BrockLi Soup

A couple days ago, Gogol Bordello, Against Me, and Smashing Pumpkins all released new albums. Obviously, I’d been looking forward to it for a while - Against Me and Gogol are two of my favorite bands, and the Pumpkins haven’t released anything in 7 years (and anything GOOD in 9 years).

Honestly, I haven’t listened to the Pumpkins album Zetigeist much. I got Tarantula a few weeks ago and absolutely love it. The rest of the disc is pretty good, but that’s the only single that really sticks out to me.

I’d been waiting for Against Me’s New Wave for months, and honestly, I’m kind of disappointed. I got the White People For Peace single a while ago (which included Full Sesh), and both of those tracks are fantastic. The rest of the album? Well, I haven’t really decided yet. This may well be the sell-out album. I mean, it’s catchy, but it barely sounds like Against Me. I was expecting a biting, politically-charged anarchist opus - really, I wanted a full CD like White People for Peace. Borne on the FM Waves sounds like Jimmy Eat World. I do like Americans Abroad, but I liked it on the live album - it sounds exactly the same, just without the crowd in the background. The rest of the tracks are mellower; it’s a more introspective album, and I suspect the die-hard fans are losing their shit over it.

Gogol’s Super Taranta may well be the best album of the year. Tribal Connections feels like a long-winded jam band tune - it reminds me of the long live version of OAR’s Crazy Game of Poker. Forces of Victory is really good - really, the second half of the album is great. I love the opening of Supertheory of Supereverything - “First time I have read the Bible, it had stoke me as unwitty, I think it may started rumor, that the Lord ain’t got no humor.” The whole album is a little more polished than Gypsy Punks was, more self-referential and continuos, and really, it’s just a fun album. Like New Wave, it’s mellower and deeper, but Gogol did a much better job of it than Against Me. Their show next week is going to be unbelievable, and I may wet myself with glee if it’s half as great as I’m expecting.

Just finished my first listen-through of Gogol Bordello’s Super Taranta, and it is FUCKING AWESOME. I also got the new albums from Against Me! and Smashing Pumpkins (who did a show tonight in DC - waiting for my roommate to get home and report on that), but I haven’t really had a chance to listen to those two yet. More soon.

Tips For Punk Show First-Timers

1. Don’t wear flip-flops. You will lose them. Boots are your best bet, because sneakers will come off easily too.
2. Don’t be surprised when people push you. I don’t know what things were like at the last N’Sync concert, but that’s not how it works around here. Standing there giving everyone a pissy look won’t earn you immunity
3. If mom or dad insists on escorting you to the show, they’re either really cool, or (more likely), you’re too young to be there. Don’t bump into my beer hand.

Of the three times I’ve seen Against Me, this was probably the weakest. Much like the last Flogging Molly show, this is due in a large part to the fact that I wasn’t there with the crew from school. Unfortunately, they were opening for Alkaline Trio this time around, so the place was pretty sparse when they went on and the crowd wasn’t as charged as usual. On top of that, it was an all-ages show, so most the crowd was under 18. It was kind of fun to just stand there and be buffeted by wave after wave of tiny little punk kids, and I laughed when they all sang along to “I’m drinking Irish tonight,” because I knew that most of them wouldn’t taste Guinness for another six years. The pit never really opened up, so it was 45 minutes of pushing back and forth.

Despite my gripes with the audience, the band put on a great show, as always. They played about half of Searching For A Former Clarity (opened with The Energizer, one of my favorites), and maybe a half-dozen older songs, finishing with Sink, Florida, Sink and Pints of Guinness. I only stuck around for Alkaline Trio’s first two songs - the first one featured a police siren, and the second sounded like generic pop-punk, so I didn’t have high expectations for the rest of the show.

It was definitely worth the ticket price, and the trip up there, and the $5.50 beer, but it didn’t hold a candle to their show in Buffalo (and the trip to Mighty Taco after the show is only part of the reason). Hopefully they’ll come through town again soon.

On a related note, Gogol Bordello is playing at Nightclub 9:30 tomorrow night. As much as I’d love to see them again, I already know that tomorrow is going to be a long day at work, and apparently I’m going to NYC for the weekend, so I should take a night off and maybe do some more laundry. Such is the life of a moderately responsible twenty-something.

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing Flogging Molly in concert for the third time in a year. The show was over at 9:30, and I went with Bryan and Jeff from work, and Bryan’s fiancé Katie.

I can’t lie - it wasn’t as good as the first two times I saw them. I wasn’t really expecting it to be, though; I knew that seeing them without BP and Sharon just wouldn’t be the same. It was a 21+ show, so the folks in the pit were bigger and capable of doing a lot more damage.

The Rolling Blackouts opened the show with a lackluster set. They were fun to watch, but not very good. Scotch Greens were a lot better - sort of a blue-grassy punk sound - but they played a full-length set, and must have been up there for an hour, so Flogging didn’t even go on until like 10:30. I wound up leaving before the show was even over: I went to take a leak, and decided I had been hit in the chest enough times for one evening. And, the last train was only 15 minutes away, so it was that or $20 for a cab ride home.

Flogging’s set was as good as always, but it took the sound guy three or four songs to figure out what he was doing - the backup mics weren’t even on for the first song. They didn’t play Within A Mile of Home before I left, which was disappointing. The Guinness was $6 a can, which almost makes Rochester look good (which reminds me, I met three different people from Rochester before the show).

So yeah, it could have been better. I blame Scotch Greens for the fact that I couldn’t see the whole show, but what can ya do? Against Me! will be here in April, and my hopes are higher for that one.

I’ve been meaning to comment on the shows I’ve been to lately, but I always seem to have something more pressing to do. Here’s a quick re-cap.

Against Me! with The Epoxies September 25 at The Icon in Buffalo

As it turns out, it was Against Me! with The Epoxies, and Smoke or Fire, and The Soviettes. First off, The Icon is a shitty little building, I won’t argue that, but it wasn’t bad for a show like this. They have a big garage door at the back, so it didn’t get too hot in there. BP really didn’t like it, though, so I’m assuming he fell off the step that’s inexplicably located in the middle of the place.

The Soviettes were fun to watch, but I didn’t like the music much. Smoke or Fire was pretty good, but I wasn’t paying much attention. The Epoxies were absolutely ridiculous. The best way I can describe them is “synth punk” - they sort of had this rivethead look going on, and the music prominently featured a synthesizer. They filled the place with fog, and the guitarist and bassist both had laser pointers attached to their guitars. They reminded me of Gogol Bordello - music isn’t great, but their show was fun to watch.

Against Me! was great, as expected. They played a few from the new album, which has been growing on me - it’s definitely better live. I would say that this one was on par with the show in Toronto, back in May. This time around, I knew all the songs, but it felt like only the people up in the pit were really into the show. In Toronto, the entire room was like the pit, but with less pushing. Either way, it was a fun show and I’m glad we went. And we got Mighty Taco before coming home.

Jon Stewart October 8 in the Gordon Field House here at RIT

Jon was a disappointment. It took him like 15 minutes to get going - he kept dicking around with the captionist and interpreter – which was only moderately funny the first 20 times I’ve seen comedians do it - and asking all the photographers where they were from. It almost felt like he was stalling because he knew he didn’t have enough material. Most of his set was pretty good, but he finished with a story about his dog getting sick. Did he really have to appeal to the lowest common denominator? No one goes to see Jon Stewart because they know he tells great poop jokes. As good as his political commentary and other jokes were, ending on that one sort of left me with a bad impression of the show overall.

The Rochester Philharmonic October 14 in Ingle Auditorium here at RIT

I really only went to this because I had to for my Haydn & Mozart class. When they finished the first piece, I started to think that it would be a much better show than expected. The first three pieces were outstanding - three of Braham’s Hungarian dances. But then they did one of Mozart’s concertos. It was like 30-second intervals of exciting and emotional music padded with five-minute stretches of boring. They finished with Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, which was better than the Mozart, but still pretty boring. After the conductor took a few bows, they did another Hungarian Dance, so at least the end didn’t suck. The musicians were fantastic, but the 18th and 19th centuries produced some real crap.

Against Me! will be in Buffalo on September 25. Who’s going with us? Tracy, I’m looking at you.

Jym did a pretty good job of recapping our evening up in Toronto, so I won’t bother doing it again. Long and short of it is, it was fun to take a trip with the guys, and Toronto is a great city.

The only thing I’ll add is that Fonny WAS right. We were giving him shit a month or two ago, because he was going to a show at a skate park. He tried to explain how incredible it was to be in the middle of a big group of people that were totally into the band, singing along to every verse and just being completely into it. I finally got what he was talking about last night when Against Me! was on. I enjoyed watching the crowd more than the band (at least partly because my eyes are broke, so I can’t wear contacts, and I look absurd in glasses, so I wasn’t wearing them, so I couldn’t see the band anyway). Everyone there was shouting along with the singer. It made me wish I knew the songs better, because I felt like I was just standing on the outside of something really awesome. During the last song, a dozen people hopped on stage with them and sang along (pic sucks, we were far back). Before the show, some people up front started a sing-along. On the way back to the hotel, the people behind us did the same. It felt like no one there wanted to be anywhere else (except for Jym, once he found the pizza place across the street). It was pretty incredible.

Anyway, it was a great start to what will surely be a great summer. I’m looking forward to spending a quarter with these guys.

PS - pictures here.