Tag: live concerts

I missed seeing the Ramones live. And the Clash, and the Sex Pistols. So I sure as heck wasn’t going to miss The Damned, one of punk’s pioneering acts and just about the last great band still going strong from their peers.

Many of my best friends were punks and goths when I was a young wide-eyed lad, but I always felt sort of punk-adjacent. Paradoxically, the older I’ve gotten the more appreciation I have for the unrestrained energy and fury of a good punk tune, and on a rainy Friday night at Auckland’s Powerstation there was nowhere better to be than hanging out with the Damned. Far from some vapid nostalgia effort, it turned out to be the best gig I’ve been to in quite a few years now. 

The Damned sprouted from the UK in the class of 1976. They were the first British punk band to release a single, the unforgettable ‘New Rose,’ to release a studio album and to tour the US. But while their debut Damned Damned Damned was hardcore, over the years they branched out into goth rock and psychedelia, perhaps offending narrow-minded punk purists but impressing those of us who like a band that continues to evolve. 

Even as they’re pushing their late sixties now, they still make a dynamic picture on stage. Lead singer Dave Vanian and guitar guru Captain Sensible are the only two of the original line-up left, but they’re more than enough to summon up the band’s spirit with a solid group beside them. Vanian was instantly the most stylish man in the room with a bespoke suit, fedora and sunglasses, strutting and crooning in his distinctive baritone, while the good Captain, mugging and smiling and wearing his trademark striped shirt, feels like a Beano comics character come to life. 

Punk could be angry and violent, but there’s none of that bad energy in the Damned 2023. For nearly two hours, they pounded their way through classic punk and impressive new songs and reminded you why they’ve endured long after the Clash and Ramones are gone. Sure, there was a churning mosh pit (with a lot of bruised-looking guys my age who you know are hurting today) and even a stage-dive attempt, but it was a place of good vibes. 

A big chunk of the set was devoted to the Damned’s brand new album Darkadelic, a rather bold move when you know that most of the crowd was really there for the older hits. But having listened to Darkadelic a lot the past week or two, it’s actually pretty terrific. It doesn’t try to be some hip rock release from 2023, but more of a summing up of all that the band has built. The Damned gather up their considerable powers honed over the decades into catchy numbers like ‘The Invisible Man,’ the grand harmonies of ‘Bad Weather Girl,’ the comic menace of ‘Beware of the Clown’ or the swoony dark ‘Wake The Dead.’ The new songs all navigate the tricky business of slotting right in among the Damned’s better known work, and they were terrific live. 

Of course, though, the classic punk bashers are what the crowd is there for, and the final section of the show was an unrelenting blast from ‘Born To Kill’ to ‘Love Song’ straight through two encores and concluding with an utterly fiery stomp through ‘New Rose,’ the one that started it all. It’s still a lightning bolt of a song, and the crowd bobbed up and down like pogo sticks, old geezers like me and young girls born decades after the ‘New Rose’ single was released, and by gosh it was fun. 

Punk is momentum, and catharsis, and lord knows we could always use a little more of that in these stressful times. Pound past the angst and the ugliness and uncertainty and just be there. Even if I can’t hear so good the next day, it’s worth it.

The Damned have followed their own quirky path for nearly five decades now, from rapid-fire punk to brooding goth to stadium rock anthems. They aren’t the young men in the ‘New Rose’ video almost 50 years ago, but somehow they’re still nothing but themselves.

What could be more punk rock than that? 

(Here’s ‘New Rose’ performed more than 40 years apart, in Wellington and in the 1970s video. They still got it!)

Look, we’re all a bit nostalgic for the 1990s these days, right? It’s a cliche, but it’s almost relaxing to recall an era where pop culture’s greatest fear was “selling out” rather than worrying about climate apocalypse, social media overload, misinformation and creeping fascism. It was hardly perfect but we like to imagine it was.

Not every ’90s band is the same. I can’t remember the last time I listened to Pearl Jam, but I put on a Pavement song every week or two at the very least. For a band whose full albums precisely spanned the 1990s, from 1992’s Slanted And Enchanted to 1999’s Terror Twilight, they feel far less bound to their era than others. Pavement returned to New Zealand for a fantastic show at the Civic Theatre last night and reminded us all why they still matter, decades after their final album. 

The dream of the 90s is still alive in Auckland @pavement_band pic.twitter.com/djhSxOwSoZ

— Now Now Jerome (@Jeromical) March 7, 2023

I saw Pavement play their first reunion tour in 2010 (reviewed on Version 1.0 of my website) and it was marvellous fun, but 13 years on, even though they’ve never put out any new music, they felt even more contemporary somehow – all the angst and weirdness of the last few years just seem to make them more relevant than ever. 

The band were a bit looser and more playful than in 2010, stretching out nicely in extended spacey jams on songs like “Type Slowly” that built on the hazy vibe, with frontman Stephen Malkmus’ spiky guitar solos evoking the late great Tom Verlaine of Television and his own relaxed and sprawling solo albums. 

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Pavement have often been misleadingly described as “slacker rock,” including probably by myself at some point, but it occurred to me that lazy label obscures the amiable craftwork behind their songs – earworm nuggets like “Gold Soundz,” “Summer Babe” or the surprising viral hit B-side “Harness Your Hopes” have a tight power pop catchiness at their core. 

Malkmus’ lyrics have always had a charmingly casual quality to them, sounding like a super-relaxed rapper. But no matter how surreal the songs may get with their asides about Geddy Lee’s voice or how sexy Stone Temple Pilots are, Malkmus always managed to sound disarmingly sincere. “I’m an island of such great complexity,” he sings in one of my top 10 Pavement songs, “Shady Lane,” and the key is he never makes that seem like hard work. 

They had the blissful upbeat tunes like “Cut Your Hair” and “Stereo,” but there’s always been a gently melancholy core to the band, too, a quality which helps their music endure in numbers like “Here” or “Stop Breathing.” I’ve listened to my favourite of their albums, 1997’s Brighten The Corners, about a zillion times and still manage to come away with new things from each song. 

Last week I had the pleasure of “writing up” – as they say in the biz – an interview Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich gave to Radio New Zealand’s Music 101 before their show, talking about how NZ’s classic Flying Nun bands like The Clean and Chris Knox influenced their sound. Maybe that’s why they sounded faintly alien in the flannel 1990s. They hailed from Stockton, California, and were an ordinary-looking group of dudes, but at their core Pavement were inspired more by bands like Can and The Fall than KISS and Led Zeppelin. They have always been a rather unique brew of American casual and avant-garde surrealism. 

Everyone seemed to have a different favourite song last night, as Pavement dipped between their “hits” and more obscure numbers. That’s kind of the beauty of their work – it’s whatever you want it to be.

I’m sorry if I ever called them slacker rock – they’re their own beast, really. Maybe it’s the dream of the 1990s, hazy and irresistible like that summer babe in the distance, unforgettable and you’ve always just missed her. 

There’s a great book about ground-breaking ’80s punk bands called Our Band Could Be Your Life. For me, Midnight Oil is one of those bands.

As the Aussie enviro-rockers shook up a nearly full Spark Arena last night on the Auckland stop of their farewell tour, I thought a lot about how the band has been part of the soundtrack of my life for more than 30 years, and helped shape how I think about the world.

I wrote a review and appreciation of one of my favourite bands as they zipped through town – go read the full piece right now over at Radio New Zealand!

When your musical tastes lean toward the retro, as mine tend to, you find yourself attending a lot of farewell tours. You don’t always know it will be the last/only time to see a band. But as someone who loves an awful lot of bands that were at their peak in the ‘70s or ‘80s, you never know what fate and time will bring. 

Performers in their 70s or even older aren’t always at their best, but sometimes they’re amazing. You sometimes find well-honed machines who may not be quite as fast on their guitar solos as they once were, but who make up for that with the breezy skill that only comes from playing the same song thousands of times over. 

The announcement that 75-year-old Elton John is coming back to New Zealand for his long, long Covid-postponed farewell tour in early 2023 and that Billy Joel, 73, is coming here for the first time in decades reminded me that many of my favourite older acts who make it all the way down to Aotearoa probably aren’t going to be coming back again. I’m undecided on seeing Elton just yet, but I’m already down for Midnight Oil’s farewell tour in September, pandemic willing. 

I managed to see Brian Wilson deliver a surprisingly affecting tribute to the Beach Boys and Pet Sounds a few years back. He was seated for most of the show and did sometimes seem a bit off in the clouds, but still delivered some of those dazzling harmonies on “Sloop John B” and “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” beautifully. Younger band members handled the high notes, and yeah, it was an audience of gray hairs, but as reunions go, it was more sweet than bittersweet. I’m glad I went. 

And then there was getting to see The Monkees twice before the deaths of Peter Tork in 2019 and Michael Nesmith last year. Head cheerleader Mickey Dolenz led the charge at both shows, making up for some of the slack energy of the clearly fading Tork or Nesmith, and while it was most definitely a valedictory lap, there was a charge of energy at hearing the old frothy pop songs by the original band one last time. Because now, all but one of those Monkees are gone.

Or take an 80-year-old Mavis Staples, who was fierce, fiery and loud in a delightful show a couple years back that showed one of the great gospel singers could still bring the house down. Or Nick Lowe, who might’ve been white-haired and hardly the young power pop star of the 1970s, but who put on a great show. 

On the other hand, I’m glad I decided not to fork out for one of the octogenarian B.B. King’s final shows here in Auckland back in 2011, which sounded like it was a pretty grim affair with the 85-year-old King basically propped up on stage far beyond the point where he could really live up to his legend. A show where the artist is barely able to perform is kind of grotesque. 

Sometimes you don’t know how lucky you are. Seeing a dazzling Prince a mere two months before he died will always be one of my live music highlights, and The Rolling Stones were everything they could have been in a packed stadium in 2014 before Charlie Watts passed away. I’ve crammed in three Bob Dylan shows in the 15+ years I’ve been in New Zealand and am grateful for every note I got to hear.

Because sometimes, you miss out. I’ve still got enormous regrets over missing the late Leonard Cohen on what turned out to be his final show anywhere in the world in Auckland in 2013, and having a trip overseas conflict with what probably is Sir Paul McCartney’s final trip down under back in 2017 still stings. 

I do still listen to some music by people under 40, don’t get me wrong. But when it comes to a chance to see a legend, I’ll probably take a punt on seeing them while I can. Every tour has an ending date, and you never quite know when the final curtain call might come, do you? 

Blue on blue  / I’ve got a message in a song for you 

There’s a song in my head, and it keeps going around.

1. NICK LOWE

In my mind / I’m on the end of a ball of twine 

I saw Nick Lowe and his backing band Los Straitjackets earlier this week at The Powerstation in Auckland. It was a terrific power-pop crooner night out.

Nick Lowe isn’t quite a household name, but he should be. He’s a music geek’s musician, who’s written some fantastic earworms over a 50-year career. “Cruel To Be Kind,” “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” “I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass” – all Lowe’s work. He also produced Elvis Costello’s first five albums, a streak of genius rarely matched in music history, and The Damned’s debut. He was even Johnny Cash’s son-in-law for a while.

Lowe’s songs are cutting yet warm, a gentler reflection of Elvis Costello perhaps. With Los Straitjackets (a Mexican wrestling mask-wearing surf guitar instrumental rock band, and yes, that’s as awesome as it sounds), it was one heck of a good show.

And there was that one song.

2. BAD THOUGHTS

Blue on blue  / How has it come to this 

It’s harder to control things lately. The 2010s sucked in a lot of ways, with death, professional turmoil, sickness and disillusionment, and the ever tick-tocking drumbeat of time passing. To cap it all off I had a life-threatening health crisis almost exactly two years ago, which left me taking pills for the rest of my life and feeling diminished.

I know by any normal metric, I’m an incredibly lucky guy. My problems are nowhere near as bad as a lot of other people. Intellectually, I know that. But the problem is that somewhere inside me it feels like a regulator broke down a while back, and it’s harder to take control of how I feel sometimes. That I’m at the mercy of chemicals or biology or some angry cloud. That’s when everything is blue. Or black. 

3. POWER OF POP

I can’t sleep/ For all the promises you don’t keep/ I wanna run but I’m in too deep

Lowe’s set was terrific, engaging and fun, but there was one song that just hit me much harder than anything else. It’s a song in my head, and it keeps going around. 

“Blue On Blue” is the name, from the EP Love Starvation. It’s a simple, elegant little ode to love lost, and yet for some reason, in the way a song does, it stopped time a little bit for me. Inches from the speakers, front of the club, I felt like Nick Lowe was singing it only to me. Just a guitar, a spotlight, a 70-year-old man with white hair and a song. 

It’s not even a song about depression. It’s a romantic ballad, about not being able to leave her behind, and the pain that lingers. It’s a beautiful little song, and at one point as Lowe’s backing band dropped out and he sang a verse alone, the crowd silent, it felt like the power of pop sliding into my veins. Slightly sad songs have always made me feel things more than others. That’s why power pop is kind of beautiful, because the great bands like Big Star and Badfinger and Teenage Fanclub and Cheap Trick and Nick Lowe all master the art of pretty, glittering songs that are still kind of sweetly melancholy in their cores. 

Everyone’s blue sometimes. 

Sometimes a song doesn’t mean what it means. How a song gets to me doesn’t mean it’ll get to you.

Everyone has those tunes that stick in their mind, glued to a place, a time, a person. Peter Gabriel’s “Solisbury Hill” is about my graduating high school in California and moving to the other side of the country. Sebadoh’s “Ocean” is about the girl who got away. The Bangles’ “Different Light” will always be the soundtrack to my first kiss. Lou Reed’s “Magic And Loss” is about pushing through the darkness. Freedy Johnston’s “The Lucky One” is about taking a chance and changing your life. 

And for some reason, that night at the club, Nick Lowe’s “Blue On Blue” felt like a reminder that a song can be the best medicine. 

It’s the power of pop, of a song to get to you. Blue on blue is how I feel sometimes, pushing through. 

There’ll always be songs. 

I’ve realised in recent years that if you have a chance to see a legend, you see the legend. I saw Prince perform just two months before he died, but I’ll always regret not seeing Leonard Cohen giving his last concert ever in Auckland or missing out on what turned out to be David Bowie’s final tour in 2004. 

So when soul legend Mavis Staples came to town, I made sure to be there because I didn’t want to miss what might be my only chance to see her way down here in NZ.  That may sound a bit morbid, but honestly, Mavis and outstanding opening act Tami Neilson were actually one of the most life-affirming, optimistic shows I’ve been to in ages. In a time when the news seems to bring us down almost every day, you need a little Mavis Staples singing that “love is the only transportation.”

It’s hard to sum up just how awesome Mavis Staples’ career has been. She’s been singing since 1950, when she was just 11 years old, with the family Staple Singers. She marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Bob Dylan wanted to marry her. She’s worked with everyone from Prince to Jeff Tweedy to Curtis Mayfield. Songs like “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” are part of American history.

Today, Mavis Staples is a few months away from 80 years old, she’s barely five feet tall, and she was obviously nursing a sore throat, but she still tore the roof off the Civic Theatre in Auckland with her soaring voice and inspirational message. 

Backed up by a crack back-up band, for an hour or so she took us through soul and gospel history, covering Funkadelic and the Talking Heads, and hammering home her message of positivity against the odds – “Build a Bridge,” “We Get By,” “No Time For Cryin’” – it’s all about rising up and carrying on. Mavis even joked that she might run for President. I’d vote for her in a second over the current occupant. 

Opening for Mavis was the wonderful Tami Neilson, a Canadian/New Zealander country singer I’ve been wanting to see for ages. She didn’t disappoint, nearly managing to actually upstage Mavis Staples with a rip-roaring fierce set of her rockabilly/country anthems. She’s got a stunning stage presence, all retro charm and easygoing charisma. Neilson’s got a voice like Patsy Cline and Dolly Parton had a super-charged baby and she let it tear through the Civic. Stragglers who wandered in late because they’re too cool to see an opening act were missing one of the best performances I’ve seen in ages, proud and strong and every way a match for Mavis Staples. If you don’t know Tami Neilson, check her out. I’d say she’s on her way to being a legend, too. 

These days, it feels like there’s nothing more revolutionary than being sincere, than just being a man, alone, on stage with a guitar and a message. 

Folk singer from Essex Billy Bragg is back in New Zealand for a three-night run of shows at the grand old Hollywood Cinema in Avondale, and his first gig in the series was like a tonic in troubled times.

Being a protesting folk singer in 2018 may seem like a throwback. The old names like Pete Seeger or Phil Ochs are all gone and those that are left are getting up there in years. And it’s so, so hard for a protest singer to find that thin line between hectoring and speechifying, to not get stuck in rant mode eternally. But Bragg has ample humour and an immensely quick wit to carry him through the night. We need more voices like his.

His rallying cry at each show is a rejection of cynicism and a call for activism. Bragg is one thing a lot of musicians aren’t – utterly sincere on stage, clear-eyed without being naive. It’s inspiring and more than a little comforting to see someone unafraid to take a stand and who can sing a song like Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists Are Bound To Lose” and make you believe every word of it. 

This first night of his run at the Hollywood, Bragg was in fine, upbeat form, playing for over two hours and loosely changing his set on a whim, at one point playing an amazing Leadbelly cover to demonstrate the skiffle sound (which, of course, he’s written a book about). He spoke nearly as much as he sang, on everything from Brexit to Stan Lee, but always engagingly.

With immense control, he spun from a grim recounting and song about America’s history of lynchings to breezily playing a cover of the Jackson 5’s “I’ll Be There” from his busking days. What I’ve always liked about Bragg is his ability to switch gears between the hard-edged protest songs and open-hearted songs about love, or as he called it, “songs about rain and wanking.” Songs like “The Milkman of Human Kindness” or “Greetings to the New Brunette” are little gems of lyrical power and longing. 

And when several hundred people are lustily singing along and stamping their feet to “There Is Power In A Union,” for a moment, the world feels like it isn’t completely screwed in the long run. 

He capped things off with a biting and clever rewrite of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’ Changin’” for the Trump era, blasting at the grim tide with lyrics like “The land of the free and the home of the brave / Martin Luther King is spinning in his grave”. 

I don’t know about you, but these days I can get behind a protest song or three. 

Long live the revolution.