Saw the Black Keys for the second time last night at the House of Blues in Anaheim. Apparently I forgot to recap the show back in April March. (edit: apparently my recap consisted of the following sentence- "Saw the Black Keys last week. good show, but too short. I'm liking the new album."). So this will be a comparison piece. This show was smaller than the first one, and not as good in almost every way possible. The sound was awful. easily the worst sounding venue I've ever been to and it's a freaking House of Blues. It was way too bass heavy, on most songs you could barely hear the guitar, which sounded really muffled when you could hear it and you could barely make out anything Dan was saying. So that really tainted the whole show. The crowd was ok, probably 50% actual Black Keys fans and 50% people who just happened to be at Downtown Disney at that time. After going to a show in Hollywood followed by a show in Orange County, I think the best crowds are in the black hole area where I live. More actual fans who appreciate having shows in the area. The only thing redeeming about the show was that they played some songs from the new album. At the first show (which was right after before the album came out) they didn't play any new songs. Here's some of the songs they played...

Have Love Will Travel
Set You Free
10 am Automatic
Stack Shot Billy
Girl is on My Mind
When the Lights Go Out
Just Couldn't Tie Me Down
Your Touch
Just Got To Be
I Got Mine
Strange Times
Psychotic Girl
Same Old Thing

I FINALLY got to see Radiohead and it was awesome. Hands down the best band of the last 2 decades (at least). Started out in the 6th row (although waaaaay off to the side) and ended up switching with some other people to move up to the 4th row (still way to the side). Security was pretty loose so I was able to bring my camera in. Since this is probably the only time I'll ever get to see Radiohead live, I figured I should do it right. The setlist was great, although as a Bends lover, I would've liked to hear a couple more Bends songs, as well as "Bangers and Mash". Damn you Vancouver! Thom wasn't too talkative, other than when he forgot the words to "Street Spirit". The whole band looked like they were enjoying themselves. The crowd was pretty good. although there were plenty of too-cool-for-words LA types which is to be expected. I missed my first celebrity sighting (Ellen Degeneres) because I wasn't paying attention.

My major score of the night was getting the setlist. The guitar tech was nice enough to throw it to me and I managed to catch it and not look like a fool.




Tonight is the Black Keys and while they're good live, nothing compares to Radiohead.

July recap:

David Usher- Little Songs is just fantastic. It's almost sad that his debut is so great because everything after kind of pales in comparison. Not to say that his other albums aren't good. If God Had Curves has a few songs that hint at the rawness of that first album. I'm interested to see the direction he takes his new album...just under 2 months to go.

Emm Gryner- it was great to listen to Public again after so long. Definitely made me want to listen to more, So i've added Science Fair to the mix. I'm also trying to resolve the debate in my head as to which album is better.

August's albums....no random theme this month, unfortunately..

PJ Harvey- Is This Desire?
This album is a wee bit of a cheat since a)it's not mine and 2)I never even heard the album until about 2002. However, I do remember hearing "A Perfect Day Elise" back in 98 and I did like it, I just never got around to listening to more of the album. But I have become a PJ fan since then. My "thing" with this album has been that I've never been able to differentiate it from To Bring You My Love because I heard them at the same time. Which is why I added it to this little experiment of mine. I know I like the album, but i really don't know how much. So I'll be spending the month thinking "This song is on this album? Who knew?" A lot.

Jude- No One is Really Beautiful
Way back when, I was really into this album and probably would've said that Jude was my favorite male artist. Now i'm not so sure I'll even enjoy the album outside of  "I Know", which I still think is a great song. so this should be interesting.