Washington, DC, 3/13/08 Options

[SJN1279]

According to Pollstar, Live will be playing the 930 club in DC on March 13th....details TBA!

[icewaterike]

Well, I’m finally back from Washington, DC and have a chance to sit and write about the experience of seeing +Live+ at the 9:30 club. As this was officially my 16th time seeing the boys, I was excited as usual and especially excited to see them at a club. It’s been since 1997 at the Warehouse in Toronto since I’ve seen them in a club setting, and that show still remains in my mind as one of the best I’ve seen.

We left London on Wednesday afternoon, March 12th, with the plan in mind to drive half-way to DC and stop in a place called Clearfield, PA for the night. The border traffic in Niagara Falls was nice and light, and thank god so was the weather (last weekend we got close to three feet of snow in our area, and I was glad we didn’t have to deal with that!). We took a direct route to Clearfield through the mountains of New York state and Pennsylvania. Staying off the interstates allowed for some seriously beautiful sightseeing along the way and an avoidance of toll-roads.

After staying in Clearfield for the night, we were up early and en-route to DC. We tried to time it so that we’d be entering the city at a non-peak time, and we seem to have nailed that because we had very little problem with traffic on the way in along the canal. We arrived at our hotel around noon. Nice place in the northwest of the city called ‘Embassy Suites’ near Dupont circle. After a short walk-around/explore in the area around our hotel and GW university (and a free drink for “happy hour” at our hotel!) we headed out to the venue by cab. We arrived at the 9:30 just after 6:30 in time to pick up our tickets at the box office and get in line. Again, weather was beautiful (we left London at -2 degrees Celsius and in Washington that day it must have been 15 degrees!).

Doors opened right on time at 7:30 and we were inside. Quick stop at the merch table to find no big surprises per-se. I picked up Adam K’s newest solo disc as I haven’t had a chance to buy it as of yet, and also a red cross patch. Then, we were off to the front of the room to wait it out for +Live+ to come on.

It was nice getting to know some of the fans in the front of the crowd that night. Spoke with Jimmy for a short while and also Jamie who admins isawlive.com. Nice talking to you both. Also met some nice folks named Gordon and Jen out of Maryland who hadn’t seen +Live+ before. Great camaraderie in the audience before and during the show. The crowd was really tame as far as pushing and shoving and rudeness goes (except for the guy who decided to cut in and stand in front of us about 2 minutes before +Live+ took the stage and despite our asking him to reconsider his ignorant move, justified himself in staying where he was).

The Alternate Routes were an entertaining band to watch and listen to. Their chops musically are pretty solid and the songwriting was pretty bang on too. I was looking forward to seeing this band, as they have a member in their band who I’ve seen before touring with John Mayer back on the Room for Squares tour. Stephen Chopek was the drummer for Mayer back then (you can see him on the “Any Given Thursday” DVD) but was a little disappointed to see that Chopek wasn’t with the Alternate Routes at the 9:30 and after looking at their website I see that he’s moved on from that band to pursue other opportunities. That said, the new guy they have is pretty good too, and considering he probably had to learn a lot of their music pretty quickly so that the band could perform at these shows, tells me that this is a band that has their shit together. Personally, I’d like to see their guitar players (especially the lead guy who has a lot of chops) get amps that cut a little better than what they are using. I know the "vintage sound" of some amp models (Vox, Bad Cat) is a neat effect, but tonally the amps don’t cut through like some of the more ballsy tube amps out there. I would have liked to hear more of what the lead guitarist was doing, but I think partly his choice of equipment was getting in the way of that. However it could have been the FOH engineer to blame in this case a little bit as well.

After a good set from the Alternate Routes, we were all pumped to see +Live+. They came on right on time to some neat intro music I’d never heard from them before. After some research I’ve discovered that the song they came on stage to is an old gospel tune called “Blind Bartimus” or “Blind Bartimaeus” depending on who you talk to. I can’t for the life of me, though, discern who the artist is that is doing this version that Live is using as their entrance music. Maybe using what I’ve figured out one of you can fill in this gap. It would be neat to know why they chose this as their intro tune. Are they using this song as their entrance music on the other stops this tour as well?

Here’s the setlist from the night:

All Over You
Waitress
The River
Mirror Song
The Dolphin's Cry
They Stood Up For Love
Selling The Drama
I Walk The Line
Wings
Beauty of Grey
Run To The Water
I Alone
Heaven

--

Sofia
Lakini's Juice
Lightning Crashes

Before I get into why I think they crafted the setlist as they did, I’ll talk about some of the really cool moments in this show, song by song.

Intro: As I said above, a cool tune that I haven't heard as intro music before. “Blind Bartimus” is the name of the spiritual. Can you help name the artist??

All Over You: Good opener. Lots of good energy from the band and the crowd liked hearing something familiar right out of the gate, I think. Good sing along moments and crowd involvement early.

Waitress: I was actually really excited to see this on the list. I haven’t heard this tune in ages done live and there were a couple of cool moments in this. The first was some vocal adlibing from Ed in the verses rhythmically and with some extra cussing thrown in for good measure. Good guitar solos from Taylor harkening back to the TC days. And the best: no whistling at the end but instead some call and response between the crowd and the band. The coolest part about this was that Ed demonstrated the melody vocally for us, and when the crowd sung it back, almost in total unison, the rhythm was totally different than it should have been. I was a little thrown off by this, so I looked for Ed’s reaction, and he had a huge smile on his face and laughed a little as if to say “wow, that was cool”. Very cool moment.

River: Not a lot of energy here. Pretty laid back and but some good vocal harmonies from Adam, whose mic was up a little more than I’m used to. It was neat to hear so much of him in this tune and all the others during the show.

Mirror Song: It’s funny... I was so excited to hear this tune three shows ago as I thought it was a rare treat. I still liked hearing it in DC, but this is one of the tunes they swap out sometimes for others that I haven’t heard... and I was kind of hoping this would be a show where Mirror Song was replaced with something else (Even Operation Spirit or something like that) but alas, my luck, again I hit a show where they happen to be playing MS. Still, a good tune to hear and I love watching Gracey and the unique beat during the verses.

Dolphins: Heavy guitars through the last chorus. Very heavy ending. Loved it.

TSUFL: Time and time again, I love hearing this gem of a tune in concert. I especially like the guitar tone Taylor chose for this. Very distorted and heavy feeling. Adam’s vocal on this always impresses me too..

Selling The Drama: Pretty standard performance. I’d love it for them to go back to the way they performed this back in the way where the bass and drums don’t kick in until just before the first chorus... that was way cool. Still, this is the tune that made me fall in love with the band, so I’ll always love hearing it in concert.

I Walk The Line: Good cover as usual. I do love hearing it and Taylor’s energy is always fun to watch during this.

Wings: Not my favourite off the new record... but Adam again was fun to watch with the echos from Ed.
Beauty of Gray: The old stuff is always great so to hear. What a cool song and I’m glad they haven’t forgotten about it.

Run To The Water: Been a while since I’ve heard this and it was fun to hear it again in concert. I remember seeing them do this tune on Mike Bullard and this performance took me back to 2000.

I Alone: Good rockin’ version of this. Full intro and rocking middle section... same formula we’ve seen for years... but still effective.

Heaven: Wouldn’t be my main choice to end the set proper. Crowd reaction was weak to this on the offset and I think another tune may have gotten everyone more riled up for the encore.

Encore Break: After a a short while the band came back out one by one for the encore. First on stage was Gracey who woke up his Macbook and started a loop of some latin percussion sounds (mainly congas, shaker) and after four bars he joins in on drums. Good funky, solid, human-metronome Gracey that we’re used to. Then Pat comes out and gives us all some crazy funk slap-bass. Fantastic! Then guitars come in with some chimey harmonics. Ed comes out walks by Pat’s bass and jokingly slaps the fretboard a couple of times. Pat looks up, looks slightly perturbed (maybe in a joking way) and goes back to playing. Good moment.

Sophia: After the crazy funk buildup we go back to the loop and Sophia breaks in. I like the tune, but I felt the awesome intro was a little anti-climactic once Sophia proper started in. I did like the overall funk-vibe to this though... Pat was a madman slap happy bass man in this one. Wicked. Ed’s vocal outro was fantastic too.

Lakini’s Juice: Good as always. I’ve seen it rock harder, but it was good and the crowd ate it up. Ed and Chad did their dance at the end.

Lightning Crashes: Never like this as a closer and was REALLY hoping for White Discussion as a surprise add-on, but no dice. I like having a rock and roll closer for this type of show. The energy was in the room, I thought.

Now, I know many of us are a little frustrated by the lack of originality when it comes to the setlist as of late, and although I agree that +Live+ could maybe be doing a little more to cater to those of us who see a lot of shows, and switch things up a little more, pull out the odd older tune, debut a new tune or two, etc, I also understand why they are doing what they are doing as well. Live aren’t in a position to forego their hits or play shows for the diehards only, as they are most often playing to a room of casual fans who remember the hits and want to hear them. They are switching up here and there, to keep it interesting for them and for the crowd, but for the most part are sticking to the tracklist of what was on Awake. Which, really, in the end, makes sense. They are currently label-less and trying to keep the buzz on their band as strong as it can be, in preparation for perhaps a new record, but more likely a DVD of live material that’s been rumoured. These new setlists sort of confirm that they aren’t looking forward to new material at this point in their career.

After the show I was shocked to see that at the merch table +Live+ are now selling signed copies of the stage setlist (which are computer printed copies of the nights setlist but dated with the name of the city and venue as well as a SS-era logo on the top) They are autographed (genuinely) and available for a whopping $25. Also available are a few signed drumheads for $50 which include passes to a meet and greet after the show. I’ve never seen Live do that before. Usually Gracey throws a drumhead or two and the stage setlists are usually handed out too, but I’ve never seen +Live+ try to sell that stuff. Not sure how I feel about it... but I did buy a setlist We didn’t hang out for long afterwards as we wanted to get a cab and get back to the area of the city we were comfortable with.

We stayed in DC for another day to take in the city. Great place. Many thanks to everyone who helped us make some informed choices about accommodations and things to do while there. We thought it was a great place and had a blast.

Personal photo gallery of show pics:

http://gallery.mac.com/isaamoor#100023

[chazeye]

Icewaterike - Enjoyed reading your post........good stuff. Glad you liked the show and that it turned out being a good roadtrip.