nico nuzzaci

Last time I went to see Death Cab For Cutie I was worried that I would get bored standing up during the gig – since I expected a very slow and low energetic gig. That time they took me by storm and totally surprised me with a very entertaining… rock act (almost).

This time they didn’t surprise me (since I knew) – but they sure as hell, again – entertained me.

Back in may I wrote about seeing The Shins. I put The Shines and DCFC under the same label and genre. And that’s might just be why I didn’t like the The Shins gig that much – I expected more. DCFC makes The Shines look even worse. Maybe it’s a bit hard comparing them… but I do.

The sound was loud. I even put on my brilliant earplugs. Which turned the volume down to a more ‘friendly’ volume. Don’t know it it’s always this loud in Brixston Academy.
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who complains over the volume of a gig; this is not a complain – this is an observation. The sound was good. But loud.

The audience was young. The highlight was when the three girls that stood in front of me started jumping, purely on the initiative of the guy’s in front of them. The reaction was like; Oh they jump. Let’s fit in and jump a bit as well (seems to be what you should do).
Now, I’m not the kind of guy who complains over the age of the audience; this is not a complain – this is an observation. They did great and melted in perfectly with the rest of the audience.

There aren’t many moments the singer in DCFC, Ben Gibbard, stands still and just behave ‘emotional’ or… can I say lazy? Even during the slowest songs he bounce along to the rhythm and pulse – moving along to his creation – loving it. They deliver the songs the way I believe songs should be delivered and performed live – not too perfect and with that little edge of personality and causality to it… can I say alive?
The rest of the band, especially the bass player – Nicholas Harmer – also gives their best – rocking along and just feeling it during the entire concert – feeding the ‘aliveness’.

Death Cab For Cutie have some really amazing songs and albums. Seeing them live adds even more value to their work. So if you get have a change to see them – go.
It will be great.
I promise.

After have been to the totally brilliant and amazing acoustic Foo Fighters gig on Wednesday, I was sooooo looking forward to hear them again, but fill full power. Before I left the flat on Saturday I was literally jumping around with my acoustic guitar playing Foo Fighters songs.

Mattias, Willow and I arrived to Hyde Park around 3 p.m. The sun was hot and the weather beautiful. We had inner-circle tickets, which, according to our entrance gate (x16), meant VIP (by far the biggest VIP area I have experience, but I guess if you put it in proportions to the entire event it was just “normal size”).

Think we all were a bit surprised that the first band on stage turned out to be Juliette & the Licks and not Queens of the Stone Age.

Juliette & the Licks
The full name of the Juliette in the band name Julliette & the Licks is Juliette Lewis – the actor. Now I don’t know if any actors so far in the history of music have actually managed to pull of being a actor/musician (no Jennifer Lopez did not pull it off (but was she and actor before being a “musicianâ€?? or is she just an “dancer”? Or just a greedy business women?))… Either way – Juliette will not go to the history books for being the first to pull this off. They were shit. So bad. Ridiculous.
Please get of the stage.

Angels & Airwaves
I said we were a bit surprised to see Juliette and her “band� being the first one up. Most say I was even more surprised to see that Angels & Airwaves was the second act.

I have never heard of Angels & Airwaves. But before the singer even mention it (after the first song) I did notice – and understand – that they are a side project to Blink 182.

The music was very similar to some of the less punky Blink 182 stuff. The sound was more like “arena� rock – a lot of echo and reverb.
A bit like I would imagine an U2/Blink 182 think would sound like.

It wasn’t to bad – but I wouldn’t call it good. The singer,Tom DeLonge, obviously had a sore throat. He kept drinking water all the time, and grabbing his throat. He also made a lot of expression indicating that he was having a hard time singing… but not ONCE did he mention it. Why didn’t he just stand down and explain to the audience he had a hard time singing today? I’m willing to bid £100 that the set they played was shorter then they had intended it to be, because of the sour throat they never mentioned.
This throat business may also have been the reason he always wanted the audience to sing along to a lot of vowels. Aaaaaaaaaaa, oooooooooo.

Beside the sore throat, I think Mr DeLonge need to do some reading about culture and different countries. This is not California. This is not America.

Early he said that Angels & Airwaves is not meant to be music that people sing along to while driving their car… and then started a long monolog about “brothers and sisters”, the twin towers, wars in Iraq etc and so on; please sing this song with me – this is the lyrics – ooooooooooo (vowels).

Overall they didn’t make a good impression on me. But I’m definitely gonna listen to them and give them a chance. Their sound was very “arena” and is probably very nice on a over produced cd.
And I do believe if Mr DeLonge throat was ok – it would have been less vowels and better delivery.

Queens of the Stone Age
First of all – Joshua Homme is not ginger anymore. He has dyed his hair black. He looks like a combination of Green Days Billy Joe Armstrong and Elvis Presley (a swollen Billy Joe basically). Now, the look of the front figure don’t mean that they have to do a bad performance…

They were horrible. The sound was horrible. It was horrible.

Everything had so much distortion that nothing came through. It was just a big mass of sound.
Whenever Mr Homme sang in falsetto the song disappeared totally.
The tempo of the songs went way to fast. Especially “No One Knows”. So did they also lost the buggy woggy feeling.

To sum it up – I wished I didn’t need to experience this.

Motörhead
Respect. They have been playing music and touring before most of the others even were born. Respect.

Foo Fighters

“About six months ago somebody said to me, “Do you wanna do Hyde Park next summer?”. I said, “How big is it? It’s pretty fucking big right?”. He said, “It holds 85,000 people but even if 30,000 turn up that is still the biggest gig Foo Fighters have ever done”

First: No – it was not as good as the intimate acoustic gig. But that doesn’t mean that it was not good.

“There is one place that treats our band like royalty and it’s this place.�

And it was big – huge!.
Even too big.

I wanted to feel more energy. More pure aaaaaaaaaa. But since Hyde Park is huge and that there is nothing to keep the sound waves from not “escaping”, it never really reached that.

But they are so good.
They have so many good songs.

The “extras” for this gig was that Lemmy from Motörhead came on stage and did a song with them. So did Queens Brian May and Roger Taylor.

The setlist ran:

1. In Your Honour
2. All My Life
3. Best Of You
4. Times Like These
5. Learn To Fly
6. Breakout
7. The One
8. Shake Your Blood (Probot song preformed with Lemmy)
9. Stacked Actors
10. My Hero
11. DOA
12. Generator
13. Monkey Wrench
14. We Will Rock You/Tie Your Mother Down (preformed with Brian May and Roger Taylor)
15. Everlong

Before Dave played Everlong, all by himself, at the end of the catwalk that stretched all the way to the end of the inner-circle, he said:

“I’d like to thank you for making this the most unbelievable show of our lives. We will always be there for you guys.”

Dave – your more then welcome.