2020

Clutch “Live from the Doom Saloon Volume III” Livestream 12/18/20

Having missed the first two installments of Clutch’s “Doom Saloon” livestreams, I was ecstatic when “Doom Saloon III” was announced. Even better was the fact that it was being advertised as a “greatest hits” performance or as the website said, “We have put together a set list of 15 of our most popular songs as requested by you the fans.” Having seen Clutch live many times my only complaint of recent shows is that they rarely play older material so I took this as a chance for fans like me to finally get to hear more of the older stuff. The term “older” does have some relativity here since they are now up to twelve studio albums so what I mean by older is the first two or three albums, having been a fan since the first release Transnational Speedway League. Don’t get me wrong I also like the “newer” material but those first few albums just hold a special place in my heart I guess. 

The stream started out with a montage of fan-submitted footage of people singing along and playing along with Clutch songs on their instrument of choice. After this there was a segment called “Clutch Reacts: Archives” that showed the band reminiscing about old footage of themselves interspersed with questions from fans. This was followed by a tour of their combo Weathermaker record label warehouse where they house their wares before being shipped out and band gear and Doom Saloon studio which houses the live room where they hang out, jam and stream. During the Q&A section I found it interesting that the band was evenly split between Jam Room (Neil and Tim) and Clutch (rhythm sectin) when asked what their favorite album was. It was also interesting to hear how integral they consider performing live to the writing process since it gives them an opportunity to test out the crowd reaction. When asked about their favorite song they all said the “newest one we’re working on,” which was akin to asking an athlete why they won the game and receiving a response of “we scored more points than the other team.”

“Earth Rocker” got the party started and although I thought the sound quality was fantastic Neil apparently thought differently as evidenced by his comment immediately after of “OK. Just so you know this is not pre-recorded otherwise we would re-cut that because there’s something going on with the bass. We’ll figure it out. We’ll have to sort that out before “Spacegrass.” What I heard in this comment was a.) the sound quality was about to get even better and b.) I was going to get to see/hear “Spacegrass.” Eff yeah!

Circling back to set list of the most popular songs, Neil further clarified before they began saying that these songs were the top 15 from over 4,000 submissions for “Doom Saloon II “and would be played staring with number 15 going all the way down to number 1. All I have to say is either the group of 4,000 that voted has for the most part a very different idea of the best Clutch songs than I do or Clutch just played what they wanted to play. I’ll never know for sure but I enjoyed the set regardless. “A Shogun Named Marcus” and “Spacegrass” were worth the price of admission alone.

SETLIST: Earth Rocker, Cypress Grove, 50,000 Unstoppable Watts, D.C. Sound Attack!, In Walks Barbarella, A Shogun Named Marcus, The Elephant Riders, The Regulator, The Mob Goes Wild, X-Ray Visions, 10001110101, Electric Worry, Burning Beard, A Quick Death in Texas, Spacegrass

Primus “Alive from Pachyderm Station” Livestream 12/11/20

Well it only took me nine livestreams to figure out that I should hook my laptop up to my tv using an HDMI cable instead of just watching on my laptop but I guess better late than never. 

This livestream was being broadcast from Les Claypool’s winery, Claypool Cellars. Right at the beginning there was a disclaimer that mentioned the word “produced.” So much for a “live” stream… Those thoughts quickly melted away as soon as the stream began with “Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers.” No banter, just right into it. It was mind blowing to see Les shred on a bass with a whammy bar and this was only the first song! Fuck yes Les! Somewhere in the middle of the song they took a detour to play “Lacquer Head” and then brought it back around to close “Tweekers” out. Killer.

After that they did “Too Many Puppies,” which also had a detour in the middle when they played “Sgt. Baker” before they brought it back around to close out “Puppies.” The level of musicianship to do this kind of thing is astounding. I was really digging the Sailing the Seas of Cheese vibe since that is one of my favorite Primus albums. The two gummies I ate beforehand probably did not hurt anything either. Right around this time I saw something on the chat that said “Les is more” that gave me a chuckle before they continued on with “American Life.”

Next they went back to Fizzle Fry with “Pudding Time.” Les proclaimed “Not too bad for a few old turds” afterwards then dedicated the next song “The Anitpop” to Eddie V (Eddie Van Halen). For “Seas of Cheese” Les played a skinny stand up bass on a stand with a bow as he did when I saw him with Sean Lennon with The Claypool Lennon Delirium. An image of a pig mask then appeared onscreen and I immediately thought “Mr. Krinkle” because of the video and the next thing you know they started playing it. This was funny because I was just thinking to myself not too long before this that I had loved Primus from the first time I heard them, which was when I saw the video for “Mr. Krinkle.”

Following this they went back to Antipop with “The Heckler” or as Les said, “This song is called the hackeysack, the hackeysackler.” At this point I was thinking Larry LaLonde does not get enough credit for being a badass guitarist.  They stuck with Antipop with heavy psychedelic production effects during “Electric, Electric” then went back to Fizzle Fry with “Harold of the Rocks.” For “Over the Electric Grapevine” Les brought out another crazy custom bass. His basses remind me of Prince’s custom guitars.

Sailing the Seas of Cheese got more love with “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” then the cover of The Rainbow Goblins book appeared before they played “The Seven.” Just as it was when I saw The Claypool Lennon Delirium “Southbound Pachyderm” was the closer but this time I actually got to see it!

Overall this set that clocked in at exactly an hour and a half was damn near perfect. For a fan that has been with the band for this many years it was very exciting how deep into the catalog they went. A+

SETLIST: Those Damned Blue Collar Tweekers, Lacquer Head, Too Many Puppies, Sgt. Baker, American Life, Pudding Time, The Antipop, Seas of Cheese, Mr. Krinkle, The Heckler, Electric, Electric, Harold of the Rocks, Over the Electric Grapevine, Jerry Was a Race Car Driver, The Seven, Southbound Pachyderm

MoPOP Founders Award 2020 Honoring Alice In Chains Livestream 12/1/20

This was a star studded free livestream to honor the career of Alice In Chains and raise money for the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, also known locally as EMP or Experience Music Project as it was originally named. After 10 minutes of messing around with trying to get the feed it finally kicked on with Alice In Chains in the middle of performing “Your Decision.” Observations from the two and a half hour event:

  • Jerry Cantrell reprised his role as Nona from back in the day when they did the Nona Tapes! This was awesome because I had the original home video on VHS back in the day.
  • Mike McCready made a brief appearance doing the opening riff of “It Ain’t Like That” that made me want to hear the whole song but no dice.
  • Ann Wilson sang “Rooster” spliced with old Alice In Chains footage with Layne. She has an amazing voice but I just wasn’t feeling her version.
  • Corey Taylor, Dave Navarro and Taylor Hawkins did a performance of “Man In the Box” with current Jane’s Addiction bass player Chris Chaney. Some might say Corey was making the song his own with the vocals but to me it sounded like he was just struggling to imitate Layne. This is coming from a guy that loves Corey Taylor so no disrespect to him but after hearing two great singers do Alice In Chains songs it just made me appreciate how incredibly unique and talented Layne was even more.  At this point I realized I was in for a long night.
  • Duff McKagan and Shooter Jennings did a pretty rad version of  “Down In a Hole” with Duff impressively playing all the instruments except lead guitar. This is such a powerful song and they captured the overall mood perfectly.
  • Korn did an admirable job covering “Would?” but cover songs are a strange beast to me. I love Korn but feel like you either need to absolutely fucking nail it, make it way different or make it better in some way and this did not do any of those things for me.
  • Mark Lanegan and his backing band of misfits including Nancy Wilson covered “Brother” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just got done reading Lanegan’s book and I could tell he was giving an inspired performance for his fallen friend.
  • Fishbone did a cover of “Them Bones” with horns and all and it was awesome. They definitely made this song their own but kept the bones of the song intact (pun intended).
  • MoPOP has a contest for local talent called Sound Off and at this point the program featured a handful of gifted artists doing various bits of Alice In Chains songs. 
  • An artist named Liv Warfield did a cover of “Put You Down” that was respectable. It is always nice to hear women in rock.
  • Mastodon covered “Again” and the music part was on point but again I just was not digging the vocals.
  • Kim Thayil made an appearance with a group of people I did not recognize doing a full-length version of “It Ain’t Like That,” which finally quieted my brain after the teaser Mike McCready threw out at the top of the program.
  • Kim Thayil and Krist Novoselic doing “Drone” with two female singers was right up there as the highlight of the whole thing for me. It simply sounded great.
  • Weirdo extraordinaire Les Claypool made a cameo doing a crazy partial bass solo version of “Man In the Box” that was pretty cool.
  • Lily Cornell Silver (daughter of Chris Cornell and Susan Silver) made her professional music performance debut playing piano and singing the beautifully haunting “Black Gives Way to Blue” with Queensryche’s Chris DeGarmo accompanying her on acoustic guitar and she killed it. I guess it does not hurt to have great genes.
  • Mark Lanegan made a second appearance doing “Nutshell,” which I did not enjoy as much as his first act but still liked nonetheless.
  • Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd did “Angry Chair” with Tad Doyle singing and it stirred the same emotions in me as the Mastodon cover did: musically it was great but Tad’s vocals just were not doing it for me. Mike McCready showed up again during this just long enough to lay down a scorching one-two punch solo with Kim.
  • Billy Corgan did a stark rendition of “Check My Brain” alone with an acoustic guitar. I love Billy but if you have read this far then you know his voice was definitely out of its element here.
  • Metallica was one of the most anticipated performances of the night but when they finally appeared doing a partial acoustic version of “Would?” (that had already been done by Korn) it was a little disappointing.
  • The grand finale was Alice In Chains doing “No Excuses” and it was a nice ending to a really magnificent evening.

It is noteworthy that it was free to watch the event but money was being raised through donations. While this was nice it was also disheartening to see the tally of money raised at a paltry amount even as we neared the end of the broadcast. They could have raised way more money if they had just charged something in the first place. Since most of the other streams I have been watching average $15 for a ticket I made a donation in that amount because music is important and MoPOP is doing good work for the community and the arts in general.

Foo Fighters Livestream 11/14/20

The Metallica livestream ended about an hour before this one started, which means I had a good little buzz going by the start. Compared to some of the other livestreams I recently watched this one was very no-frills and more like an actual concert. They walked out, Dave said “Ladies and Gentlemen…The Foo Fighters” and then just got right into the rocking. At this point I started thinking about how ironic it was that there was a chat feature. Bands are usually against people being on their phones at actual concerts since it is distracting and I do not see how the chat feature is any different. Speaking of distracting I love Vans Old Skool shoes so it is worth noting that Dave’s red Old Skool’s caught my eye right away as did Pat’s constant guitar changing throughout.

Foo Fighters shows are always energetic with lots of good natured banter/joking going on so I figured the band might interact directly with the camera a little but no dice. It was almost like watching a concert that was filmed without the intent of livestreaming. That being said they still had some tricks up their sleeve: during “The Sky is a Neighborhood” they brought out a live choir of four younger looking people; “Times Like These” was sped up, which gave it a completely different feel; they unveiled the first live showing of their new song “Shame Shame” and “My Hero” turned into a sing along with the road and camera crew with a freak-out ending.

At one point when it seemed like the band was done Dave quipped, “You all are in the band and you didn’t know it wasn’t over yet?” A little later they tacked “Lump” by The Presidents of the United States of America onto the end of “Learn to Fly.” Being a fan of all the Foo material it is nice to hear something other than “the hits” so “This Is a Call” was a very welcomed addition to the setlist as was the super groovy “Make It Right.”

SETLIST: All My Life, The Pretender, The Sky is a Neighborhood, Times Like These, Shame, Shame, My Hero, These Days, Learn to Fly, This is a Call, Make It Right, Best of You, Everlong

Metallica Livestream 11/14/20

An entire acoustic Metallica concert? It sounded just weird enough to work and let’s be honest with no in-person live music to experience this was also a another much needed concert alternative. What made this livestream different from the start was the fact that they were raising money for the charity they started called All Within My Hands. Pretty cool. 

After 30 minutes of promos for the charity they unveiled the Metallica HQ setup where they would be performing. The band was surrounded by four video walls divided into several hexagons that projected live video of folks who were willing to cough up some extra dough to essentially be there in the room. The band was very interactive with the people on the walls so for some of these lucky people the extra money was well spent.

They started out with a severely reworked acoustic version of “Blackened,” which pretty much set the tone for how a majority of their songs would translate to an acoustic treatment. I must say I have never seen anyone shred on a 12 string acoustic guitar like Kirk Hammet did during “The Unforgiven.” Wow. “Nothing Else Matters” was predictably the song that sounded most similar to the regular version and by no means was that a bad thing. A touching moment was when Lars & James brought in their sons to play percussion for “All Within My Hands” from St. Anger.

After a short intermission they ditched the acoustic instruments to play an electric batch of songs. Continuing on the theme of weird was a version of “Disposable Heroes” that was barely recognizable and an awesome version of “House of the Rising Sun.” A Metallica album that does not get enough credit is Load so it was great to see a balls-out showing of “Wasting My Hate.” Despite “Enter Sandman” being played so much during its peak I’ll be damned if I do not get riled up during the rare time when I do hear it so this was a fitting way to end the show.

SETLIST: Blackened, Creeping Death, When a Blind Man Cries, The Unforgiven, Now That We’re Dead, Turn the Page, Nothing Else Matters, All Within My Hands, Disposable Heroes, House of the Rising Sun, Waste My Hate, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Master of Puppets, Enter Sandman

311 Livestream 11/11/20

Music is probably my favorite 311 album but by the time I first saw 311 in 2007 there were only a few of the songs that made their way into the setlist. I received an email to let me know that 311 would be doing a separate livestream for each of their first three albums a month apart. I have definitely spent 20 bucks on worse things.

The email confirmation said “VIDEO GOES LIVE AT 5:00 PM PT; PERFORMANCES BEGIN AT 6:00 PM PT.” What this equated to was an 8-bit version of “Down” playing with a cartoon-y background then the feed immediately cutting to a 10-minute timer with trippy visuals/sound for all the stoners in the crowd, and by the looks of the chat box that appeared to be many. Nearly the whole 5 o’clock hour was just shots of the empty stage/studio where the band was to play save for the occasional foghorn to announce “311Music Facts,” which was a punny way to give some background on the album. Finally near the end of the hour they showed a time lapse of “the Hive” being built and then rolled right into “Welcome” before playing the rest of the album front to back in sequence.

This livestream was actually live unlike at least one of the previous livestreams I recently watched that was pre-recorded. I thought it was ironic that there was a chat box the whole time because bands in a live setting usually want people to forego technology and pay attention to the performance. This got me wondering how many people at home were taking shitty video clips of their computer screen with their phones and posting to YouTube but I digress. These guys are awesome live and although having to watch a live performance physically removed from the band was somewhat of a bummer it still did not disappoint. I was especially feeling “Visit,” “Unity,” “Plain,” and “Feels So Good” and whether they wanted to or not so were my neighbors.

Mr. Bungle Livestream 10/31/20

After not seeing a live concert for about eight months now, I have really been appreciating the “livestreams” starting to happen with increased frequency. Mr. Bungle is a band I have heard many times but not one I ever saw live. Their ADD style of music is not something I am always in the mood for but Scott Ian and Dave Lombardo recently joining the band definitely piqued my curiosity. 

This stream aired on Halloween (the Michael Myers head on top of Scott’s amp was a nice touch) but one of the benefits of the livestream format is being able to watch the stream up to 48-72 hours later depending on the band, which is exactly what I did in this case.

Neil Hamburger opened the stream with a very dry comedy set making fun of the likes of Kiss, Britney Spears, Eagles, Foo Fighters, U2, Aerosmith, and others interspersed with some backstage tomfoolery including footage of Mike Patton getting Coolio braids.

The concert portion of the stream was unique in the fact that it was staged in the Eureka Public Library, which made the opening number of Mr. Rogers “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” that much funnier. Part of the impetus of this incarnation of the band revolves around a re-recording of the band’s infamous demo The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny so the remainder of the setlist was a mixture of those songs and cover songs. My favorite covers included an altered lyric version of Seals & Crofts “Summer Breeze,” a much needed metal version of “La Cucaracha” and Van Halen’s “Tora! Tora!” and “Loss of Control” in tribute to Eddie Van Halen. Anyone who has heard Mike Patton’s vocal range will not be surprised to hear that he can sound a hell of a lot like David Lee Roth when he wants to. Similarly anyone who has heard/seen Trey Spruance play the guitar will not disagree when I proclaim him to be a wizard.

All in all it was pretty fantastic to see these guys lock into a groove and then suddenly without warning shift the tempo up to warp speed or slow it way down. It was also pretty funny that they cut to a couch in between songs for cameos from Glenn Howerton, Henry Rollins, Brendan Small, David Yow, Suzy Cole, King Buzzo, Josh Homme and Brian Posehn. I can only hope that one day I will get to see Mr. Bungle in person one day.

Stone Temple Pilots Livestream 10/16/20

Stone Temple Pilots released their second album Purple on June 7, 1994. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard Music Charts and I purchased one of the copies that helped put it there. I was on board with STP after just one listen to “Sex Type Thing” so it was a no-brainer to pick up Purple on the day it came out. More than 25 years later I was excited to revisit an album still fairly heavy in my personal rotation by witnessing a livestream of the album performed by the band. Scott Weiland would be missing of course, but having seen Jeff Gutt front the band through its set at Aftershock 2019 I was confident he could help keep the spirit of the songs alive. Below are some expansions of notes I jotted down as I was watching the livestream:

“Meatplow” – still rockin’ with that killer riff.

“Vaseline” – made me think of Scott’s sad performance that went viral near the end of his life where something was clearly wrong. At this point I also started questioning how “live” this livestream was. There was no talking to address the audience up to this point and it seemed a little too produced.

“Lounge Fly” – my suspicions about this being live were further escalated before the band played this song after a still image of the original recording log came onto the screen and Dean told a story of how the song was written on the record label’s private jet on a particularly turbulent ride getting from the Grammy’s in L.A. down to San Diego for a show. He said the slide extremes in the guitar were meant to represent the plane going down. “New guy” singer Jeff Gutt sounded slightly Scott on this song.

“Interstate Love Song” – the still image of the recording log combined with narration continued between practically every song after that, this time with a story about how Interstate Love Song came about. It was during this song I realized that both Jeff and Robert were wearing their sunglasses inside throughout the whole performance. Rock ‘N’ Roll.

“Still Remains” – made my nipples hard. This is not just one of my favorite songs on the album but one of my favorite songs ever. Melodically the song is just gorgeous.

“Pretty Penny” – perfectly exemplified what made STP so special.

“Silvergun Superman” – also one of my favorites on this album and they nailed it.

“Big Empty” – definitely suits Jeff’s voice well as his timbre most similarly sounded like Scott during this song.

“Unglued” – during the pre-song narration it was revealed that this song was built off a riff that Scott brought to the band, which made me smile and miss Scott even more. Banger.

“Army Ants” – The intro riff sounded a little weird because everything up to that point had been played pretty much note for note with the album but then the song hit and all was well.

“Kitchenware & Candybars” – very tender song that shows both extremes of this album.

After “Kitchenware & Candybars” the stream very abruptly switched back to the image of the album cover that was there before the stream started and that was that. No nod to the hilarious “hidden track.” All in all it was exactly what I was hoping for. They drew me into their world despite being on a computer screen. Just the thought of it being live changed the experience for me and although it pales in comparison to seeing the band at the Gorge less than two months after the album was released it was still pretty cool.

Down Livestream 8/29/20

Back in 2019 Down announced that they would be touring in 2020 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut album NOLA…then the pandemic happened. A compromise that would still allow them to play the entire album came in the form of a livestream slated for August 29th, which was awesome except that was the weekend that I was going to be in Nashville with no realistic way to watch. 

Fast-forward a couple days to when Joe saved the day by sharing his link with me and giving me a heads up that I needed to watch before the link went dead. Had I known the link was good to re-watch the livestream for 48 hours afterwards I would have just ponied up the $9 but that’s what friends are for. I started the stream about 20 minutes before the deadline fully expecting to have it cut out but much to my surprise the links worked all the way through both parts.

This livestream was professionally produced and just well done overall, a stark contrast to the couple raw ones I previously watched. It was more like a concert film minus a live crowd combined with vignettes about how the band/album came to be and the indigenous people of New Orleans. The quality of the video and sound were both outstanding, as was the band’s damn near flawless performance of the songs. In between songs Phil expressed gratitude by giving a shout out to different countries of the world in a way that was both sincere and unintentionally hilarious. Down did not play the songs in the same order as they appeared on the album but they did play all of them and then ran through a handful of choice cuts from their other material. The songs from NOLA have stood the test of time and thankfully the band members were still standing long enough to give this gift back to the fans.

Seether livestream 5/24/20

The closest thing to a concert that I will seemingly get for the foreseeable future – Shaun Morgan from Seether livestreamed three songs (“69 Tea,” “Fine Again” and “The Gift”) with a little Q&A in between. The sound quality was terrible on both Facebook and YouTube but was good enough to feel the emotion coming through and it was free so who am I to bitch? He said they recorded about 20 songs that they whittled down to 13 for a new album set to drop in August.