Cleveland, Listing It Up, Live Shows, Music, Punk, Top 12

My Top 12 Live Punk Rock Albums

28 April, 2009 Brian Mc 6 Comments

I just viewed a clip of an amazing video taken from a Bruce Springsteen live show recently where he brought punk rock legend Mike Ness on stage to play “Bad Luck”. Have you seen it?

This was just another one of those random concert highlights made possible by a live show with a performer who had a good idea for the evening and the fans who were all in attendance that night now have ultimate bragging rights as they can say “I was there.”

I have always been a fan of live shows and will always be. It’s one of those things in life that I enjoy doing and can not see myself quitting anytime soon. The atmosphere alone with screaming fans and endless smiles makes the experience worth returning to. I love being a part of the evening and telling friends what I saw the next day followed by a bold “I was there” bragging statement about something only the ticket holders that night got to see before anyone else.

I admit I do not attend as many shows as I used to but I still make an effort to hit a few local venues and festivals every year just to keep the momentum going. If a band I am a fan of rolls through town I do what I can to make arrangements to get to the venue that night to see them.

When not driving downtown to see shows I like to occasionally listen to a live show from the comfort of my home. It’s easy to say I would rather be in a packed club listening to live music as the experience is like none other, but sometimes just hanging out at home is good enough as well.

Having a decent collection of live albums I thought I would narrow things down a bit and ask myself:

What Are My Top 10 Live Punk Rock Albums?

Scratch that…

What Are My Top 12 Live Punk Rock Albums?

Twelve is much better of a number to work with where there is so many live CDs to choose from.

Sure I could have a top live shows list from all genres but that would take me forever. As a music lover there are a ton of recorded shows out there that I own or have listened to that have had a huge impact on me. I think it would be best to start with baby steps with the genre of music that means the most to me; punk rock. I also decided to keep it to actual releases by record labels and include no bootlegs (although I have some amazing live shows that never were released…)

After pondering this question for a couple of days I soon realized how hard this was for me to answer. I had a nice sized list of live shows in my head but found it was no easy task to narrow down. For the record, this was a very difficult list to compile for me as a fan. There are so many other bands that deserve to be on this list but these top twelve mean the most to me.

In no particular order I here are my top twelve live punk rock CDs:

Social Distortion – Live At The Roxy
Mike Ness and crew always put on a good live show and this CD is listening proof. Having been a long time fan of this band it was clear that this CD needed to be on my list. Mike Ness more than a punk rock legend, the guy, to me, is a god and will be playing his heart out on stages all over the world until he is 100 years old. I will never grow tired of this CD ever.

NOFX – I Heard They Suck Live
Without a doubt this was one of the most entertaining live CDs I have ever heard. I remember buying the cassette and playing it over and over memorizing even the talking in between songs. NOFX puts on a fine show as well featuring all sorts of independent hits. I find it humorous that I list this CD directly after Social D because this show was played at the Roxy as well to a crowd of rowdy fans. If you have not heard it you are missing out, unless you are not a fan of NOFX.

The Clash –From Here To Eternity Live
Ok I am sure you are wondering why this album has a big line through it. Truth is I loved this CD for years until I heard a recent live release…

The Clash –Live At Shea Stadium
Now before you all jump on me and remind me that this CD is just The Clash (minus the original drummer) playing more popular songs hear me out. This show was not even a headlining show (they were opening for The Who) and the year was 1982; right about the time The Clash was headed on a downward spiral the would lead to the dismissal of the group. The set was shorter than their other live CDs but to me it was a great listen start to finish. I have listened to this CD a lot since it was released and it has made me reignite my love for one of the greatest punk bands of my time.

The Dead Kennedy’s – Live At The Deaf Club
Just thinking of how this shoe was recorded in 1983 still amazes me. My first and only taste of a live performance by this band was when I heard the improv “Night Of The Living Rednecks” on Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death. I was sucked in by Jello Biafra’s method of story telling on this track and of course a fan of The Dead Kennedy’s so it was more or less a bonus to me when a full length live CD was finally released. It also kills me that I was 2 years old when this concert took place. I’d love to hear from someone who was at this show just to hear their personal experience.

Ramones – Loco Live
Do I really need to explain myself here? Over thirty quick punk rock classics on one CD from the band that started punk rock in the states. I don’t think many folk can disagree that this CD belongs in anyone’s live punk CD list. It’s not top quality but it sure is fun as hell.

Bad Religion – Tested
This CD was not added into my collection for quite some time mainly because the CD was not readily available locally to me. Once I did get my hands on it though it became one of my favorite CDs to listen to by Bad Religion. I loved how the band recorded this CD, by plugging directly into their mics which in turn eliminated a lot of the crowd making for a more solid listen. With a solid setlist and exceptional performance by the punk rockers this is one of my favorite love CDs out there.

Flogging Molly – Alive Behind The Green Door
This Irish punk rock act is, without a doubt, one of the greatest bands to see live in my opinion. One thing I love about this disc is that it was released before any of their studio albums and recorded at Molly Malones, the bar where this band got their start. There are not a lot of bands out there that have followed this approach by releasing a CD full of songs that later would be studio recorded on to various releases over the years. The performance is clearly under the influence but ever so much fun.

Misfits – Evilive
The recording of this live show is horrible yet I love it. It is about the closest listen I have ever gotten to true live Misfits from back in the day. I did once witness the Misfits when Michael Graves took over the singing duties but it was no Glen Danzig and spite the good time I had it was not a genuine Misfits experience. This is a show I only dreamed of saying “I was there.” Full of classic songs, I also loved hearing Henry Rollins guest sing on “We Are 138.”

Death By Stereo – Death Alive
Many people may have not heard this CD when it first released as it was first given out for free with issues of the Volume 3 issue of Law of Inertia magazine in 2003. In 2007 the live performance was reissued by the band as Law Of Inertia went out of print and many fans missed out on this incredible recording. If you are a fan Death By Stereo or just good wholesome hardcore punk you really should check out this CD. This benefit show is full of so much energy I am surprised no one was hurt in the recording of it.

Face To Face – Live: Face To Face
Trevor Keith and crew have always had a special place in my punk rock heart. I love this band, always will, and this CD is listening proof of how great they are. The songs are all raw and full of energy and just impress track after track. When I think of a live album that I could listen to over and over again this is the one.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Live From The Middle East
Ska is not dead, never was, never will be. Ska may not be very popular these days but if you are a fan of the genre I suspect will be making a comeback soon, I am sure you know who the Bosstones are and very well have heard this CD. The performance contained in this CD makes it worthy of multiple listens. Such a great CD from beginning to end.

Against Me! – Americans Abroad!!! Against Me!!! Live In London!!!
Singing and shouting and good times for all on this CD. If you only have New Wave in your collection I think it would be best to put that down and go out and find this CD. I find myself singing along as if I were actually at the show while listening to this CD. That to me is a good live album.

Again, this list was so hard to compile. I would make a list of a whole bunch of band’s live CDs and then start crossing them out once I thought of another. I am sure I will be hearing from a lot of folk telling me I missed someone and at that time I will smack myself in the head and hate myself for 9 seconds because I forgot about a phenomenal show. I am ok with that though because I know there are a lot of awesome shows out there. A lot of artists can be put in this list but after all, it is my top 12.

I’d love to hear what your top 12, 10, even 2 are! As music fans we are entitled to what we like and sharing the love for music is a great thing.

Cleveland, Good Times, Photography, Random

What is this that you keep selling me, boy?

25 April, 2009 Brian Mc 3 Comments

The weather finally broke free of the evil cold chill the other day and boy did I take advantage of it.

I have an interesting work schedule so I have Thursdays and Fridays off. That my friends is my weekend and I made damn sure I was out doing things the entire time.

On Thursday I did the typical cleaning of the house and jammed out to some good tunes while doing so. I headed to Big Lots and picked up a receiver shelf I had my eye on for a while now so I could make my living room look less of a dorm room (I had 2 TV stands in there before – classy).

After putting the shelving unit together in one try I took my boys for a walk around the neighborhood and just soaked in the good weather.

That night I finally had the chance to meet up with Matt and pick up the records he so kindly purchased for me on Record Store Day while I was working. As a special thank you I brought him a gift, something he was looking for…

The vinyls he scored for me were awesome and I could not wait to get home and listen to them. I am not even sure if I am going to open a couple of them as they are collectors items for sure.

I also brought a box of old magazines and such from the 90’s I collected and later stored at my parent’s house. Matt had a smile that looked like he was opening J-Day presents when he starting going through all the back issues. I’ll let him explain why later.

After catching up for a bit and what not we headed to Angelo’s Pizza on Madison for some grub. If you are ever in the mood for pizza and find yourself on the west side of Cleveland I think it would be in your best interest to stop at this joint. We shared an amazing seafood pizza, which I might add intimidated me at first because I did not think it could be done. I have a new favorite pizza now. The crust alone is like eating breadsticks. I am serious about to call off work right now and head out there for lunch…

Friday I was the landscaper of sorts and mowed my lawn for the first time this year. I love having a lawnmower with a bag on it so I can just vacuum up all the leaves and sticks I missed cleaning up last month. After I did a so-so job I spent a few hours with these guys playing:

See that blue ball? Sweet Lou (the tan dog) is addicted to it. Seriously, I call it the crack ball because he is obsessive about it and will cry if he can not play with it. He chews on it like it is bubble gum and will try and bring it to you when he wants to play “ball”, but usually he grabs it and runs away when I reach for it. The good thing about “ball” is that it keeps his attention and he stays in my unfenced yard and I can do my thing around it without having to chain him up. The bad thing is trying to get him away from the “ball” when it is time to go in or what not.

After a couple hours of playing “ball” the infamous ((RAD))am stopped by and him and I headed out to go thrifting. It was a good day for thrifting and I scored a few select apparel items that will make me look super cool.

From there we swung back to my house to pick up a beautiful lady who just got home from class and headed for some Skyline Chili. It was the first thing I had ate all day and furthermore the last too. I stuffed myself silly.

The cutest girl on the block I had the pleasure of taking to lunch soon got called into her job so after lunch we headed back to the house and ((RAD))am split to go impress the ladies with his sweet Jeep. I just hung around the house and tried my best to get my record player working on my new receiver and finally discovered I need to buy a preamp…boo.

The weather was perfect and I know I got a lot more done than I listed here but I do not want to bore you.

Today sucks though… I have to work the next 5 days, 10 hour shifts. I am not looking forward to it but I am looking forward to next weekend when my friends Josh and Shannon come invade Ohio so we can caravan to a metal show. More on that later.

Until then, enjoy the weekend.

Live Shows, Music, Music Video

Lollapalooza 2009

22 April, 2009 Brian Mc 1 Comment

I finally had a chance to check out the Lollapalooza 2009 line up and I am a little excited about it. Ok, a lot excited…

Click HERE for the Lollapolooza 2009 line-up poster.

The poster is kinda large to be putting on my site so instead I will just copy / paste the list of bands that will be performing over the 3 day weekend:

Depeche Mode, Tool, The Killers, Jane’s Addiction, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon, Lou Reed, Ben Harper and Relentless7, Thievery Corporation, Snoop Dogg, Rise Against, Andrew Bird, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, The Decemberists, Neko Case, STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector 9), Animal Collective, Band of Horses, Of Montreal, Arctic Monkeys, Coheed and Cambria, Ben Folds, Fleet Foxes, Silversun Pickups, Kaiser Chiefs, Crystal Castles, Bon Iver, Santigold, Atmosphere, Dan Auerbach, Cold War Kids, Deerhunter, Lykke Li, Robert Earl Keen, Peter Bjorn and John, Heartless Bastards, Gomez, Glasvegas, Federico Aubele, Dan Deacon, Passion Pit, Zap Mama, The Raveonettes, The Gaslight Anthem, The Airborne Toxic Event, White Lies, Ra Ra Riot, No Age, Asher Roth, Los Campesinos!, Bat For Lashes, Chairlift, Gang Gang Dance, The Virgins, Amazing Baby, Portugal. The Man, The Knux, Ida Maria, Delta Spirit, Friendly Fires, Manchester Orchestra, Constantines, Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, Hockey, Miike Snow, Alberta Cross, Hey Champ, Sam Roberts Band, The Henry Clay People, Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam, Cage the Elephant, Living Things, The Low Anthem, Blind Pilot, Langhorne Slim, Other Lives, The Builders and The Butchers, Eric Church, Joe Pug, Kevin Devine, The Greencards, Carney, Thenewno2

See any bands in there you like? I know I see a ton of bands I would love to see, even if I have already seen them previously in the year! There is also a handful of other artists too listed to perform at another stage.

I’ve never been to Chicago so this may have to happen. I am sure my pal Matt will want to join me as has mentioned it to me a couple of times. Any of you other Cleveland bloggers thinking of invading Chicago too?

Tickets are $190 for the three day festival not including a place to stay. I will be highly considering this since I have still heard nothing about this year’s Virgin Mobile Festival.

I would like to say that I was going to the Virgin Mobile Festival for the fouth time in a row but if they move it from the Pimlico Race Track that will really put a damper on if I want to go. Part of the whole experience was being at that horse race track turned festival grounds… I wrote a little post about it a few weeks back you can read if you are curious on why they might move the Virgin Festival to another location.

I guess we will see what happens!

Until then here are some Lollapalooza related videos I found…

This video is footage of a terrible crowd in Charlestown, VA in 1995 not giving a good welcome to original indie artist Pavement:

I really wanted to go to Lollapalooza in 2007 because of this band:

Jane’s Addiction in Enumclaw, WA in 1991 with Ice T (NSFW, a little strong language going on here…):

Random

Punk Rock Dogg (Is That Like Snoop D-O-Double G?)

21 April, 2009 Brian Mc Leave a comment

For those of you who can stomach my blog I am sure you might know I like the punk rock. I like to think of myself as an aging punk rocker who has a love for many other genres of music outside the punk rock.

I listen to mostly punk rock. In fact I actually have a beat up iPod that I only store punk rock music on it, and Wu Tang/ODB…

Where am I going with this?

Well I have two dogs and they are about as punk as I am…well maybe not. Regardless I found this fun site called Punk Rock Dogg that is for punk rockers like me who want punk stuff for their dogs.

They sell a lot of fun stuff on the site including matching shirts, sweet dog tags, and even collars. I have not gone as far as buying accessories yet but I did want to share with you all what I did buy…

Punk Rock Dogg’s Hardcore Cookies

Are you done laughing yet? Well besides the dog on the package looking like my Boston Terrier the cookies actually appeal to me not because they are “Punk Rock”, although that is awesome, but because they are made from 100% natural human food grade ingredients. Knowing that it is not some chemical treat loaded with preservatives and by-products is a good thing. I am sure my dogs could care less what they eat but the point is, I do.

At $6.00 a bag the price is a few bucks higher than Rachel Ray‘s Bacon Dog Biscotti or your standard Milk Bones but to me it is worth a shot seeing how they do mean a lot to me.

Just look at them:

Good Reads, Music, Random

Pirates Press Celebrates 5 Years!!!

21 April, 2009 Brian Mc Leave a comment

I received an email this morning from my pals over at SolidPR I thought I would share with everyone. With Record Store Day being celebrated just this past weekend I felt this was a more than appropriate good read:

Pirates Press Announces Five-Year Anniversary!!!

The best stories are those that write themselves, when all the writer has to do is expressly write what they see (or in this case, see AND hear)… and all the reader has to do is envision their role. The story of vinyl records and especially its burgeoning resurgence is this type of story, and the proud leading role PIRATES PRESS has been playing in it is one as well. Their family of salespeople, production coordinators, project managers, and graphic designers have experience from all over the manufacturing, sales, and distribution industries and care deeply about the experience people have working with them.

Putting their customers ideas to life is the essence of Pirates Press’ true goal… helping artists, record label owners, and other entrepreneurs do what the market and industry are demanding of them to survive; bring collect-ability back. Helping create tangible products that reflect an artist’s visions in such a way that creates a real demand to purchase it (rather than download it) is important in an increasingly downloadable world that too-often looses the tangible dimension that once [financially] drove the industry.

Vinyl collecting has for generations been the baseball card of the non-jock (and even the occasional jock), and remained present in certain scenes and genres (underground for the most part) regardless of the pressures from the industry to exclusively digitalize. It was always that tangible element of vinyl in combination with the nostalgic sound and feeling you get from playing records which resonated with collectors through vinyl’s darkest moments. Now, when the digital world that everyone assumed would replace it entirely has brought such strain to the industry, vinyl and other creatively packaged albums sales have made a tremendous resurgence, once again giving people something their passionate about going out (or [ironically] going online) and buying. Pirates press believes that the sky is the limit at this point for vinyl and other types of creatively packaged music and ideas, and we’ll continue doing everything in our power to bring our customers there in as powerful and prominent of a way as possible!

Pirates Press Statistics in the last three years:
– 680,000 records produced in 2006
– 1,100,000 records produced in 2007
– 1,750,000 records produced in 2008

High Profile Projects: Spiderman3, MyChemicalRomance, Beck’s “Odelay” Deluxe 4LP Package, AgainstMe!, The Dark Knight, Madonna’s “Hard Candy” & a slew of singles, Talib Kweli, Brian Posehn&Lewis Black&PattonOswalt, Pulling Teeth (Holographic Record Jacket), Murder By Death 16pp Foldout, Bob Marley Boxset, Isis Boxset, The Watchmen, All the WBR Singles, & Much More…

High Profile Customers: Warner Brothers Records, Reprise, Sire, Atlantic, Original Recordings Group, Relapse, Robotic Empire, HydraHead, Deathwish Inc., Troubleman Unlimited, Anticon Records, Temporary Residence, Suburban Home & Vinyl Collective, Southern Lord Records, Tank Crimes, Chunksaah Records, Fat Wreck Chords, Vagrant Records, Slumberland Records, & Many More…

Pirates Press Unique products include: Gatefold Jackets, Tip-On (casewrapped) Jackets, Boxsets, 5th and 6th Color Printing, Foil Stamping, Embossing, Spot Gloss and other special finishes, Insertion of CDs/Digital Download Cards into the vinyl, BIG Posters, Slipmats, Stickers and other Merch, Unique Types of Colored Vinyl, Limited VERSIONS to create immediate collect-ability! Looking to the future, we’re also working to redevelop the technology to make flexidiscs, as well as new technology, a multiformat CD/DVD/Vinyl Disc, Shaped Records and Picture Discs as well as diecut shapes of vinyl pressed directly into the records. Lots in store in 2009 and beyond!

Props to Pirate Press for staying in the game for five years now! As a vinyl collector myself I think it is great this company is doing better and better every year. I can only blame them some for helping empty my wallet as more releases come out in the future, but I am ok with that.