afi/dillinger escape plan/nightmare of you, 06.22.06, roseland ballroom

the story of me and a.fire.inside.
i have never really been a big fan of afi. it wasn't that i didn't like them or appreciate their artistic merit, because i certainly respected them and knew what their draw was. their music is intelligent (if emo), they are intelligent (and oh-so-emo), and from what i've experienced, their fanbase is rabid for them. they have to be good, right?

but davey's whiney voice always got in the way. i couldn't keep myself from imagining gnodes the size of apples habituating his vocal chords in 20 years*. he sounded too much like some pop-influenced, snotty kid trying out for chamber choir (you got a nice vibrato, but breath from your gut). for some reason, this kept me from ever fully diving into their music, so whenever someone would mention them, all i could do was offer up a shrug and say that "it's admirable they're vegetarian?"

then i heard from many a source that their new album, decemberunderground, released on 060606 (yep), was phenomenal. soon after, i received my live*nation update that said tickets were still on sale for roseland AND they were playing with dillinger escape plan (i love those guys). i purchased my admission and hoped i would be impressed rather than disappointed.

*for some reason this same visualization doesn't occur with all of the hardcore singers i listen to. whatev.

the killing lights
nightmare of you
i arrived at roseland around 6:25. i waited in line with all of the other emotastic/goth/scenester people (i was dressed inappropriately, you could say). when things finally got moving, people flooded in and literally ran to the front of the stage. i hung out by the balustrade (and thus, the bar)and took in some human interaction.

as always happens at roseland, the opening band began promptly. nightmare of you, why must you start off every freaking show i go to, why? all that ever happens is me standing there, taking out my earplugs, utterly disappointed, wishing you could have proven me wrong this time, just this time.

to be fair, album-wise, i like nightmare of you. i listen to them on my iTunes. they're poppy and kind of retro and we enjoy the catchiness factor. one time, i went to a show specifically to see them. but i have learned the truth now: they are an awful live band.

never really exactly on pitch, their energy never really up to ::rawk:: status, and the likely event that someone is going to mess up due to the lead singer's possibly cracked-out status, makes me less than enthused to know that i'm going to have to listen to them for 30 minutes. jamie (my partner in this neverending ear torture) has hypothesized that something shady is going down, because there is no logical reason as to why these guys get to open for all of these hot bands.

they weren't any different for the afi show. all of the catcalls from the dillinger fans didn't make the situation any better, either.

i do have to give them some potty-humour credit though. when announcing dillinger would be on after them, and then analyzing the ripping cheers throughout the crowd, frontman brandon reilly announced that what he'd heard was total testosterone. "it's not even just a lot of manly shouting. it was pure balls." ahahahahaha brandon. too bad your singing isn't as good as your wit. you're fired.

i always go into these shows praying that they do well. i really, really want them to put on an amazing performance, for i see the potential in their skinny pants and tie schtick. unfortunately, the potential i see doesn't come through, and i always leave with a bitter taste in my mouth and an awful sense of dejected failure.

dillinger. motha-f'in. escape. plan.
after the disappointing and somewhat embarrassing run of n.o.y., dillinger made their way onto the stage, and "pure balls" it was. nothing gets this girl pumped up like some good 'core. that and the body of greg puciato (ben weiman has a piece of my heart too). what can i say? having gauged the crowd earlier, it was definitely littered throughout with big guys covered in tattoos, and wishing to make it through to afi, i stayed off to the side.

their show was ridiculously heavy, with strobed lights beating to their funky mix of mathcore rhythms. i'm surprised i didn't have an epileptic fit it was so wonderful. "43%" raged and their cover of nine inch nails' "wish" was by far one of the highlights of my evening. unfortunately, it seems i was surrounded by a relatively clueless and thus, alienated, group of people waiting to see afi. i don't think they knew what was coming, and the look of confusion and slight distaste played on their faces while dillinger shredded. punks maybe, but hardcore they were not. whatever, the scene is an acquired taste and tall platform boots and corsets don't always work well in a mosh pit.

they were so wonderful, i'm not really sure there's much more to say other than i can't wait to see them again on august 2nd at bowery for a diabetes benefit. sweet.


a fire in my loins
creatively speaking, afi has their showmanship down pat. very comfortable with the audience, very comfortable with themselves, afi knows how to dress to impress. with the crazy hair-wha?'s and the makeup and the colorful schematic lighting, afi knows how make people insane for them. it was only a thursday night, but it could've been a friday night for all i knew (though i hear their friday show was even more over-the-top). fists pumped into the air, people chanting, screaming as davey havok jumps into the audience.

their music is also really freaking good. davey's voice doesn't bother me when it's live, and i couldn't get over the excellent guitar work as done by jade puget. i was happy to be there. granted, i didn't know many words, but i recognized at least 75% of the songs, which means that they have managed to waft themselves into my world anyway, even without me trying.

the audience had its share of potty guys (one of whom kept screaming lyrics into pretty jailbait faces as his girlfriend stood there ready to rip his head off), but for the most part, people were respectful and pretty excited to be hearing their favorite band in person. hey, i was excited. i'm really glad i ended up heading to the ladies room and rock-do'ed my hair up, because goddamnit, they deserved the effort. and now i kind of have a crush on jade puget, even if he did shout out his girlfriend before one of their songs.


the moral of the story
don't judge a book by its cover. or at least a band by the voice of its singer. dillinger will always rock your socks. nightmare of you has a really, really long way to go, but i'm still holding out hope that they'll surprise me one day. oh, and give peace (and emo) a chance.

/jen/

up next... unbusted/hooray for earth

jaymay/zox 06.06.06, apple soho/cbgb's

on 06.06.06, i had the pleasure of seeing two very different shows in two very different venues. it was the perfect mix of audio waves for an evening after a long day at work.

jaymay, apple store, soho
the mac store in soho was showcasing jaymay, #1 on the iTunes folk list at the time, for a small, acoustic performance. i have had an interesting relationship with this particular artist for a while, to say the least. i first heard about her when a friend saw her in concert at the living room in brooklyn in spring 2005. he was pretty excited to tell the world about her, and for a good reason. i promptly forgot about his raving endearments of her shortly thereafter due to being half-homeless in new york at the time, but after one especially miserable holiday celebratory evening, riding home in my other friend greg's car at 4 a.m., jaymay popped up on his mixed cd, and i instantly recognized her. she's the kind of singer-songwriter you instantly recognize, even if you haven't heard about her in six months. i was a big fan from there on.

i promptly showed up at mac hq in soho, and went up to their little sound stage where a picture of jaymay was projected onto the back wall. five rows of chairs were set up, a considerably intimate setting, where her family and friends were intermixed with the rest of the audience. unfortunately, there was no jaymay. during sound check, one of her strings snapped while going through "song for paul," a beautiful, melancholy, and haunting elegy to her friend who died from an overdose last winter. it's also the only song during which her string has broken before (creepy). while we were waiting for her to arrive with a guitar newly stringed, people wandered in, curious as to who it could be playing at the mac store during this hour, and who i assume were pleasantly surprised after her performance. by the time she began, there was standing room only.

when she did appear again, a little harried, nervous, and slightly embarrassed, she quickly finished her sound check and began. although not as serene as in previous concerts, she nonetheless accomplished her playing beautifully. it still was just as fragile, honest, and crystal clear as it always is.

the audience received a small treat when she decided to play "grey or blue," a catchy yet frank approach about pining for someone who, although in her group of friends, will not look her way. explaining that she had come up with the song while babysitting a young child, and had written it on his toy xylophone, she was going to play it for us as it originally was produced, with pencils for mallets. and it worked. it worked really, really well.

so my observations: unfortunately, the mac theater is not the best place to listen to soft indie acoustic guitar. while jaymay's performance in itself was fantastic, its environment was less than ideal. the background noise in the echoing space is slightly overwhelming, and one of my largest complaints was that they kept the store muzak on during the performance. this was a huge distraction during the quieter parts of her concert, and ruined the energy for me a little.

jaymay is great, always. she has never failed to enchant me, and now we know she can also handle various obstacles and still come out shining like the mellow yellow star she is. she is a true artist, talent, and necessary voice on the music scene. hopefully she will continue to rise to extraordinary heights.

look forward to more of these on jaymay as time goes on.

zox, cbgb's, east village
because jaymay's concert ran over a little, and i still had to eat dinner, i was unable to really catch the two opening bands during zox's concert at cbgb's. however, i can say with certainty that this was a completely different concert than the one i had been at previously. cbgb's is about as far as one can get from the mac store in the "small venues" category. the decaled, dug up, dirty, potmarked, punk hideout is the antithesis of the smooth, simple, minimalist lines of the mac store theater. it also has better acoustics. but i digress.

despite the timing, i was still able to run in, grab my brooklyn lager, grab my free cd, bump into spencer swain, the electric violinist from zox (although considering the crowd, everybody was bumping into everybody), and settle. zox is another band that i have managed to catch a few times before, once at the knitting factory, and then at bamboozle in the meadowlands parking lot.

though i was now completely overdressed in my work clothes, and surrounded by many people who were younger than me, i was still able to relax and react as zox caught the place on fire. having had their cd release party earlier that day in providence, r.i., and about to embark on the warped tour, everyone was ecstatic and totally feeling the groove of the reggae-n-rock influenced beats and riffs. "carolyn," "anything but fine," and "a little more time" were some of the highlights.

zox is a great band. they deserve all of the recognition they're getting, and they're friendly to boot. when i saw them at bamboozle, i had a nice little conversation at their booth with eli miller, their lead singer/songwriter. they've got a great energy, and you can see that they really enjoy playing their music. the crowd is there for them as well. even though they may be from tiny rhode island, their following is overwhelming, and i've got to say, i'm eagerly looking to get my hands in on it.

-jen-

up next.... nightmare of you/dillinger escape plan/afi

let's get this party started

hello everyone.

welcome to venues and volume. this shall be a joint thing, between jamie and i. we really like music. so much so, in fact, that we're going to write about what we see live. maybe we'll learn something, maybe we won't. maybe our grammar and spelling skills will get worse while our auditory sense becomes greater (too much rock'n'roll rots the brain).

who knows?

feel free to post comments about how much you love what we have to say or how much you hate everything we put down on this bloody thing. we're up for all sorts of attention.

this isn't really my first post. i wrote a whole one on jaymay and zox before i realized i hadn't given this thing a proper introduction. so here it is. welcome!

<3jen