I went to see Swans! Best show I've ever been to. Met the band, they signed all my stuff, really humble people, great live musicians.
Here is a video of the intro to
"No Words / No Thoughts". Swans are sort of like a drone-metal band with good stage presence - they played 8 songs for about 3 hours total. They even played a new song, which was billed as "NEW SONG" on the setlist but I was close enough to see Michael Gira's handwritten lyric sheet for the track and it is apparently called "Apostate". The camera-phone recording I got of it is mostly dull, since the sound blows, but the final 40 seconds or so are made up a Phil Puleo drum solo that just about destroyed me. When I get the video to post, that "Holy Shit!" you hear at the end is me.
Opener was a band called Wooden Wand, sort of an outlaw country / blues band. They were pretty good.
Setlist.
Chris Pravdica (of Flux Information Sciences, Services, etc.), bass player. It was tough to get a frontward view of the guy, but we chatted him up real good after the show. He was in a seminal Massachusetts band called... The Interminable Popes? Something sort of like that.
The elusive Thor Harris, of Shearwater, a talented multi-instrumentalist who played a number of percussive and melodic instruments. Favorite had to be xylophone bars played with violin strings. He is a hairy manly man but he is possibly the sweetest guy you could ever talk to.
From where we were standing, we barely had view of Thor (and no view whatsoever of Phil Puleo, unfortunately).
Michael Gira is as much a conductor as a singer. It seems like he changes arrangements on the fly and directs his bandmates to hold their bludgeoning for another bar or bring in the cymbal crashes early. His perfectionism is off-putting to some extent (makes him look like a bossy boss) but it certainly fits with his persona as a mad genius.=
When Norman Westburg isn't playing, he stands exactly like this, motionless, with a contemptuous scowl on his face. It's actually really intimidating. Where Michael Gira is a whirlwind of manic energy, Westburg exudes barely controlled violence. We were standing right in front of him and I was genuinely worried he would hurt me, since I was blatantly filming and snapping shots. He had a red splotch on his left shoe that may or may not have been blood.
I like this shot. It's hard to separate out of focus pictures and pictures of motion, but the mic in the foreground is a clear indicator that it's Gira, not the camera, that's moving.
Gira gesticulates wildly during his performances - For such an atheistic individual, his concerts play like Charismatic revivals, with improvised dances, speaking in tongues, and lots of shouting.
Thor with the oboe power.
Highlights of the show were the breakdown in "Sex God Sex" where Gira is left to chant "JESUS CHRIST, COME DOWN, COME DOWN NOW" whilst vigorously slapping himself in the face. Really unexpected and powerful. He also spit on the audience, grabbed and pulled at his crotch, shook his ass (and let audience members slap it) and broke several guitar strings.
Between-song banter: "COLLEGE ROCK... FOLLOWING CLOSELY IN THE STEPS OF ARCADE FIRE" (Gira apparently has a strong dislike of Arcade Fire). Introducing his band and then himself as Sarah Palin. Expressing a wish to taste the bodily fluids of every person in the venue.
Talked a bit to Christoph Hahn (who looks and sounds just like an elderly version of Tommy, oddly enough) and Chris Pradvica, who I didn't realize was in a lot of experimental industrial bands I really enjoy. Phil Puleo and Norman Westburg were not going out to the floor to meet fans but they signed stuff from the stage and were generally friendly. Gira had his signature ten-gallon hat and cigar at the merch table but I only exchanged a few cliched words with him. He has a hells of firm handshake. Thor Harris is a total sweetheart and we met some friends of his who had been guest-listed.
I have more videos but they'll probably have to be uploaded tomorrow!
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Topic: You people go to shows, right? What future shows are you excited about? (Read 954297 times)