Veruca Salt played a role back in the 90's in making me the person I am today. Nina and Louise brought the fire on this night, never more so than on the new stuff like "Prince of Wales" and "Laughing in the Sugar Bowl". Of course there was also "All Hail Me", "Volcano Girls", and a stopped-and-restarted "Seether", but for me, gaining a full appreciation of the new album "Ghost Notes" was the point. So here's "Laughing in the Sugar Bowl".
I'll finish this post with what was probably the second-best concert day of 2015 for me: Fat Wrecked for 25 Years, featuring NoFX, Lagwagon, and a cavalcade of other punk bands on Fat Wreck Chords. I bought my tickets for this August concert the day they went on sale, and when the venue was changed from the Aragon to the House of Blues, I had mixed feelings. The HoB is smaller, so I would be closer to the stage for my first time seeing NoFX and Lagwagon, but my experiences with the staff, crowds, and bars was always better at the Aragon. On my previous trip to the HoB, I was nicotine-deprived halfway through the opening act because there was no re-entry. At least they fixed that for Fat Wrecked. So that ended up being about 6 hours of beer, cigarette breaks, and good punk rock- and by the time we showed up, we had already missed the first 3 hours. A few of the bands paid tribute to No Use For A Name and their deceased lead singer Tony Sly, the highlight being Strung Out's cover of "Soulmate". Thanks to HoB's recording policies, we'll have to settle for the performance from Toronto.
Since I'm not really quite a punk diehard* I was mostly there for the headliners, and they were damn well worth the wait. Lagwagon played their album "Trashed" from beginning to end, and NoFX covered both Rancid and Tony Sly. Lucky for this post, that performance is on YouTube:
That's the summer in concerts, and we're roughly a third of the way done for the year. If the next post isn't about baseball, or the music that actually came out in 2015, it'll be a detailed account of my first three-day festival experience.
*: When I get into a band, I get into them all the way, but I don't usually go for "You enjoy _____ so you might like ____." . So while Rancid, NoFX, and Against Me! are all effectively a part of my religion, I don't have that encyclopedic knowledge of obscure bands that is the barrier to entry to the punk community. I also listen to scornworthy pop-punk on a fairly regular basis because I was 12 years old when Dookie came out and it will always be awesome for that reason. But hey, two years ago I didn't know a single Against Me! song, so maybe this is something that changes gradually. Maybe by the time I'm fat and bald and embarrassing to see at a punk rock show, I'll know my stuff. If not, I don't care. I'll wear my Green Day hoodie to any damn show because it's comfy, consarnit.
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