#61
Post
by tubro » Sun Oct 12, 2014 9:41 pm
I didn't see precisely the same show that our resident jane's lover did, but for sure it was a terrific event and one that i'm glad i decided, pretty much at the last minute, not to miss. just simply perfect weather and the time square backdrop was a once in a lifetime visual prop.
my day started at 8 am in the met life stadium parking lot for male ritual behavior, in this case BBQing before a football game. great tailgate - grilled breakfast station with pancakes, biscuits and gravy, eggs, etc. among the menu items were collosal shrimp cocktail, a chilled shrimp pepper and cucomber salad, lamb chops, 3 in thick ribeyes cooked black and blue, two day smoked chicken thighs, some craft beers and a really tasty bottle of rye from the distillery in south carolina owned by one of our tailgaters. plus homemade ice cream and other nice desserts. i was sort of hoping that if the jets were going to lose, they'd do it on the early side so i could leave in time to see devo. they complied; i left mid third period and got to times square about a half hour before devo hit.
place wasn't very crowded. we hung back near the soundboard and watched devo kill it as they always do. i was fearing that the crowd was going to be touristy and not tuned in, when the booji boy routine fell very flat. devo got done and some EDM schmuck took the stage. there was an hour until jane's was on. so we retired to jamba juice right next to bman's vip area. hung there during most of the EDM set. by the time we went back out it had gotten quite packed. and the crowd down front was totally sufficiently a rock and roll and jane's crowd. most of the tourists had probably moved back or left. good crowd. packed. nice. we weaseled our way to the rail in the back of the vip. perfect view 15 feet or so in front of dave. the stage was very small - sort of the size of a club stage rather than a festival stage. so we were house left in front of dave and also had the PA stacks in front of us. it was loud and clear and really great sounding throughout.
scene was good too. no cops or hassles.
jane's wasn't bad but didn't play some amazing great show. far from it. i've said it so many times and it was true again today. they're a brand with an act and while it frustrates their biggest fans (read: us), it playes well to people looking to rock with a polished and seasoned rock star act. they all played their parts and i really believe that it's hard to really knock them for what they do or how they do it, except if you're a huge and/or former huge fan and have this professional rock act compared in your mind with something magical and long gone. dave played well. actually seemed pretty focused on the task at hand. very little messing around with the girls on stage or in front. his solos wailed. perkins was fierce. cheney was really loud in the mix and sounded good but he's a bit of a cyborg up there at this point. just a pro doing his job. perry did a long band intro of perkins and especially dave and didn't mention chris. he's a robot. sounded good though.
nothing stood out, good or bad, for me, except ted, which was really out there with perry singing while crowd surfing. perry's rants were drunken an bizarre and the band tired of it and started songs to shut him up a few times. he celebrated succot, the jewish holiday of the week, yelling happy succot mother fuckers (in hebrew) and sort of whining about how much 'jews love you'. it was odd. he did a bit of a rant about the stock ticker at the top of one of the billboards in times square. bitched about how moneyed people don't give a fuck about anyone and how we should change the fucking world or some shit. then at the end that 'my wife makes me eat her pussy' and 'i love getting my dick sucked' rant that went on for a while and was a bit uncomfortably odd. he did say that like jews celebrating the sabbath we should all take over times square on fridays just like today, which in perry's world was indeed a friday. and he did get his mic turned off after pulling that 'let's play 3 days' thing and getting the band re-strapped on to their guitars only to have the stage manager dude tell him no way, to which perry seemed to accuse deblasio of being responsible. a drunk next to me shouted that we should vote him out in november, showing at once an immense stupidity and a fine sense of when election day is. perry avoided those stupid speeches about the next song. fucking funniest part, even funnier than the missed day of the week, was before summertime. he had just finished with one of the bizarre drunken crack head raps and then turned to the band and shouted something like 'rock it' and they went into summertime and he said something like 'oh a slow one'. funny. tuned out and fucked up. but not so much in a bad way. it was perry in times square and that counts for something.
perry's voice was shot from beach and ocean size on. in the past since his voice has been shot i've been impressed at times that he plays thru it like an injured athlete. today he resorted to shouting at times and while that's not at all his style it's certainly a tried and tested punk rock vocal style and i really didn't mind it. too bad he doesn't take care of his instrument though.
one of the real striking things about the show to me was that there's no 'nothing's shocking in its entirety' vibe at all. besides shower, they play all this stuff all the time. they do the same tired version of jane says with the intro and the drum track. it's just another show, only without ANR and stealing and 3 days. as has been said here a lot, the RDLH shows next year will be more interesting by far. and then cutting it short (not really their fault, by the way - they only had an hour - they were on, on time and didn't dither around any more than usual - just ran out of time) w/o thank you boys and pigs made it all the more just a regular show rather than a NS show.
this event could have sucked and it didn't. they're not surprising anyone - that's no surprise. they're a rock star band that can bring it. times square was fucking amazing, and believe me i've never said those words. but i wasn't hard to get in or out or get around and it looked great.
and it was free.
by the way, on 47th st between 7th and 8th just after devo's set, where they had some trailers and tents for dressing rooms, we heard the jane's trio jamming. some randy rhodes shit from dave that just killed followed by an instrumental (get this) 'birthday' by the beatles.
