2023 in live music
Started: 2024-01-04 20:35:42
Submitted: 2024-01-04 23:39:47
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Counting all the shows I saw in 2023
I think I went to more live shows in 2023 than I have in every year prior to 2023 put together.
The first show I saw in 2023 was Nils Frahm at the Fox Theater in Oakland. I've listened to his minimalist effects-laden music for more than a decade, including through the depths of the pandemic, and it meant a lot to me to hear the music that got me through the pandemic performed in a theater packed with people.
Then I watched the Eurovision song contest and went to see Hot Chip at local live-music venue The Catalyst, conveniently located in downtown Santa Cruz, in a moment of music-related discovery that should have been obvious to me years ago (I like music, and I like seeing music live, and there's more good music out there than I've heard of), but I only now got around to realizing.
Before I could really dive into the promise of music discovery, I went back to Catalyst to see Moon Hooch, a dual-saxophone band (backed by a drum kit) that I want to describe as "subway busker jazz", because it sounds like the sort of music I'd hear busking in a subway, (which, I understand, is how the band actually got started), and also because their song "Number 9" starts with a field audio recording of an announcement in a subway. This show was presented on Catalyst's "Atrium" stage, a smaller stage that allowed a more intimate experience. Atrium shows played to smaller crowds, and it was easier to get right up in front of the stage to watch the sweat on the musicians as they played.
In August I saw a show at Catalyst called "The Sound of Grunge", comprised of three tribute bands playing the songs of Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and Stone Temple Pilots. As the show progressed I recognized less of the music, but I still enjoyed the music and the vibe of the crowd, split between Gen-Xers who grew up with this music (who were probably 5 to 10 years older than me) and a handful of young adults (born after the music was popular) who formed a tiny mosh pit right in front of the stage.
Every couple of weeks I'd look at the list of upcoming shows at Catalyst (most of which I've never heard of, forming an intimidating list of names and pictures, often with only the vaguest descriptions about what sort of music they actually play) and try to find something that looked good by sampling the band on Apple Music. Some of the shows I decided to attend the afternoon of the show, and rolled up to the door to buy a ticket on my way in.
My first straight-up discovery at Catalyst was the melodic doom-metal duo Year of the Cobra, who played a cozy show on a Sunday at the end of August. The entire band was two people, with the melody played on fuzzed-out bass guitar, reducing the holy trinity of rock music (guitar/bass/drums) to an effects-laden duo. This is one of the bands I reach for as background music when I'm about to dive into the depths of a project.
In September I went to Berkeley for an outdoor concert at the Greek Theatre with Dashboard Confessional opening for Counting Crows. (My emerging heuristic is that I'll see almost anything that catches my interest at Catalyst, but if I have to go over the mountain to see a show it ought to be something I've heard of.)
The only other artist that showed up at Catalyst that I had heard of before (in addition to Moon Hooch) was the bizarrely-named Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, a band from Perth, Australia playing a kind of frenetic psych pop. The lead signer spent the first part of the show with his long hair completely covering his face, which I'm sure was an interesting stylistic decision.
The next show I saw in the Atrium at Catalyst was Powerman 5000, which I think I can describe as nineties industrial metal. (My first impression listening to the band on Apple Music was that it sounded exactly like the soundtrack for The Matrix, possibly because the band's frontman, Spider One, is Rob Zombie's younger brother.) This which is not precisely my kind of music, but it's close enough that I can enjoy a Sunday night listening to their energetic music.
When I walked in the door while opening band Julien-K was playing I had the vague impression that the drummer had three arms, but as soon as I looked I confirmed that the drummer actually only had two arms. This suggested to me the idea of an octopus as a drummer, which I figured was so obvious that other people must have already drawn it. (I did confirm, with a quick search of the Internet, that there are plenty of drawings of octopuses as drummers, but many of them don't seem to know how bass drums work, because they didn't draw one of the octopus' limbs resting on the drum kick.)
In November I flew to Las Vegas to see U2 in the Sphere.
In the middle of November I went to San Francisco to see The National at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. (I left Santa Cruz in the middle of the afternoon to catch the #17 bus over the mountain, then took Caltrain up the peninsula to the city.) Throughout the show lead singer Matt Berninger paced back and forth on the stage, trailing his microphone cord behind him. More than once the cord got stuck on a monitor speaker or other equipment on stage and a frantic sound tech hurried onto the stage to disentangle the cord so Matt could keep pacing. It looked exhausting and I wanted desperately to give him a cordless mic so I wouldn't worry about a cord-related disaster on stage.
Near the end of the show Matt Berninger hopped off the stage and made his way into the audience, trailing his mic cord behind him, elevated above the heads of the audience between one sound tech behind him and another at the edge of the stage, carefully playing out the cord to maintain the right tension in the cord. Matt made his way all the way to the far wall of the auditorium by the time the song ended, well past the spot near the middle of the crowd where I stood, then made his way back through the crowd to return to the stage for the next song.
The show ended with an audience sing-along to the song "Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks", which was an interesting experience. The band's lyrics are impressionist at best, and they were even harder to understand when I was trying to listen to the audience singing, when I had not memorized the band's entire catalog. I cannot claim to be a superfan of The National, but I did enjoy the show.
Two days after Thanksgiving I saw the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas show in Seattle, which turns out to be the only show I attended with anyone else, since my spouse doesn't believe in crowds.
The last show I saw in 2023 was back at Catalyst's main stage, headlined by the eighties thrash metal band Death Angel. This was the kind of music that I was warned about in the eighties: relentless guitar-driven music, loud enough that I could feel the bass thump in my chest (I was glad for my earplugs, which I brought to every concert I attended); barely-intelligible lyrics; an audience raising their hands in the air showing devil horns with their index and pinky fingers; and a large mosh pit in the middle of the audience, between me and the stage. I spent most of the show just behind the mosh pit, close enough that I was occasionally jostled by someone bumping their way around the pit. Some of the longer-haired people in the mosh pit occasionally stopped their circuit to headbang in rough time to the music. (A large portion of the audience looked like they had been thrash metal fans for decades: their long hair had gone white with age but they were still wearing their studded leather jackets open to show tshirts from any number of legendary metal bands.)
The show was a sensory overload but I enjoyed the energy of the crowd and the energy of the music, feeding off each other.
The last thing I saw when I left Catalyst was an icon of Jesus playing electric guitar over the exit sign, blessing us with holy rock music as we stepped out into the streets of Santa Cruz after the show.
