the best concert i have been to this year!!!! (CMJ Night 2)

The best concert I have been to this year!!!!


Ok I had another great night out, CMJ is still young, and on night two of CMJ I headed down to the Bowery Ballroom, to hear an amazing lineup

-What Made Milwaukee Famous
-The Bird & the Bee (Inara George)
-Robbers on High Street
-Elvis Perkins
-Dr. Dog
-Cold War Kids
-Tapes N Tapes



The show started with "What Made Milwaukee Famous" they took the stage at 7:00pm sharp the show ended with the "Tapes N Tapes" leaving the stage at 2:00AM. This was a damn long show, but worth the $20, and for such an amazing show.... I am quite pleased.

I went to this show initially for Tapes N Tapes and Cold War Kids, because I saw them back in June and they rocked. Dr. Dog I saw open for The Raconteurs they were so/so then, but tonight they were amazingly fun to watch, the music wasn't that great but allot more entertaining then the previous show. I was also looking forward to seeing Inara George, cause she has one great set of pipes, I mean her music is so not my speed, but she is so talented, she is a great listen, check her out on itunes.

Anyway, it’s late once again, so I am gonna go through the bands quickly



What Made Milwaukee Famous - here from Texas, they are not an indie band by any means, more like the killers, heavy synth and pedal usage. They sounded fine, and they were a blast to watch,


Robbers on High Street - I saw the set, and I remember I liked it, but really cant remember all that many details about the set... it was the second set of the night, and well it was a really long time ago. Bummer I should start bringing a pad to these shows... I think I will.

The Bird & the Bee - Inara George and band... she is only of note, and well her slow melodic tunes were great listening, way to slow for my liking, but wow, I love to hear her sing even if I don’t like the song!!!! She is that good, I spoke with her briefly after her set, and she said she's opening for Sia later this month, so I will definitely check that out, not because I like their music, but because Inara and Sia are both extremely talented vocalists whose talent I most certainly appreciate. Her set was 45 min or so, and well I enjoyed here solo more then when she had the backup vocalists in the song.

Elvis Perkins - this was a most welcome surprise, I have never heard them before, read about them on blogs and such, but never really listen to any of their material, but wow what a great band. I really enjoyed their extended set, they even did somewhat of an encore, and it ran about an hour the set,

Cold War Kids - they did the same great set last time, I still enjoyed. They have refined their stage antics, so it’s quite a fun set to watch.

Tapes 'n Tapes - a great band, but by the time they got on they were told to cut the set in half, they only did a 40 min set, and it was great, and surprisingly they did allot of stuff off their EP's, last time they just preformed their album, so it was nice to see them change it up.


what really made the night was that all the bands had all the bands on stage at one point of the set, Elvis Perkins had Dr. Dog and Cold War kids on for 2 songs, and all the bands kept on coming up and going wild, and it made the show quite enjoyable.

Anyway I will for sure go and see Elvis Perkins again, as well as the Tape n Tapes and Inara George. The rest of them well I’ll most probably see them open for one band or another over the next couple of months, so I will see them again also...

anyway I was so wiped after the set last night, I went down to D line back on Grand st, and well I caught the D over the bridge to DeKalb and I needed to transfer to a Q, and well I fell asleep on the platform... it was a good 40 minutes or so, not terrible, I stood up and waited for the next Q, I got on and the next thing I know, I woke up in Coney Island, way past where I was supposed to get off, I got off the train and well waited for the next Q back the other way... that was another 20 minutes, and it started to rain about now at 3:40 or so, I did not get home until a little after 4:00 AM, and well for a show that ended at 2AM I had a nice sleep adventure, sleeping in as many public places as humanly possible... wow what a night, happy to be home.... worm and dry, ah yes dry....


Anyway, got a photo show tom and Friday at the Javits Center and an Alice in Chains show tonight.... going with a whole bunch of friends... can’t wait... just hope I get home before 2 this time.... I need some quality sleep this week.

Yea I took like 300 pictures there, and well I had another case of gear envy, lots of canon’s tonight, the main lens I saw was the 17-40mm L lens, a real nice lens, not for concerts, unless you have a good flash, which they all did. My gear envy was quelled when I started talking to this photoropher taking pics for Playback and we were discussing Glass and other picture details in general for shooting a canocert in low light, and he was shooting with a Nikon D200, that’s a real nice camera, but he told me that the Canon XTi that I have would do a fine job, I just need to use a wide open lens and bump my ISO all the way up, it kind of gave me the confidence to shoot a show, not Alice in chains, but if I go the next Sia show I’ll shoot that, why not…. Anyway, it was nice standing front and center stage, as always, but until Tapes n Tapes got on there was an imaginary photographers trench, it was like the audience gave all the photographers about 2 feet and they all moved back it was kind of cool, watching the photographers work was a bit distracting for me, cause I like to see what they shoo with, cameras and glass, I mean one guy was shooting with a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS, and it is open enough, it is too big to be shooting with when you are 10 feet from the subject…. Whatever nice piece of glass anyway. Regardless, I will post pics over the weekend, have no time to post and edit this week, too much going on.



ttyl