Live Music You've Seen in 2013

[Verreaux]

Since we're well into 2013 already, I decided to go ahead and start up the new thread.

Went to my first concert of the year yesterday, and I saw Surfer Blood and AWOLNATION at the UC Riverside Heat Music Festival. This was the third year I went to Heat (I don't go to UCR, but a few friends of mine do so I get discounted tickets from them), so it's pretty much becoming an annual thing for me lol.

Surfer Blood is pretty solid live, although it appeared the singer left off-stage mid-set to vomit during one song as he upchucked a bit while finishing the fourth song in the set. Since this was a college show, the crowd was ridiculously rowdy (albeit fun); so rowdy that a mosh pit broke out during their set, which was ironic since Surfer Blood plays relatively mellow indie rock lol. Anyways, overall a nice set even though I believe that I was the only person in front row who actually knew who they were lol.

AWOLNATION, on the other hand, was as expected and was incredibly fun. A larger mosh pit broke out right behind me and loads of crowd surfers arose. Aaron Bruno and his crew really know how to put on a show, and the UCR crowd was nuts in moving along with the music although it did get pretty crazy sometimes, especially when some girl behind me almost got trampled near the end of their set. Aside from that, AWOL's set yesterday definitely deserves a spot among my all-time favorite sets.

I was also gonna catch Best Coast and part of Porter Robinson at the show as well (did get to see Best Coast do a couple of songs including The Only Place), but after it took me and my friends a good 20-30 minutes to maneuver ourselves out of the main stage crowd we were pretty much done for the night and decided to grab some late night grub at Denny's.

I'll be seeing Imagine Dragons with Atlas Genius and Nico Vega at the Wiltern in LA in a couple of weeks, weekend 2 of Coachella next month, and eventually some more shows later on in the year...so can't wait!!!


tl;dr: saw Surfer Blood and AWOLNATION yesterday; SB 7/10, AWOL 9/10

[Mega-Tallica]

Haven't been to a concert yet this year, simply have too much going on right now, but got tix for Sevendust, Lacuna Coil, and Coal Chamber on April 20th. It'll be my 4th time seeing Sevendust, but I'm actually pretty excited to see Coal Chamber, a band who I'd never think I'd be able to see live, really looking forward to it.

[afterstasis]

I saw Catharsis again.

[rkbdgurl]

Have not been to a concert this year yet, but did purchase my tickets last saturday, to a concert with some of my fav RB artists...Bad Religion, The Killers, and several others coming in May. It's time, and I'm so ready!

[JBlack240]

I got plans to go see All That Remains, HELLYEAH, and Nonpoint on April 12th along with Stone Sour on the 17th.

[Mega-Tallica]

I got plans to go see All That Remains, HELLYEAH, and Nonpoint on April 12th along with Stone Sour on the 17th.

Nonpoint is soooo good live. It's always a treat when they team up with Sevendust on a tour. Those concerts are my favorite ones I've been to.

[Verreaux]

So yesterday I went to go see Imagine Dragons with Atlas Genius and Nico Vega supporting at the Wiltern in downtown LA.

I've never heard of Nico Vega (though I found out today that their singer is married with a kid to ID's singer), but from what I saw their stage presence was great; NV's singer and drummer are especially talented and it was cool to see them do their thing.

Atlas Genius was a pretty nice treat to see as well. Despite their lesser stage presence compared to NV, I ended up liking the material I didn't know by them (I'll admit I was one of those people that went in only knowing Trojans) so much that I'm probably gonna end up grabbing their album. Also, their singer has an extremely lighter voice than expected, so that was kinda funny.

Imagine Dragons was undoubtedly epic, although I was pretty much prepared for it. Their album Night Visions is chock full of radio-friendly "arena indie pop-rock" and after seeing the stage people unveil the band's multiple bass drums (one being like 12 FREAKIN' FEET TALL) I was expecting some great moments to be had. Naturally, I was not disappointed. The stage they had was pretty unique, since they had a bunch of fake trees with synced strobe lights and a LCD screen portraying moving clouds. Also their singer is probably one of the most enthusiastic frontmen I've seen in a while, so that's a plus as well.

In all, a good night despite having to ditch my last class to get there on time lol

tl;dr Nico Vega 8/10, Atlas Genius 8/10, Imagine Dragons 9/10

[Skittles]

Saw Morrissey for the third time. I previously saw him on his 53rd birthday and Coachella 2009, however this time was different in that Patti Smith was a special guest that night. She sounded great for being a thousand... Originally, the show was scheduled for November 2012 with Iggy and the Stooges (what I was actually paying for) but it was postponed because his mother was... still ill (yeah). We arrived a little late and missed Kristeen Young (OH WELL) and just barely made it to the opening of Patti Smith's set. Moz sounded fantastic as well, much better than the previous shows I saw him at, especially after having a bleeding ulcer just shortly before the evening!

The set opened with Shoplifters of the World and consisted of a blend of solo / Smiths material, closing with The Boy with the Thorn in his Side, which I thought was a little weak and not as energetic as when he closed with Still Ill on his birthday. I just got paid that day to and decided to go all out on the merch:
A poster
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...91347076_n.jpg
A mug
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...21595925_n.jpg
A shirt
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...95793259_n.jpg
And another shirt
https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphot...31671750_n.jpg

On the way out, this group of girls and a guy we're flirting with me, telling me how I look like a young Morrissey. So it was a pretty good night.

[Verreaux]

It's been about a week and a half since, but I went to my first Coachella (weekend 2). People were complaining about the headliners when the lineup first came out, but honestly it's the undercard that truly shined this year (and made MAJOR conflicts in my schedule of acts to check out), but overall between camping uncomfortably, getting burned, soloing half of the sets I wanted to see (that's not really bad come to think of it lol) and acquiring a sore throat/cold I'm still trying to get rid of today, it was totally worth it and I'm still feeling the chella blues.

So my weekend ended up going like this:

Friday: Get there at 10am, get IN at 1pm (my friend's glass pipe got taken away lol), set up tent and get into the actual venue at 3pm....then wander and check out random acts for a couple songs. then FINALLY at 4:45 check out all full sets for the rest of the day for Metric, Passion Pit, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Purity Ring, Foals, and Earl Sweatshirt. I solo'd Passion Pit and YYY's after one of my friends KO'd at camp following Metric, but then rejoined me for the rest of the night during Purity Ring. Metric was a little disappointing in terms of stage prescence, Passion Pit and YYY's killed it, and Purity Ring, Foals and Earl Sweatshirt were all great sets (guests galore as well; Purity Ring brought out Danny Brown for a song and Earl brought Flying Lotus as his emcee as well as Mac Miller and obviously some of his OF buddies like Tyler and Domo Genesis).

Saturday: Wake up at 6am after 2 hours of sleep (our tent was pretty bare bones, and I wasn't exhausted/drunk enough to KO :P), charge my phone for 2 hours at their crowded charging station and solo an early start to see The Wombats and randomly then check out Theophilus London. Return to camp around 2pm to check up with my friends who wanted to go see 2 Chainz (lol), which was the only act I saw with my friends that day (and the only set with a guest artist that day as well, Fall Out Boy randonmly showed up and played their newest single). After that, I split from my friends and went on a mass marathon of back-to-back sets from 6ish to 1am, catching the entire sets of Portugal. The Man, Hot Chip, The Postal Service, Two Door Cinema Club, and Phoenix. All of these sets were probably the best of the weekend for me (even though I was mentally and physically exhausted by the time Phoenix came on, but it was still amazing nonetheless).

Sunday: Once again I woke up at 6am (however I got 5 hours of sleep this time, so I was a little more well rested) charged my phone again for two hours, and proceeded to go early in again and start my day with Deap Vally and Robert DeLong; both of whom put on great energetic sets. I proceeded to kill some time and then check out The Airborne Toxic Event, who put on a decent set (I had seen them last year at UC Riverside's HEAT festival, and that show I felt was much more livelier). Then I killed some more time at random stages/art pieces and proceeded to check out The Lumineers, whose audio was cut off at the end of their set yet put on a surprisingly great show (it was one of those sets that made me appreciate their music a little more, classy yet charming overall). Finally I was pretty tired so I headed back to camp for a while then returned back to watch Vampire Weekend, and they proceeded to put on an amazing set.

Unfortunately after Vampire Weekend, me and my friends had to leave as two of my friends had early morning class the next day (I did as well, but I was going to ditch...and still did ahaha) so I wasn't able to check out Red Hot Chili Peppers, of which I heard they put on a surprise set chock full of older songs (Me & My Friends, Sir Psycho Sexy, They're Red Hot, etc.) so I'm really bummed I missed that. I'm also bummed about the acts I missed thanks to scheduling conflicts or due to my exhaustion/hunger such as Of Monsters and Men, Franz Ferdinand, New Order, Sigur Rós, La Roux, Grizzly Bear, and oh so many more.

In all though between the long exhausting days inside the actual venue and the (questionably?) alcohol-induced hilarious nights at the Coachella campgrounds, Coachella was an amazing experience and I can't wait until I go again...well that is if I can afford to go again, so we'll see lol.

ps: I bolded the acts that I saw full sets of during the weekend just to make it easier to scan through who I saw.

tl;dr: Went to weekend 2 of Coachella, proceeded to have a blast!

[ClaptonsWig]

Circa Survive (March something) [10/10]
They were originally supposed to play last October, but cancelled that show for unknown reasons and added Royal Oak to their latest one. I had to leave work early to pick up my date, but totally worth it. They were touring with Minus the Bear as well, so it was great to see them again live. When Minus took the stage, the crowd in the pit was intense, there was no air pockets or arm room, everybody was shoulder to shoulder. The very presence of Anthony Green on stage lot up the place, and the crowd was pulsating for the rest of the night. They played 4 songs off Violent Waves, but stuck with Blue Sky Noise as far as hard rocking goes. I met two others in the crowd, and helped brace them from ongoing crowd surfers/mosh pits. I got one of their numbers, and we still chat.

Jonny Craig (March Something) [6/10]
This was a concert my date wanted to go to, and glad she did. The opening band was a last minute addition, who is a local show from Michigan called The Scenery. They were great sports, and even engages with the audience nicely. The guitarist worked at the pavilion, so I got to meet her again for a different show later on in this post. Anyways, a different California band came on called Hail the Sun, who blew the roof wide open. They were heavily jamming and having a good time. Their drummer Donovan is also the singer, so it was sweet watching him perform. They were the backing band for Kurt TravisJonny Craig, which was neat. Kurt did an acoustic show, although he played solely solo material. Same with Jonny, he did have a couple rockers but the night was rather tame. Throughout the night all the bands were walking around talking with fans, but the one who stood out for me the most was The Scenery.

Sleeping With Sirens (April 13) [6/10]
I had to go to my great aunts funeral just hours prior, so my night was kind of gloomy. The opening band Lions Lions once again stood out to me the most, although the other band Conditions did a great job keeping the audience thrilled with the show. When SWS came on, the place erupted and was booming. They never let up, and it was sweet. The last song was awesome, as all the other bands came onstage and were playing, dancing, or even walking around carrying chairs just to hype up the crowd.