Music, Music, Music!

Posted by Fred on Friday, August 15th, 2008

Catch Up!

First order of business - personal things. Florida was great, and was very relaxing. It was also the first trip involving air travel in recent memory in which I've avoided any major snags. Things have been quiet at home and I can't believe it's only a week until I go back to school. I've had several topics on my mind to write about lately but I just haven't had the initiative to... blog it out. Hopefully I'll actually sit down and write something coherent about those topics soon. I'm also hoping I can get some of my friends/contributors to submit some supplementary content to keep the blog hopping. I'm hoping to optimize the site more for search engines and fix a few bugs, maybe try to promote some more. For now, though, I have several music-related topics at hand.

A Festival in Pittsburgh?

That's right. Last weekend was American Eagle's New American Music Union festival, which was actually a lot of fun. I'm no American Eagle fan, but the lineup was very good for a $25 ticket, not to mention the free shirt and water bottle included with admission.

On Friday I made it to see NASA, the Black Keys, and the Roots. NASA was interesting... an almost girl talk-like mashup and modification of songs with a little bit of a twist. Not something I would listen to on a regular basis, but it was better than I was expecting. I confess, I never listened to the Black Keys that much, but I really enjoyed their show. Seeing them live definitely turned me on to their music and was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The Roots were also unexpectedly entertaining. As with the Black Keys, I never really listened to the Roots too much, but had a rather good time watching them perform live. It is certainly worth noting that they have an excellent group of talented musicians who almost double as a jam band. They carried on some songs for 10-15 minutes with some impressive show of talent, including quite a skilled guitarist. Listening to their recordings, you probably wouldn't have realized!

Saturday we caught some of the college bands, who started at 11:00am. Although live music tends to be more enjoyable than listening to recordings in general, I was quite impressed with the bands that we did catch, including the Delicious. We headed in around 3:00 to catch the Duke Spirit, Black Mountain, and Gnarles Barkley, who were all decent (and to be honest I don't remember much of it, considering the following acts). Spoon followed, who I really enjoyed. Hearing them live was so much better than a studio recording, even though they have a rather produced feel to their albums. Very danceable. The Raconteurs, of course, knocked my socks off in much the same manner they did at Bonnaroo. They strike me a band that was made to perform live. It's difficult to capture the unrestrained feeling that they blast in a live environment in a recording. If you play a Raconteurs record at low volume, it just sounds like Jack White's amp is broken; in contrast, listening to the Raconteurs pushing their gear to the limit in person transforms that scratchy sound into a roar. Perhaps that's just a common disparity between live and recorded music in the first place. I think it's most prevalent with the Raconteurs.

Oh, and Bob Dylan played. Dylan... well, I got to see him play in person. His music has never really been of too much interest to me though. I did get to leave early from a spot some Dylan fans would pay thousands for... take that!

Studio-A-Rama

Every year, WRUW holds an event by the name of Studio-A-Rama which is a night of live music sponsored by the station. As a member of the Live from Cleveland crew, which does sound engineering for the show Live from Cleveland every Thursday night, I have the responsibility of helping to run sound for the bands playing S-a-R... including a band I've been enjoying all summer, called City Breathing. City Breathing plays mostly ambient, more chilled-out music and has but one album that I know of. I'm super excited because although City Breathing isn't my favorite band, I really enjoy their music and it will be an honor to get to produce their sound!

I'm hoping to try to write a little more this week and make some fixes on the site. Beware shrinking the browser window too thin, or the Show Background link on the left may wander onto the content part of the page! I have some pent up rage to release over voting, a computer build under $1000, and some product reviews to get to. In the meantime, TGIF!

Mood:

Currently listening to: City Breathing - Under the Din of a Dying Marquee

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Tagged under music, concerts, WRUW