Jonathan Richman

Supper Club, New York, NY

Comedian Julia Sweeney opened (doing stand-up).

 

 my (faded) ticket stub from the show

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Morrissey

Image
Benedum Center, Pittsburgh, PA..... With a Morrissey concert, one always wonders whether it will take place at all--given Morrissey's well-documented history of shows cancelled at the last minute. So it was concerning when several recent of his concerts had to be scrapped due to credible death threats on the former Smiths frontman. But, it turned out not to be a concern and the show went on as scheduled. Morrissey was in fine voice but I had some issues with the setlist. Towards the end of the main set, I thought it's got to be bangers all the way down, but I was disappointed. Some deeper cuts, but more problematically, midtempo songs that didn't get the energy up except for the hardest-core of Moz-heads. There were a lot of people heading to the exits early, and my daughter (first time seeing him live) said to me at one point, "The music for each song sounds good but once he starts singing, they all sound the same." The last time I saw Morrissey , while a showcas...
Read more

Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sonic Youth, Social Distortion

Brendan Byrne Arena, E. Rutherford, NJ.... It was a couple years before Neil was bestowed the "Godfather of Grunge" moniker, but this tour made clear he had an affinity with noisy, scruffy bands of younger vintage. A great show all around. It was my first time seeing Neil, so I was pretty psyched. He had snapped out of his weird '80s era with a vengeance on 1989's Freedom and 1990's Ragged Glory albums. I was pretty blown away with how hard he rocked at the show. My most vivid memory of the concert was a giant microphone with a yellow ribbon on it getting a lot of applause (due to the Gulf War being still in progress at the time). The opening acts were pretty memorable as well. I was struck with how low-slung Mike Ness played his guitar. And during Sonic Youth's feedback-drenched finale, Thurston Moore used his guitar as a bridge between the front of the stage and a security barrier and he carefully shimmied across it, all the while spewing caterwauling nois...
Read more

World Party, Jellyfish

Image
The Ritz, New York, NY.... Karl Wallinger is fascinating to watch on stage. He's a left-handed guitarist, but like Hendrix, he plays a right-hand guitar. So all of his chords are backwards. On top of that, he normally strummed with a pick but he used fingers only for solos. Each time he went into a solo, he had an eye-catching way of tossing aside his pick to the stage floor to play with his fingertips.   I was there with my friend Tim, and he bade me goodbye to catch a train back to Jersey during the encore break. Just as he was exiting the building, World Party returned to the stage with Sinead O'Connor in tow to lend her voice to a few numbers. World Party was originally scheduled to open for  her summer 1990 tour (including when I saw her at Jones Beach ), but World Party ended up not being the opening act. Instead, that gig went to Sinead's boyfriend Hugh Harris. (Harris was described in the press as "her new man" or "reported paramour.") It seeme...
Read more