Rocktober

In the span of five days last week, I saw seven different bands, and somehow still have my hearing. Seeing this many concerts in such a short time is pretty foreign to me these days. I used to go to concerts all the time, but, as will happen as you get old, I go to less and less every year. This past week has been fun, but I can tell you that I am really tired.

Last Saturday night, my wife and I went to the Dayton Music Festival to catch Bob Pollard's new band, the Boston Spaceships. Opening the show were two really cool bands Hospital Garden and The Sailing. Hospital Garden was pretty good, and I was especially impressed with The Sailing. Their energetic sets perfectly set the stage for the Spaceships to come out and blow the crowd away.

Now, I've seen GbV/Bob solo about 35 times, and at this show I only saw ONE SONG that I have ever seen live before. They ended the night with the stalwart classic "Game of Pricks," and for a solid two hours before that they played a perfect mixture of new material and obscure classics. This would be like going to see Springsteen and him playing his next two albums, a bunch of songs from the Tracks boxset, and then finishing with "Born to Run." To translate: This was a real treat for a die hard fan like me.

It helps that Bob has a fantastic band along for the ride. Chris Slusarenko and Tommy Keene were monsters of the guitars, new comer John Moen pounded the material along with precision, and the always great Jason Narducy brought his usual great bass playing and wonderful backing vocals. And Bob, well, Bob was in great voice, and, when you play songs like "Dorothy's a Planet" and "Headache Revolution," well, you're going to give the crowd what they want. It was a great show, and I hope Bob keeps this band around for a few more tours.

On Sunday I went to Gem City Records and caught two sets as part of their Sunday instore series. A band that has been getting a lot of spins around our household lately, Wake Up Mordecai, was one of the two bands. They put on another good set, playing a few new songs and a couple off their first EP North to the Nth Degree, including my personnel favorite "Now We're Communicating." I am told that "Girls Don't Ride In Viking Ships" was recently played on WOXY, which is pretty cool. I highly recommend these guys if you haven't checked them out.

After a couple of days healing from our busy weekend, we headed to Cowtown (or the more recent nickname, C-Bus) for a night with Death Cab for Cutie. My wife and I attended the show with my long partner in rock crimes, JB. We arrived as openers Tegan and Sarah took the stage. Though I haven't spent much time with their music, I thought they were a pretty decent opening act for the evening. A good portion of the crowd treated them like royality as they played, which might account for the crowd of statues during Death Cab's set.

We got up close in the packed crowd for Death Cab, and the band did not disappoint. They played a blazing set that reminded me at times of Pearl Jam. The three of us had a great time as the band knocked out song after song, but the rest of the crowd wasn't quite on the same page. It seems that between mild applause they found their shoes very interesting. We decided to watch the last couple of songs and the encore from the top of the lawn where we could have a bit more fun.

So it was a pretty good week. It was fun to see a bunch of cool bands in fine form. At the very least, it was a good warm up for the madness of AC/DC that I'll be witnessing in a couple of weeks. I might want to invest in some earplugs before then.

Because I'm old.