EXTC

City Winery, Pittsburgh, PA....

EXTC is basically an XTC cover band, made somewhat legit due to the presence of former XTC drummer Terry Chambers. The show was a lot of fun, especially hearing any XTC songs performed live with a whiff of authenticity.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Michelle Shocked, Michael Penn, Erin McKeown, Assembly of Dust, David Poe

Allegheny Landing Park, Pittsburgh, PA....   The WYEP Summer Music Festival   In Brief: The only old song Shocked played was "Anchorage"--everything else was new. But unlike many performers who are heavy on their latest material, she was so dynamic that no one seemed to mind. Erin McKeown sat in on guitar for about 4 songs. There were some technical troubles during Penn's set, but he still played well. "Long Way Down" was interrupted halfway through ("I'd like to soldier on," Penn explained when he stopped the number, "But it's hard to sing if I can't hear the guitar"), but I'm so glad he played it. He closed with "Walter Reed," one of my favorites of the new record.
Read more

Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

Image
Tramps, New York, NY This was a showcase for Hitchcock's new album, Perspex Island . Most of the audience was radio people, journalists, A&M Records staff, various music industry types, and 25 members of Hitchcock's fan club. As a radio DJ, a former A&M employee (mail room), an a bona fide Robyn Hitchcock fan, I was in my element. Prior to the show, A&M's promotions staff had a dinner for radio guests at a restaurant up the street from Tramps. It was the first time I was able to see some of my former A&M co-workers. I saw Wayne Isaak there, who ran the New York A&M office (then located in the Fuller Building, at 57th Street and Madison Avenue) and who reluctantly had to fire me when they had budget cuts. I was able to tell him with absolutely no rancor, "Remember when you let me go, you said 'This might be the best thing that ever happened to you'? Well, it was! So thanks!" And it was true, since my firing at A&M indirectly led to...
Read more

Butthole Surfers, Rev. Horton Heat, The Toadies, Starfish

Convention Hall, Asbury Park, NJ..... More so than any show I've been to in recent memory, this concert was not focused so much on the songs as it was on the performances. Most of the time when you go to a show, you're primarily motivated by an interest in one or many of the artist's songs. Concerts by jam-bands like the Grateful Dead or most blues musicians, on the other hand, are more performance oriented. You go to see the performance of the entire show more than simply to hear that song in a live setting. That's why Deadheads could stomach going to umpty-ump shows by the same band. This evening headlined by the Butthole Surfers at Convention Hall turned out--surprisingly--to be more of a performance show. Although certainly many concertgoers were motivated to go by some individual songs (notably the several popular singles by The Toadies or the Butthole's current hit "Pepper"), the real story was the sheer intensity of the Rev. Horton Heat's rockab...
Read more