tempered from the road

Best ten sets of 2011, in no particular order. All of these were in Chicago unless otherwise stated.

Larry and His Flask. Congress Theater, 2011-10-08. Riot Fest. Jesus Fucking Christ. Music should be played this way every single goddamn time. They’re going to be opening for the Reverend Horton Heat in March, and everyone should go. Everyone in the whole world. We’ll fit if we can get a TARDIS installed in the Metro, so there’s no problem.

The Menzingers. Subterranean, 2011-06-16. My morning-after post still sums it up as well as I’m ever going to be able to.

t.s.o.l. @ reggie’s, 2011-05-14

T.S.O.L. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-05-14. Perfect for the Code Blue singalong alone. (Full writeup.)

Unnamed impromptu group of musicians. Rainbow Ballroom (Fresno, CA). 2011-02-16. The actual bill for the evening was Chuck Ragan, Lucero, and Social Distortion. Everyone had played Reno the night before, and there was a blizzard in the mountains early that morning. Do you know what’s between Reno and Fresno? The Donner Pass. Anyone who left Reno after ~0700 didn’t make it to the show, and that group included Lucero and Jon Gaunt, Chuck’s fiddle player. (I have seen all of them since, so although they did not make it to Fresno that day, neither did they resort to cannibalism to survive.) So the members of Social Distortion, minus Mike, opened for themselves. Brent and Jonny traded vocal duties. They played a bunch of country covers and some stuff they’d written themselves and they had a great time doing it and I had a great time watching it happen.

peculiar pretzelmen @ reggie’s, 2011-09-08.

The Peculiar Pretzelmen. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-09-08. I’ve said this before, but allow me to repeat: Imagine, if you will, Tom Waits doing a lot of drugs and finding himself in Appalachian coal country and he has to do a concert consisting entirely of Loony Toons theme song remixes and so he goes to the junkyard and makes up some instruments for his show. Weird and riveting.

The Dwarves. Bottom Lounge, 2011-08-20. If I hadn’t actively loathed one of the openers, this would be on the best-show list instead of the best-set list, because Nashville Pussy were also excellent.

Made By Man. Cobra Lounge, 2011-09-27. A local band I’d never heard of, but the frontman is terrifyingly charismatic and he freaked me out in the best way possible.

Trenchtown. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-10-13. Some sort of surf.punk reggae band that I swear is from California, except they’re from Michigan. They covered ‘Maneater.’ Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

Tracer Bullet. Reggie’s Rock Club, 2011-12-16. The first time I saw these guys, I spent half the set wondering where the hell I know the singer from and the other half drooling on the half-naked saxophone player. The second time, he also took his pants off, and normally I would probably like that less, except that he was wearing Batman briefs. Batman briefs get a pass. Oh, also, their music is good, punk rock mixed with a Detroit oldies station.

Chuck Ragan. Ogden Theatre (Denver, CO). 2011-12-03. I picked Denver 2 as my favorite Chuck Ragan set of the year, but I never saw them do a bad one. This one sticks out in my head, although I’m not sure why. The “Coal Tattoo” cover, maybe? (Link to the Hazel Dickens version, which isn’t the original, but it’s very good, and it’s the one Chuck namechecks when he intros this song.) All three nights in Denver were great, actually.

Live music is the best music, guys. Here’s to another year of it.