This is my friend's book, he's trying to draw attention to a book he has written. Check it out on facebook. Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=304984697029 He describes the book as: "I've written a novel called “Wilderness” which I'm sending out to agents (think "Calvin and Hobbes" written by Neil Gaiman)" He also says "one who friends the group will get any messages from me, they will just be helping a young aspiring novelist." I think that's a worthy cause.
The Nickelback/Three Days Grace/Buckcherry review is coming sometime today. Quick review
Buckcherry was good, not great. Their sound mix was terrible. Almost assuredly Buckcherry will be on themusicaddict's Top 50 bands list which will be coming soon
Three Days Grace: a lot of great songs and they were probably the best band of the night. Their sound was good. They quite likely will be in my Top 50 bands.
Nickelback are poseurs, wanna be's and were way too loud. Their show was lowlighted by Kroeger's monotonous annoying repeated screeching. They shouldn't be headlining and were worse than I thought they'd be. I wasn't expecting very much either. Read this blog and I think you can tell whether they'll be in my Top 50 or not.
Buckcherry went on stage right on time, at 6:15. They played for a hour, until 7:15. Buckcherry is lead by singer Josh Todd. I don't know any of the other band member's names but does it matter? Todd lead the band through 11 songs. The shirtless, tattoo covered, dancing whirling dervish was in fine form. I wouldn't say he's the best singer in the world. However his voice has a unique personality.
The sound for Buckcherry was atrocious, muddy and the musicians were too loud in the mix.
Buckcherry started off their set with "Talk To Me" and "Rescue Me", two okay songs. Then because they are touring behind their new CD "All Night Long", they have to play some songs from it. (An earlier CD of theirs "15" is much superior to the more generic "All Night Long".) They played the lead single "All Night Long" which is an usual rock song about Buckcherry's favorite subject.
Next it was time for some of the best Buckcherry songs as they rocked us with "Everything" and "Next To You". Todd introduced the latter song by asking "Who's sexy?" themusicaddict raised his hand to the embarrassment of his son. The next song was "Lit Up" which is a good song and has an incredibly catchy chorus. But when there are many young people in the audience should Todd continue to sing the cocaine refrain over and over again?
Following another song from the new CD, "These Things". Buckcherry is a weird band, they bounce from a cliche rock song to a great ballad. "These Things" is one of their great ballads. But due to the terrible sound, the song sounds much better on the CD than live. Then back to another cliche rock song "It's A Party". Then yet another song from the new CD, "Dead" with Todd going on a rant about his generation isn't dead. I wasn't aware that anyone said they were.
For their final two songs of the night the sound got better for some reason. They played probably their two most popular songs. Even before I listened much to Buckcherry, I knew the following two songs. Those two songs of course are "Sorry" and "Crazy Woman". These two songs perfectly describe the Buckcherry dichotomy. "Sorry" is a sweet and sincere song. It's one of the best power ballads of the last several years. Buckcherry didn't try to do anything special with it, which is good in this case.
Then the other side of the Buckcherry dichotomy, they played a very crude song with actions to match. Their set ended with "Crazy Woman", yes I realize that's not the real title of the song. I just hate the other word and the terrible language throughout the whole song. It was an extended version of the song, with a tag of Billy Squier's "The Stroke". Todd included pantomiming to that song. Again the lowest common denominator I hate about rock music. It's all the cliches and stupidity of rock music that drive me crazy. A little creativity please.
But overall a pretty good set, then a 15 minute break before Three Days Grace took the stage. Buckcherry has been the music of choice for my drive music today.
For me, Three Days Grace was sort of the wild card of the night. I'd heard a lot of their songs and they have several good songs. With their many great songs tehy almost are ready for the next step to headliner status. They played from 7:30-8:25.
First their sound was pretty good and not too loud. The singer, Adam Grontier, and band were equal in the mix. Three Days Grace would have been better if they maintained the momentum once they built it.
Three Days Grace set started with one of their guitarist in the spotlight playing the start of "I Hate Everything About You". The intro of that song is very reminiscent of Alice In Chains "Heaven Beside You". That's a great song which lead into another great song, "Break", followed by a third great song "The Good Life". Grontier has charisma and an amazing voice as the band was sounding tight.
He took a break to talk about their most recent CD, the about year old "Life Starts Now". He urged people to get the CD anyway they could "rip, burn or steal". Adam your record company isn't going to like that.
Next was "World So Cold" and another one of their amazing songs, "Pain". Again they have some pretty amazing songs, but they are trying too hard to get the crowd revved up. Adam, that's something you do with your music not with your words. Usually I like when the band talks to the audience, but Three Days Grace went too far. I was thinking "shut up already".
Their next song was one of the few lowlights of their set, "Home". There's a droning sound at the start of the song, I'm not sure what the purpose of that was. I'm sure it was intentional but why. They had the audience participate in a "sing battle", also known as a momentum killer. Grontier explained very helpfully about how the sing battle would work. He would sing something, then half the audience would sing the same thing. Then he would sing something and the other half of the audience would sing it. He then had us sing "whoa" extended. There were just too many stops and starts for the set to reach blast off. They were so close though.
They then sang "Last to Know", just one of their many great songs.
They closed out their set with "Never Too Late", "Riot" and "Animal I Have Become". During "Riot", Grontier went into the audience trying to get people to stand up, that's emblematic of the stops and starts of their set. That's something they need to work out in order to be a quality headliner. I was about to say of being a headliner, but when Nickelback is a headliner apparently it's not that tough.
Overall a pretty good set, but they need to take out some of the stops and starts. In that extra time they could have sang a couple more songs. I would suggest "Wake Up" and "Just Like You". I also liked how their songs feel lived in, in other words someone has lived the lyrics. It's also nice when not every song is about sex and there's not an overabundance of f bombs. One thing I didn't like about Three Days Grace is they are very much a geography band, what I mean by that is they kept on screaming "Salt Lake City". Thanks I know where I am. Three Days Grace songs have been playing through my mind all day.
Nickelback: here's also a good idea, before you go on stage don't play songs by bands that are better than you. Four songs were played a song by AC/DC and Motley Crue each. They also played Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher" and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me". The last song sounds amazing even after all these years. Nickelback doesn't have any songs that are equal of any of the above songs.
Last but least, it was time for the headliner, whether they are worthy of that status or not: Nickleback. They "played" from 8:45 to 10:35ish. They also have too many stops and starts to gain a lot of momentum. It's almost like they seemingly sabotaged their set.
The lights were on and then some fireworks went off, alerting us their set was about to start. That was actually one of their most creative things of the night. Then they did the following:
The above video is a snapshot of their set, well play it much louder than necessary to get the full effect.
Nickelback took the stage to a 2/3rds full stadium, I'm being generous. First of all they are way too loud. Yes I know of the rock and roll axiom, "If it's too loud, you're too old". But it reminds me of the modern movies that have very little story. Too cover it up they have a lot of explosions. I think that is what Nickelback is going for too. They are trying to disguise their lameness.
The first played "Burn It To The Ground" which is one of their best songs. They followed that uwith one of their more derivative songs "Flat on the Floor". Next they played another one of their good songs, "Photograph". Again it's so loud that it's hard to focus on the music. I think they threw in a bit of "Savin' Me", but their songs sound so much alike it's hard to tell. Next they played one of their lowest common denominator songs, "Shakin' Hands", an incredibly unoriginal song.
Then the Chad Kroeger stupidity began as he said "time to start drinkin'". He told us he was drinking "Jack and coke". This was a very paint by the performance concert and this was just one of the many instances of that. Kroeger trying to play the role of "party dude", he just can't. Also later he was telling us about how he was partying with Anthrax and Slayer the night before. Which even if it is true I found laughable, the Justin Beiber of rockers partying with some of the legends of the hard core scene.
Then the lowest common denominator theme continues with not subtle videos of beautiful women eating bananas and lollipops. Seriously? How stupid is that? Is that jr. high or elementary
humor? That of course led to "Something In Your Mouth", again not very creative.
Chad Kroeger is just not a front man and he's a sexist idiot. He would go off on these tangents in which we couldn't understand much of what he was saying. Not that I would count that as too much of a loss. I don't want to know his shallow thoughts. He also would randomly screech out things, which with the sound so loud was painful.
The 7th song of their set is "This Afternoon". Again another one of their good songs. But the volume is so loud, it's almost painful.
Following that song all the members of Nickelback moved to the center of the stage. The stage was cool. You can see it in the above video, although the band referred to it as a "penis". The random, painful screeching continues. He tells us about the dive bars he frequents. The jukeboxes in those kind of bars play the same two songs a lot. The first being George Thorogood's "Bad To The Bone". The other song they play is "this song": Garth Brooks "Friends In Low Places". This song actually adds some melody into their set and the crowd got into it. However they only played about a minute of the song.
They next played "If Today Was Your Last Day" with Nickelback's corny sentimentality emerging. Then Kroeger screeches, "Thank You" unneccesarily loud. He reminds me of the obnoxious little brother wanting to be cool as his big brother or Marc Zuckerburg without facebook. They started playing Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'". (I had stopped believing long ago.) Instead of playing the whole song and building some momentum, they only play about a minute of that song.
More of Kroeger's needless screeching "Salt Lake City!" Oh good another geography band. They followed that with "Rock Star", but the non Chad Kroeger sung parts can't be understood. Turn down the volume if you want your audience to enjoy the show! Time for more screeching, "Scream if you want to be a rock star".
Nickelback returned to the main stage, Chad desperately trying to be cool. Then more stupidity was forthcoming with Jerry and the cannons. They shoot out containers full of beer. We also experienced more of Jerry's talents with his "old school moves" played to "Everybody Dance Now". Kroeger continues his assault on our ears with his random screeching.
The bad karoake night continues with Metallica playing in the background as the roadies are shooting the beer cannons. The word "Nickelback" is revolving around the drum stand. Their next song was unintelligible, later I found out the song is called "Animals". Then "Salt Lake City" with the fire pots exploding. That was followed by a pointless 5 minute drum solo. That is about 4.5 minutes too long. If you must have a drum solo do it in the middle of a song, so you won't lose momentum. Tommy Lee did it better 25 years ago and his solo was actually entertaining.
More karoake with a snippet of Pink Floyd's "Run Like Hell" which led into "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2". Again a shortened version of this song. They play only part of the song, but didn't play the cool solo at the end of the song. On their video screens, they had a picture of a wall. You know if you didn't catch what album the song is from. That tells you what the band thinks of their fans intelligience.
They closed out their set with "I'll Come For You", more screeching, "How You Remind Me", fireworks again and encore. For the encore "Gotta Be Somebody", another shortened version of a classic song "Wanted Dead or Alive", "Someday", screeching of "Salt Lake City", "Figured You Out". Then Kroeger led the crowd in a chant: "I say "Nickel", you say "Back". I think we could have figured that out on our own. Then they closed with excessive fireworks and mercifully left the stage.
This decade's Creed continues to disappoint. They are so not ready to be a headliner. They have several things to work on. First get Chad Kroeger an adult personality or have him shut the hell up. Second lower the volume of the concert. Third, get more quality songs. Fourth, stop screeching. Fifth, a lot more creativity would go a long ways.
A final thought: I've been listening to Buckcherry and Three Days Grace songs all day, but nothing by Nickelback.
themusicaddict
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