Saw the one and only current iteration of Fleetwood Mac in Atlanta, last week. When they first announced this tour, way back in the summer, ATL was the closest show to us. And since we have friends down there, we made a long weekend of it - for those wondering, ATL is approx. 8,000 square miles of tightly packed strip malls, laced with inadequate roads. FM have since announced a show about an hour from our house. Oh well.

They were great. They played great, sounded great and looked like they were having fun doing it. And best of all, my favorite, Christine McVie, was with them. She had stopped touring in 1998 - fear of flying, now remedied. She wasn't with them the last time I saw FM, which made a pretty big hole in the line-up. She's 71 now, but sounded nearly as good as she did in the 1970s. They all did, really. Even if they each backed off the really high notes from time to time, they can still sing.

No new album to support, so it was a Greatest Hits kind of show. And while they only played stuff from the Buckingham & Nicks era, they easily filled the three hours and still left a bunch of classics un-sung.

When I, my wife, and our friend Paige walked out of the Atlanta airport terminal, to wait on the curb for our ride, a very-nicely-dressed black gentleman strolled up next to us, to wait for his ride. He was wearing a "WBC" baseball cap. A young guy walked up to him and started talking. Then the young guy handed Paige his cellphone and asked if she would take a picture of him with this gentleman, which she did. Then the gentleman's ride pulled up and he rolled away. I'm pretty sure it was Evander Holyfield.

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Two weeks ago, we saw Adrian Belew at the Cat's Cradle. He's doing the 'power trio' line-up (him, bass, drums) this time. In order to squeeze in as many fan requested songs as possible, I guess, about half of the songs were abbreviated versions - verse, chorus, verse). This grated on me a bit. Still, he's always a good time.

Vaults miniature Mick Fleetwood:

Saw Mr. Beck Hansen last night, at the Red Hat ™ Amphitheater in loverly downtown Raleighville.

Because they got rid of the first three sections of seats in order to make a 'pit' area (so thousands of people could stand shoulder to shoulder in a 90-degree Raleigh July evening), I bought a seated ticket - right in back of the sound guy, as it turns out. At least I'd get the best possible sound!? I surely hope I didn't, because it mostly sounded like crap. The only songs that sounded good were the mellower things from his current album. Everything else - all the loud, rappy, sing-along songs - that was a mushy mess. So, though I couldn't really tell if they were any good, the band did seem to be having a good time. And from my vantage point, Beck himself was a very mobile and active indistinct black and white blob.

Beck is the bright-blue smudge on the far left. The big building in the middle is the county jail. Atmosphere.

The beers were $8, but they were 24oz, so not really expensive. The bros were there in force. I left my assigned seat early and wandered the place seeking better views - they were all better than sitting in back of the sound guy. The venue sits right next to - and because it's a bowl, right below - the train tracks, and trains always go by during shows. Last night, three Amtracks passed by. I wonder if the people on the train are able to hear the concerts.

Song selection was good; he easily filled the 90 minutes with his hits and the better of his non-hits. There are about a dozen songs I would've also liked to hear, but Raleigh's noise ordinances mean all shows there have to be done by 10:00 - there was only so much time.

A band called "Ghost of a Sabre-toothed Tiger" opened. They do the same kind of retro-psychedelic rock that Tame Impala does, so I dug them. And they actually sounded better than Beck did. They ended with a rockin version of Syd Barrett's "Long Gone", which was very cool. Turns out, though I didn't know it at the time, that their singer is Sean Lennon: son of John and Yoko. I reckon that gives them a better claim on the sound than the Aussies in Tame Impala. And that's probably the closest I'll ever get to a Beatle.

Dude is 64 years old.

He did a dual headliner show with Pat Benatar last night in Raleigh. They all did all their hits. So, for me, it was like being 10 again.

Rick Springfield rocked more than you might expect, and he's a surprisingly decent guitar player, which was fun to see. I was sure he only had two songs I'd know but it turns out there were probably a dozen - not counting the covers. He was goofy and hammy and loves being the center of the ladies' attention - so he spent a few songs running around in the crowd with his shirt off.

Pat Benatar, and her partner/husband Neil Geraldo were a touch more serious about things - not a lot of goofing around. Maybe a little too serious... They had a lot of canned backing tracks, and the effects on her voice were a bit heavy: so much that you sometimes couldn't her her at all - though maybe that was the point? What I thought I heard sounded fine, though. Geraldo (who played guitar on the original of Springfield's "Jessie's Girl", btw) is very good, very fast, very busy, and not at all the kind of player who simply plays the chords for more than a couple of beats; the bass player carries the tune. but given the way bass sounds in a bit outdoor concert, sometimes the tune had to be inferred from memory + vocals. But, they were still good. And they tore through all their hits, and a couple of covers, with a lot more energy than I was expecting.

So, a good time - more fun than I thought an oldies show could be.

Had tix to see Vampire Weekend in Raleigh last night. I didn't go.

I told myself it was because it was an outdoor show and there was a 60% chance of one of those strong late-afternoon thunderstorms - all true. But, honestly, I'd been hoping for rain all day. As much as I like the band, the prospect of shitty seats, outdoors, on a weekday, with a 40 minute drive each way was just too much.

Alas.

And today I bought a ticket to a New Pornographers show! Throwing my money away is fun!

Saw Gil and Dave last night, at Durham's pretty Carolina Theater. That's the place we first saw them, many years ago. And if my memory is correct, last night was the eighth time I've seen them, either as "Gillian Welch" (5) or as the David Rawlings Machine (3). That bumps them to the top of the list of bands I've seen the most: making Robyn Hitchcock #2.

They don't have a new record to promote right now, so the show was a good mix of all their stuff. They hit every record pretty well, and played most of the songs I wanted to hear - and a few I wouldn't have thought to want to hear but was glad to hear anyway.

As always, they were fantastic. I can't think of a band that's as much fun to watch as those two. And yet they do their thing with absolutely no grandstanding or theatrics. They don't flex or strut and there's no spectacle. They just stand there and play and sing. They let the songs do everything. And it's perfect every time.

...at the Haw River Ballroom.

The last time I saw St Vincent, I had no idea who they were. They were just an opening band that I thought might be interesting but couldn't really appreciate because of sound issues.

This time, she was the headliner, and the show was completely in her hands. There was a set; the lighting was extravagant; there was choreography; a costume change; songs were tight; effects were coordinated; there were no amplifiers on stage; some of the effects on her guitar seemed to be controlled off-stage (maybe timed?); the rest of the band (two keyboard players and a drummer) was dressed in black and pushed to the corners, leaving Annie Clark as the focal point.

And she made good use of the attention.

She stayed in her detached sexy art robot persona during the songs, and did a few wry, surreal, Byrne-style chats with the audience, in-between.

Some songs, she did from atop her little ziggurat.

Or while crawling on it. Or sliding down it.

She got a lot of use out of the floor, too.

The show was really spectacular, especially for such a small stage. The lights and the bits of choreography (not like Britney dance moves, more like disaffected synchronized music robots) and the electronics were in a completely different league from anything I'd ever seen in a small club. Very cool.

The music was, of course, mostly from her current record, with a lot from her previous one, and just a few from the rest. All good songs, though as always, a couple of my favorites got left out. The sound was loud, super-bass-heavy and really great - no amps on stage meant no real stage sound to compete with the PA. So everyone got the full sound-guy mix - none of the stage-sound blast that nearly wrecked it for me, last time. And no time spent fiddling with electronics, either. That's something I wish more bands would try: all direct sound. IMO, the days of needing a big-ass amp on stage should be over soon - small amps and electronics can handle 99% of what a guitar player needs. Let the PA handle the volume.

And she's a fantastic guitar player and singer, too.

Pretty wild stuff. See her/them if you have the chance. She's one of a kind.

Another great show at the Cat's Cradle.

Jeff Mangum, and up to a half-dozen multi-instrumentalists, duplicated the raucous carnival sound of the records. There were singing saws, horns of all sizes, keyboards, a zanzithophone and an electronic bagpipe. Not a single electric guitar - an acoustic into a fuzz box does the same job. It all sounded fantastic.

"In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" was well-represented. And there were at least two songs from their first album, and two from each of the two EPs. Turns out there is NMH stuff that I don't own - how wonderful! It was a little unsettling to hear the Aeroplane songs out of order - that's a start-to-finish record for me. Still, this show had the unusual effect of making me want to immediately listen to the band's recorded music. Most shows fill me up on that band, so to speak; I usually avoid a band for a while after a show. But this one put all those songs into a new light; I had assumed were layered-up studio creations (and maybe they were), but seeing them done so well live with the full band, makes them seem a lot more alive than they were before. I want to hear them knowing that it's possible (though unlikely) that they were recorded with all of the people standing in the same room.

iPhone
Pix were prohibited, but I snuck one at the end. During Two Headed Boy, Pt2.

They were apparently making a recording of the show. A guy was manning a computer off to the side of the stage and it looked like he was giving Mangum advice about vocal levels. I was standing right in front of one of the mics aimed at the audience - if they put out a live record, maybe you'll hear me breathing!

It was the second of two sold-out shows in Chapel Hill. And not only was it a NMH show, it was Super Bowl Sunday, and the crowd really looked like the opposite of a crowd of football fans.

Elf Power opened - handy, because the two bands share a member (the zanzithophone and trumpet player) I have one of their records, but I didn't recognize anything from it. They were fun anyway.