Top 10 Concerts Ever!

Jim DeRogatis is leaving The Chicago Sun-Times and has written a run-down on his 15 favorite concerts in covering music. Inspired by this, I'd like to offer my favorites:

1. Wilco at Stubb's BBQ 9/22/2001 - the first great show I ever saw. Wilco was in Yankee Hotel Foxtrot limbo, and the whole country was in post-9/11 confusion. It was the first time I heard "Ashes of American Flags" and it was incredibly powerful. The band seemed taken aback by the applause for their set and played three encores, closing with a raucous version of "I Got You (At the End of the Century)".
2. Flaming Lips at Madison Square Garden 12/31/2003 - in a special New Years' show Sleater-Kinney opened and Wilco closed, The Flaming Lips stole the show. Dancing people in costumes, great music, unbelievable feeling and thousands of balloons made for an unforgettable night.
3. Fleet Foxes at Somerville Theatre 10/6/2008 - the Pacific Northwest band makes beautiful music, but it's not always the most high energy, so I didn't know what to expect. Live, their music was equally beautiful, with gorgeous harmonies and passionate vocals and playing. The crowd was totally swept up, universally standing in movie theatre setting. Afterwards I turned to my girlfriend, who hadn't spoken a word through the whole set. "Was that one of the best shows you've ever seen?" she asked? It sure was.
4. Art Brut at Middle East 5/16/2006 - the best live act going. I've seen them three times since, and they are always terrific. Eddie Argos works so hard to give everyone their money's worth, and the best part is you can see how much fun he's having the whole time. This was my first experience seeing Art Brut, and I've gone out of my way to see them every time since.
5. Okkervil River at T.T. the Bear's 11/10/2005 - like Fleet Foxes, this Austin-based group can be subdued on record. However, this live show was gripping, with singer / guitarist Will Sheff ripping his guts out on just about every song. The band didn't go on until midnight but still played two hours. In the final encore, Sheff gave the audience the choice between classics "Kansas City" and "The Okkervil River Song" and someone shouted out, "Both!" Sure enough, they played both, sending everyone home happy.
6. Sleater-Kinney at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel 2/14/2003 - Something has been missing in my life ever since the Olympia, WA-based trio broke up in 2006. I saw them five times; this, the second time I saw them, made my Valentine's Day in 2003 as they tore up one of Providence, RI's best venues.
7. K'Naan / Wale at House of Blues 4/1/2010 - see review here.
8. Mutual Admiration Society at Paradise Rock Club 8/12/2004 - This supergroup consists of the members of the talented Nickel Creek as well as Toad the Wet Sprocket's Glen Phillips. The show was fine until partway through, when rather than all take a break different members would play some of their solo items. We were treated to gems like Chris Thile's "I'm Nowhere and You're Everything," Nickel Creek's ukelele ditty "Anthony," and John Paul Jones playing a solo mandolin version of Led Zeppelin's "Going to California." Yes, that John Paul Jones. After that, the band had the crowd eating out of the palm of its hand.
9. Phoenix at Austin City Limits 10/2/2009 - see review here.
10. Kanye West at Ryan Center 10/26/2005 - I might have been the oldest person at the rapper's show on URI's campus, but there couldn't have been too many folks having more fun than me. The music was powerful and Kanye showed a charisma not always present on record, killing it for one of the most energetic crowds I've ever seen.

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Rating: B+

I was always a nerd growing up. My middle school and high school years were anchored by a group of friends with whom I would watch "The X-Files" on Friday nights. We played Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, and Hero Quest, debated endlessly about Star Wars and even nonsense like Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? It's fair to say that my dorkdom level was pretty high.

Then I went off to college, and I had a suitemate who frequently played They Might Be Giants. And I realized: I fucking hate They Might Be Giants. The inanity of "The sun is a mass / Of incandescent gas" reviled me as much as any stupid, absurd lyrics that Britney Spears, The Spice Girls, Brian McKnight, or any other similar hackneyed brutal lyricist of that day. I mean, there are polysyllabic words in there, and science terms, but that doesn't mean it's smart. And even if it is smart, it doesn't take you any place; it doesn't make you feel anything. I learned then that although I enjoy dorky media in many forms, music is not one of them.

So I took the recommendation of The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots with a grain of salt. Just look at the title. A concept album about a Japanese girl fighting off hordes of robots from outer space ("and she's gotta be strong to fight them / so she's taking lotsa vitamins")? I knew I would hate it. But I didn't - it's a great album. No one in rock is more earnest than Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne - and if anything, that's understatement, not hyperbole. He sells you on Yoshimi, on the struggle against pink robots that is in all of us, in our noble but doomed battle with our own mortality. Or something - some of the lyrics don't make any sense. But dammit, Coyne means them.

Embryonic couldn't be more different than Yoshimi. But it's undeniably a Flaming Lips album, if that makes any sense. The pop sensibilities of Yoshimi (and its predecessor, The Soft Bulletin) are completely stripped away. In its place is a swirling morass of psychedelia, and of course the trademark lips weirdness. This album is strange, very strange. There are odd keyboard and guitar sounds, theremin, and what sounds like a cell phone distorted by an electrical pulse. "Powerless" features an extended guitar solo not bound by rhythm or tone. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs adds some over-the-phone call-and-response on "I Can Be a Frog" (animal noises) and stellar closer "Watching the Planets." The music was always odd, but without the pop anchorings it threatens to fly away.

It doesn't though, and that's the strongest suit of the album. Sure, at times the orbit threatens to float off into space, especially during dreamy tunes like "Evil," "If," and "Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast," but there always a thumping, percussive track to punctuate your trance: "Your Bats," or "See The Leaves," or "Aquarius Sabotage." The album is 18 tracks and over an hour, but it has good pace and variety so it doesn't feel bloated. Coyne's vocals add to the variety; his high-pitched cracking warble only shows up as a counterpoint to Karen O's animal noises on "I Can Be a Frog" and to the disturbing subject matter on "Evil." He takes a darker edge on "Convinced of the Hex" and "See the Leaves," and on several tunes his voice is distorted.

A final item of note is the lyrics. Because the Lips' music is often poppy and uplifting, it's easy to miss that the words aren't always as cheery. Tunes like "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" and "Do You Realize?" would be dark without the gorgeous pop orchestration enveloping them. Since Embryonic dials down the pop factor, the darkness shrouds the album, putting a different edge on the Lips' common theme of finding the beauty in the fragility of life. A fine example is on "See the Leaves," where Coyne sings "See the leaves / They're dying again / See the sun / It's trying again." Closer "Watching the Planets" finishes on a strong theme of existential questions: "what is the reason?" Coyne asks amid "burning the bible," "watching the planets," and "finding the answer." The key thrust of the album comes from multi-instrumentalist Stephen Drozd, who provides the musical backdrop, weirdness, and genius behind Embryonic.

Embryonic is a fascinating psychedelic journey and a worthy addition to the Flaming Lips' excellent catalog.

Buy it from Amazon:
Embryonic
The Flaming Lips Site

Get Well Playlist

I'm sending my Aunt in Houston, recovering from surgery, a mix CD of the following:

1. Antony & the Johnsons - "Shake That Devil"
2. The Shins - "Know Your Onion!"
3. Big Star - "September Gurls"
4. Son Volt - "Windfall"
5. Robert Plant & Allison Krauss - "Killing the Blues"
6. Wilco - "California Stars"
7. Vampire Weekend - "Walcott"
8. Crooked Still - "Shady Grove"
9. Blitzen Trapper - "Furr"
10. The Flaming Lips - "Enthusiasm for Life Defeats Existential Fear"
11. Ryan Adams - "Pearls On a String"
12. Cat Power - "Living Proof"
13. Tim O'Brien - "Forever Young"
14. Bela Fleck - "When Joy Kills Sorrow"