One of the most popular tours of 2017, the Foo Fighters’ Concrete and Gold Tour has added seven new dates to their North American leg. In addition to a second show at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the band will be extending their tour with September and October 2018 with dates in Seattle, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Portland, and San Jose. [Read more…]
Peter Hook & The Light are bringing their incredible “Substance – The Albums Of Joy Division & New Order” back to the U.S. in 2018. Hooky and the band will be performing both the Joy Division and New Order albums Substance live, in their original track sequence and in their entirety. Having reviewed the tour in 2016, Rock Subculture rated it the #3 show of all of 2016, so it is definitely expected to be one of the best tours in 2018. [Read more…]
Following up on their tour dates earlier this year in March and April, Duran Duran will be kicking off a new leg of their 2017 tour with two stops in the Bay Area in California, first at Fox Theater in Oakland on July 7th and then at the Masonic in San Francisco the next night. The band continues to support their 14th studio album (and first with Warner Bros. Records), the excellent Paper Gods, which was produced by the legendary Nile Rodgers, Mark Ronson, Josh Blair, and Mr Hudson. [Read more…]
Depeche Mode’s fourteenth studio album, Spirit, is due out on March 17th, and today the band announced the dates and venues for their “Global Spirit Fall 2017 North American Tour”. The dates announced thus far run from late August through late October. The North American dates follow there European stadium tour kicking off in early May. [Read more…]
“The hangman looks round as he waits, the cord stretches tight, then it breaks…” Peter Hook & The Light opened their sold out concert at The Fillmore in San Francisco on Saturday night with the dark and prescient “In A Lonely Place”. Kind of an appropriate song to begin with for a few reasons… of course, it is from New Order’s Substance, which they played in it’s entirety, in it’s original track order (with three bonus songs on the front and one at the end). But it was also a song that the original members of New Order wrote as Joy Division with front man Ian Curtis from that original band. So it really doesn’t sound anything like a New Order song at all; it is distinctly Joy Division (dark, analog, and sans any pop sensibility). Having covered Peter Hook & The Light’s previous “album” tours in the past few years, I expected them to come out and do the Joy Division set first and the New Order set second, but they flipped the script. But that first song, is at once a Joy Division song and a New Order song… at the time a bridge from the past to the future. They led out with New Order’s Substance and closed the night performing the Joy Division compilation album of the same name. So how was it? Well, I saw the full original band perform in live in concert almost a quarter of a century ago. In recent years, I’ve seen Peter Hook as Peter Hook & The Light several times. I’ve also seen the rest of New Order (sans Peter Hook) touring separately several times as well. I have to say that, hands down, this show was the best “New Order” performance I’ve ever experienced. In my opinion, New Order’s Substance – their most seminal work – this is the best it’s ever been done live on stage. It truly exceeded my own hopeful and lofty expectations. At the center of it all is the fact that Peter Hook somehow continues to keep the “flame” of both Joy Division and New Order ignited and authentic to what it was and always will be to those who find power and meaning in the works of both bands. Brilliant show. [Read more…]
Peter Hook & The Light bring a second leg of “Substance – The Albums Of Joy Division & New Order” back to the U.S., kicking things off in Detroit tomorrow tonight, with shows running through the end of November. Hooky and the band will be performing both the Joy Division and New Order albums Substance live, in their original track sequence and in their entirety. [Read more…]
“So, basically Culture Club makes happy sad music. If you’re a Gemini, you don’t need that explained. If you’re a Libra, I can’t help you. Hands up for the Geminis! You’ve got to use two hands if you’re a Gemini, because there’s always two of you. What’s that saying? ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.’ That’s the Gemini mantra. So we do these happy sad songs. Dancy rhythms, melancholy sounds, mixed together…” Boy George explaining Culture Club in a way that only he could… an interesting insight into the band and the man who proudly stood out in front of it (as well standing for many other things) throughout the first half of the 1980s. All in preface to the song, “Move Away”, which was the lead single to their fourth album, From Luxury To Heartache, an album title which nicely dovetails into what he was explaining, as well as illustrative of that early trajectory of the band in it’s first life… It all ended far too early when they broke up in 1986 following the release of that album and that lead single, which would be their final entry into the U.S. Top 40 charts. The light that burns twice as bright last half the time and all that… But life is a funny thing. Fast forward thirty years (!), and there on that stage at Thunder Valley’s Outdoor Amphitheater in front of thousands of jubilant fans on Friday night was Boy George and the original members of Culture Club – Roy Hay, Mikey Craig and Jon Moss – and I can’t imagine them being any more happy or in sync with one another musically and with their live performance. And, it would seem, the impossible journey each took to get them there made it all the more sublime. Joyfully playing those now classic songs of happy sad music. A potent chemical reaction of letting soul and reggae out to play with all manner of other music genres, bending and twisting and dancing with new wave, country, pop, funk, rock, R&B, and even church music, to create something altogether unique but unified in that wicked sort of Gemini manner… The genius of Boy George, and his bravery in always being uniquely himself and forging new paths for others to follow. Definitely one of the best tours of 2016, one of the most important New Wave bands (who helped push those loose boundaries within that broad musical movement), and a band fronted by one of the most interesting figures in pop culture in modern times. [Read more…]
“So we’re really at the very beginning of a tour that will probably go on for a year and a half… and we’re just starting to kind of realize the kind of appetite and love that is out in the world for Duran Duran… It hasn’t always been like this; you know we’ve been around for 35 years… We have a great job that we love doing…” Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran at The Grand Theatre at Grand Sierra Resort and Casino in Reno, Nevada on Friday night… taking a moment to express some gratitude to the sold out crowd before performing one of their most popular songs (not from the 80s), “Ordinary World”. Supporting their 14th studio album, Paper Gods, which Warner Bros. Music released this month, the setlist for this tour is a good representation of the phenomenal music Duran Duran have released over the past four decades. But with less than two hours to perform, the show only scratches the surface of their brilliant catalog of music. With founding members Nick Rhodes on keyboards and John Taylor on bass, along with Roger Taylor on drums and Simon on vocals, the group have ties working with one another that goes back to the start, and they still make up the core of the band, with each contributing greatly to their signature sound. A lot of bands who have been around for a long time and have a strong association with a certain period or era become resentful of that, and some view their most popular songs with disdain – as if those hits are anchors holding them down rather than stepping stones that helped to propel them forward into world. Some other bands even refuse to perform their most popular hits live for their fans (see: Radiohead). Duran Duran are the opposite. Not only are they mindful of their own history and cognizant of what fans love to celebrate, but they appear happy to celebrate it right along with those of us in the audience. Duran Duran has always been about the past, the now, and the future, somehow all at the same time. I guess it goes back to that “great job” that they “love doing”, which is quite a modest take on creating some of the songs that are included in the soundtracks to the lives of people of my generation. As far as their concert tours go, they always bring some of that “new” with them with each tour, and this one is no different. From a healthy sampling of the new songs as well as new takes on older ones, they remind us all that they are accomplished artists with the ability to not only recreate that sublime studio sound, but also breathe vibrancy into it for how it all comes together on stage, in both sound and visuals. And somehow the guys appear timeless themselves, as they seem to defy the gods (paper or otherwise) and never appear to age year to year… the principals all look 10 to 20 years younger than they should, which contributes to the feeling of being part of an event that could be happening in the past, present, or future. At certain points during their live set, you could squint a little and travel back in time to the 00s, 90s, and 80s.
Today happens to be Duran Duran Appreciation Day (#DDAD15), so it seems like an opportune time to make note of their upcoming set of North American concert dates as well as the new album, Paper Gods, due September 10th. Their 14th studio album and the first in almost five years, it is being produced by the legendary Nile Rodgers, Mark Ronson, Josh Blair, and Mr Hudson. It will fuel a new set of shows, including their first appearance at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl and Red Rocks Amphitheatre. [Read more…]
“Oakland, I want to see you go fuckin’ crazy!” One of a set of similar sentiments shouted by Charli XCX throughout her high energy performance at the Fox Theater in Oakland on Thursday night, along with co-headliner Bleachers in their “Charli and Jack Do America” tour, though the latter had already whipped the crowd into a frenzy before she even had a chance to take the stage. At only 22 years only, Charli XCX has had a remarkably long and prolific career thus far, and in her ongoing evolution of her unique and varied brand of music, she has veered solidly into the pop diva lane of the genre highway. It was an interesting pairing of artists, with New Jersey-born Jack Antonoff from Bleachers building and building their own set with anthem-driven pop/rock songs that are catchy and captivating (even on first listen), contrasted against England’s Charli XCX pushing sexually-fused tunes with saccharine pop choruses. As a dual headlining show, each artist seemed to bring out a different crowd, though all skewed younger. Most certain is that each artist – though having respectively accomplished much already – will certainly continue to grow and evolve in the coming years. [Read more…]