Recent Shows I've Seen

I have yet to write about two recent shows I saw, but sitting here and thinking, they were both pretty damn phenomenal.

Earlier in the month I saw The Black Angels (again). This time they headlined at The Troubadour. Though mind-altering substances were imbibed, I thought they pretty much killed it. It seems that this band has seriously been reincarnated from multiple band members from the psychedelic era of the 60's. Their set lasted a bit over two hours, tribally-thumping out not only songs from Passover, but some new ones as well. Included was a really great rendition of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog". The crowd seemed very into it. The band looked like they were extremely focused and intent on blowing our minds. Which is exactly what they did.

Last weekend saw me at night one of LCD Soundsystem's three night run at the El Rey theatre. Having last seen them the boys as DJ's at the Standard, I was very excited to get back into the groove with the full band. Hadn't seen them since Coachella....I wanna say '04? Couldn't make it out this year, but if I did, I wouldn't have made it to their set at The Standard.

What can I say about James Murphy and his posse? They really know how to lay down extremely danceable, genre-defying, poptastic and funky rhythms. Though they only played for a little more than an hour, I can say that I haven't seen an L.A. crowd get down that hard in a really long time. I can actually tell you exactly when: Beasties Boys at the Henry Fonda last year. LCD ran through tunes from both albums that had the crowd singing, cheering and towards the end, really yearning for more. I guess that was my only disappointment (if you could call it that). I was a bit sad to hear that the next two nights had longer sets, but hey, I don't get paid to go to shows, nor miss work because of them.

All in all they were awesome shows. Next up on my agenda are Great Lake Swimmers, John Butler Trio, and Widespread Panic, who will be starting their next three night run at a new venue this year: The Orpheum Theatre, All should be a blast.