10. Pinback/Aqueduct - Irving Plaza 5/24 Although not the best pairing of bands in the world, this show opened me up to Aqueduct, who entertainingly launched their set with a cover of the Geto Boys ‘Damn it Feels good to be a Gangsta’. Pinback played one great song after another, a testament to their incredibly solid catalog.
9. 13&G0d - Irving Plaza 9/19 Surprisingly underattended (upper balcony closed), this show placed Adam Drucker (Doseone) center stage, but didn’t let the Acher brothers (Notwist) become too much of a backdrop. Very organic show with a lot of freestyle and deviation from record (both lyrically and musically).
8. Hood - Mercury Lounge 3/11 Seeing your favorite band play live is generally magical. My only dissapointment was that they didn’t play longer/delve further into their older stuff.
7. Les Savy Fav - Bowery Ballroom 8/26 Some on this blog are probably saying ‘WTF, LSF #7?!’ They put in their typical amazing performance.
6. Bloc Party - Bowery Ballroom 4/7 Their NYC coming out party. A raucous, joyus affair. You felt that they felt they had finally arrived.
5. New Order - Hammerstein Ballroom 5/5 I waited nearly 20 years to see one of my favorite bands play and despite their age, they didn’t let me down. Ana Mantronic of Scissor Sisters guest sang.
4. Wolf Parade - Bowery Ballroom 10/24 Lived up to the hype in their first major NYC show. Showed glimpses of more greatness to come, debuting 3 new songs.
3. Wilderness - Scenic 9/16 Wilderness are captivating. The poor venue was the only thing that kept this down at #3.
2. Explosions in the Sky/Wilderness - Bowery Ballroom 12/12 Wilderness gained a lot of new fans this night, playing a riveting set. Then Explosions came out and blew the roof off.
1. Arcade Fire w/ David Bryne - Irving Plaza 2/3 One of most peoples ’shows of the year’ …and that’s before Bryne came out and they launched into ‘This must be the Place”. Of course David Bowie jumped on the bandwagon later, but Byrne (and I) was there first!
Posted on Thursday 29 December 2005
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In fairness to Bowie, he (and Byrne) were both at the Bowery Ballroom show back in November 2004. Byrne was first to jump on stage with them, but you can’t say that Bowie was sleeping on them… He very nearly got a song dedicated to his moustache.
[…] The show itself was pretty damn good though. Openers Mew and Secret Machines played great sets. I hadn’t seen Bloc Party for a couple of years, at what I referred to as their ‘New York coming out party’ The boys had freshly released their stunning debut record, and were still a bit wide eyed at all the praise. The band that played last weekend, still had the same energy and enthusiasm for the songs, but were obviously a much more well oiled machine, having toured on much of these songs for over 2 years now. Lead singer Kele Okereke told the crowd they’ve been under the radar for the last few months recording a new record. He seemed as impatient as the audience about hearing the new songs, lamenting that it should be out ’sometime after christmas’. Surprisingly, the band decided to keep the new songs under wraps, only playing a couple of new ones, opening with ‘Waiting for the 718′ and later plugging ‘Hunting for witches’. I must say it didn’t really hold up to their older anthems, nor chart any interesting new direction. Seemed especially odd to start with ‘718′ a song few people have heard. To me the song is a little flat. Perhaps they’re still trying to sort that out. What did happen, was an energetic, crowd pleasing romp through most of their best songs. I suppose my testament to the show is that the best songs wern’t the ‘party anthems’ but actually the slower songs like ‘Blue Light’ and ‘Compliments’ where the band was able to connect with the large audience without testing the limits of the sound and light system. […]