So, we here at the Outfield have been spending the summer enjoying lots of live music, as you know. But the month of August has been almost entirely dedicated to revisiting the music we loved in college (oh, those bygone years). On August 1, Joker and I (along with Mrs. Joker and my girlfriend) saw Dave Matthews Band (with Willie Nelson) at Louisville Slugger Field. It was a massive show with a huge crowd, possibly
the event of the summer for Louisville, and we were down on the grass for the show--in the literal outfield.
This was the first Dave Matthews Band appearance in Louisville since 1995 (and that had been only a 45-minute set at Farm Aid), so it seemed ripe for a real rock-out with loads of memories. But it didn't really turn out that way. The show opened with long jams, the first three songs taking about a half-hour, and high energy really only kicked in (for me, at least) when the band performed a cover of Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House." Things were up and down for a while, with a performance of "Gravedigger" featuring Willie Nelson as a definite highlight, but the regular set ended strongly with late appearances by "#41," "Dancing Nancies" and "Ants Marching," plus a scorching cover of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer." Still, I thought the show was lacking in the older, bigger hits, and went a little too strong on the jamming.
I know that's DMB's thing, and normally I wouldn't have a problem with it--if this were a concert at one of the venues they hit every summer. But this was a city were they hadn't played a full-length headlining show since becoming famous, so I'd think it would be expected that a large portion of the huge audience was fans who'd never seen the band before, not the traveling Daveheads that love setlist variety and long, trippy jams. So maybe it would have been a good idea to cater to the casual fans on this particular night. Just a thought from me.
Props, by the way, to my cousin CoCo and his crew (including his lovely wife, Ash) for navigating their way to the front rail, slightly to the side, just as DMB was starting to play. The girlfriend and I spent a little up-close time with the band thanks to them, and it was another great perspective on the show. All in all, we had a great time, but I wish the band had taken circumstances into account and thought about the many casual fans in attendance (some of whom I heard many complaints from in the subsequent week).
Eleven days later, the girlfriend and I checked out Smashing Pumpkins at the Louisville Palace, a much smaller venue for a much louder band. They're on a small-scale tour (few dates, tiny venues), and seemed to gear it for the diehard fans, with a setlist long on rarities and short on radio hits. Like Dave Matthews Band, they hadn't been to Louisville since their mid-nineties MTV heyday (1996, in fact--an arena show both Joker and I attended), so I think a lot of the attendees were expecting more classic material than they got, but I can kind of let this one slide where I didn't with DMB: since there were so many fewer available tickets, and publicity was pretty low (I ran into guys four days later wondering when the Smashing Pumpkins show was going to finally go on sale) outside the band's own website, there was probably a higher percentage of deep-catalogue fans at the theater show than at DMB's stadium gig. And the rarities they played
rocked.
The only other real complaint here was the sound, which was mixed a little too heavy to the bass and drums, burying Billy Corgan's vocals at times, and almost eliminating the details of the guitar solos. It was loud, which was appropriate, but it wasn't quite clear. And my only real setlist complaint was the extended rendition of Pink Floyd's "Set Your Controls for the Heart of the Sun" (no, I'd never heard of it, either), which was about fifteen minutes of repetitive grinding, coming in wave after wave (which I'm sure would be ideal entertainment on certain controlled substances, but was exceedingly boring to the sober), followed by an interesting but not exciting feedback freakout conducted by Corgan and guitarist Jeff Schroeder. Beyond that, though? Excellent renditions of "Siva," "Today," "Tonight, Tonight," "Bullet With Butterfly Wings," "Mayonaise," and "The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning" (the song made more famous recently by the
Watchmen trailer), and a host of lesser-known songs like "Heavy Metal Machine" and "United States of America" that were blisteringly entertaining. And the encore was a kazoo jamboree of "We Only Come Out at Night" and Mungo Jerry's "In the Summertime!" On top of all that, ZZ Top (in town to play the state fair two days later) was in the house, and Billy Gibbons popped onstage for a quick wave as Corgan took his final bow. Weird.
Four days later, Joker and I reconvened, along with CoCo and Ash, to see Stone Temple Pilots across the river at Southern Indiana's Horseshoe Casino. There had been some concern lately, amid reports (and widely circulated video footage) of a late-July show in Phoenix where notorious relapser Scott Weiland was, uh, less than crisp onstage, that maybe the shows were going downhill and the tour was wiping out. But I'm happy to say that on Saturday night in Indiana, nothing could be further from the truth. Halfway through the first song, "Big Empty," it was clear we were getting Good Scott that night.
The band, without a new record to promote ("Yet," teased Weiland), ran through their history, with most of the biggest hits (really, only "Unglued" and "Pretty Penny" were missing, as far as radio/MTV hits go) and a few surprising rarities ("Lounge Fly," "Too Cool Queenie," "Silvergun Superman"). All four members--Weiland, Eric Kretz, and the Brothers DeLeo--were in top form, rocking out and even smiling from time to time. The stage was outfitted with a stellar light show and a stage-wide video wall, used not for band closeups, but for animation and film footage, often casting the band in silhouette as they played. We got to see Weiland's signature dance moves, his liberal usage of a bullhorn, and even a low-level climb of the stage scaffold during "Sex Type Thing." All told, it was a monster show.
In less than two weeks, we'll be taking in our beloved Counting Crows in Cincinnati, thus closing out College Retro Month here at the Outfield. Can't wait!
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