I won tickets to Thee Oh Sees through the wonderful Radio 1190. I am familiar with them, but never owned an album or anything. Later that day Carleigh won tickets through the event organizer or something. So Jack, Carleigh, Liz and I left for the show pretty early. I guess way earlier then I realized since we were some of the first people to arrive. It allowed us get some really nice seats on the balcony at least. The first band was Dirty Few. They sang about drinking, spit into each others mouths, tried to ride a skateboard on the stage and appeared to have a blast. We enjoyed it for what it was, but I could go for less spitting.

The next band was Rubedo and they started their set by saying “Hello we are Rubedo and we’re going to rock your socks off!” They didn’t. I guess now that it’s been a couple days I can at least acknowledge that they were interesting. The drummer was fun to watch. The singer would go in between seizures and motivational speaker poses. He even got up on the speaker and spewed meaningless new age crap. He unfortunately didn’t jump. Their music was what you would expect for a band who claims “Rubedo is the physical manifestation of sound streaming from the psyche of its members. This is the alchemy of rock and roll.” Except worse. Fuzz, Rob and Leslie had luckily arrived in time to see this band with us.

It’s amazing how quickly you can tell when a band is good, because it took about 3 seconds for Thee Oh Sees to establish how awesome they are. Straight forward intense shredding for two hours. Toe Cutter and The Dream are a couple of the songs I knew and they were played well. The crowd was super into it. The dueling drummers were really fun to watch. When it was over my ears were ringing and they had gained a new fan. What a great band to see live.

TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!!! #jmascis #THEBEST

A photo posted by Null Skateboards (@null_skateboards) on Nov 11, 2014 at 11:22pm PST

I’ll just start by saying that on Friday I had the tune “Listen To Me” stuck in my head all day. Although it isn’t my favorite J Mascis song I hoped he played it. He opened with it Friday night. All day Saturday I had “Thumb” stuck in my head with the same hope. He opened with it Saturday night. It just gets better from there. The opening act Luluc was alright. A little mellow and simple for me, but a decent fit and the crowd liked them. The setlists had some overlap, but most of the songs he played both nights were songs I really wanted to hear twice (or every night). Alone, Ammaring, Get Me, Me Again, Every Morning, Drifter, Heal The Star. Actually, he played rocking versions of Drifter leading into Heal The Star both nights. They were my favorites both nights. Friday night had Little Fury Things, Out There (which was insane!) and closed with The Wagon. Saturday had Quest and ended with Just Like Heaven. Both nights were spectacular. They raised the stage for Saturday’s show so shorter people (not me) could see J better which was nice. What an awesome couple of nights. Thanks Larimer Lounge, there is a reason why I consider you my favorite venue.

A few weeks ago we were skating the DIY spot in Denver when asked to skate around the making of a GWAP video. Well, here it is! I’m especially proud of how real my slam looks. Well, except that they made me goofy footed, but I’ll forgive them.

The MURDER CITY DEVILS!

A photo posted by Null Skateboards (@null_skateboards) on Nov 11, 2014 at 10:05pm PST

I never saw Murder City Devils back in the day. I had tickets to see them open for At The Drive-In, but being the Texans that ATDI are they rolled their van in the snow and the show was cancelled (well I later found out that MCD still played, but at a different venue). So here we are several years later with a chance to see them. They just put out a new album that I think is great. So it’s kind of funny to be excited to hear the older classic songs I’ve never heard and want to hear the new songs as well.

Zach and I braved the cold and got there early enough to see the opening band Dragondeer. They play some breed of blues music. They had talent and played well, but it didn’t really hype us up or anything.

Several more friends showed shortly before 10 when MCD went on. They opened with the new tune “I Don’t Want To Work For Scum Anymore”. It was loud quickly and Spencer walked right off the stage into the crowd screaming the lyrics. It was an intense and awesome way to start the set. He stayed on the stage for the rest of the show which was a good mixture of old tunes with a few new ones sprinkled in. The setlist was pretty similar to this one I found on the web except they closed with Murder City Riot. Which is kind of funny because the lyrics repeatedly sayd “been up drinking all night” and yet the show was over at 11pm. I for one was grateful though and it seemed like a lot of the older crowd was as well. It was a great show. It was nice seeing a band still doing it. Still making great music, still touring, looking healthy (it’s funny getting older and wanting to see bands look healthy rather then wasted like when you saw them at 20 something) and doing things right. Kudos MCD, you guys rule.

I just started getting into this band and they have a lot of potential for me so I was hyped for this show. On top of that I won free tickets through the Larimer Lounge email list. Cool! Zach and Fuzz joined and we got there near the end of the Disco Doom set. Doh, they sounded like they might be pretty good. The next band was AAN. I have nothing good to say about them other then the singer had a decent voice. Creative Adult played relatively early on a very uncrowded Tuesday night. They killed it! Sonically they were amazing. The songs sounded perfect and they rattled off songs quickly. Visually there wasn’t a whole lot to look at for such a heavy band, but whatevs, they played great.

Lastly, Fuzz poured an entire beer on my shoe. Just because they are corporate scum shoes. What a jerk.

)

The line with the front tail then the ollie over the hydrant to nose manual is on of my favorite lines in Nothing. Connor rips.

On a cold night I headed to Zach & Amy’s to pick them up and head to Denver to see RFTC. On the way there I stopped to get gas and was confronted by an obviously wasted-Broncos-jersey-wearing-sports-bar enthusiast. He told me I would be giving him a ride home and got in my car. Great. He kept trying to hand me money though. I accepted $20 just cause, but when he kept trying to give me more I declined. I’ve been there before. Except I’m normally cheap no matter what, but anyways yeah, got $20 to give a dude a ride for a few blocks.

Zach and Amy kept buying me drinks. It helped get through the first band called Snake Rattle Rattle Snake. They had a great drummer that was entertaining to watch and some of the songs in the middle of the set were decent, but for the most part I was not interested.

The crowd at this show was awesome. Lots of older dudes. Ric, Lindsey, Betcher, etc. Most were complaining about how late the show was. Ha. Rocket played a great set spanning their entire collection. I thought the newer stuff sounded really good live and of course the old stuff did. As usual, Speedo was very happy to be on stage and the whole band seemed to be having fun. Except maybe when Speedo talked for a good 5 minutes about a trip to Colorado many moons ago when half of the band got jumped by some teenagers. Great show though. Saw a setlist here.

The Thermals are a special band. A band that realizes their niche and keeps at it. John and I both love the new album and headed down the Bluebird on a nice Saturday night. Things were off to a good start when I found a parking spot directly across the street. We missed the first band. The Builders And The Butchers were the first band we saw. At first I thought they might be pretty good and it seemed like they had quite a few people there to see them. Instead after a few songs John and I were both over it. I don’t even know what you would call their style of music. Some type of loud folk music that had us looking at our phones to see how much longer they would play. I’ll give them credit for entertaining drummers though. Yes, plural.

The Thermals came out and went right into two great fuzzy lofi songs off the new album quickly making us forget about that previous band. They went on to play several songs from their latest album, a lot from Blood Body and a good mix of the rest. The songs were all played loud and fast. The band was as tight as I’ve ever seen. This is the first time I’ve seen the current drummer and well, he’s hilarious. At one point he stage dived into the crowd. I’m sure some hipsters frowned on him showing his excitement, but for me it’s part of the nerdy attraction of The Thermals. They are good people, play simple music well and have fun on stage. It’s awesome and so was their set.

A few days ago I got an email saying ‘Reply now with your name for chances to win tickets to Afghan Whigs at the Ogden Theater ..” so I did. Turns out I would win a pair. Prior to winning the tickets I had no intention of going to see them even though their first album Up In It is one of my all time favorites. I lost interest in them in the mid 90’s when they changed from a grunge band to a rock band. They had a lot of success and I respect that. I knew going into the show that I probably wouldn’t hear much of the old Afghan Whigs that I loved. And well, free tickets! Can’t beat that.

The first band was The Knew from Denver. They were decent enough, even good at times. Brian and Denise showed up and Brian immediately began talking shit about how this show was going to blow away the Dinosaur Jr show a couple weeks ago. For me I knew that this wasn’t even a possibility, but I did want to at least be impressed and surprised by the Whigs. Well, that didn’t happen. I’ll try to sugar coat how I really felt about the show. The song ‘Gentlemen’ was good. I will give them that, it rocked, they played it well. They played a lot of other songs off of Gentlemen that I recognize from late nights with Liz as she used to put this cd on a lot. That kind of stoked me out. But most songs were super mellow and the grunge of old was not there at all. They had three people playing guitars and half the time you could hear a cello over them. At on point Greg Dulli said “That’s why we have three guitars!” and it made me laugh. Which leads me to some other great Greg Dulli quotes from the night. Upon seeing someone texting in the front he said “Hey no texting up front. That’s why you aren’t getting any pussy!” The last song he ripped off the Beatles for a bit with the “She loves you yeah yeah yeah” and turned it into “Hey ladies if your man doesn’t love you come back stage after the show and I’ll love you.” Ugh, that’s some serious ego rock star crap that I don’t like to hear. But I love a band where the singer never even speaks between songs so who am I to judge.

It seems like the majority of the crowd enjoyed the show. Although Brian (a much bigger fan of them then me) did lean over and say “I eat my words” and Zach wasn’t very hyped either. I can’t say I’m glad I went even though the tickets were free. I did play some Up In It songs this morning though so it couldn’t have been the worst show.

First and foremost, read a well written and great review here on the Westword site (where the above photo is from). I was more nervous for this show then I have been for any show in a long time. It was like the perfect storm of anxiety and I was a mess leading up to this show. So as soon as Liz and I hit the Goosetown Tavern for dinner the beer started flowing. We met up with some homies (Tom, Fuzz, John, Chad, CJ, Darin) and pre-partied until about the time the opening band went on stage. Turns out Shearwater pretty good. It’s always nice having a decent opening act.

Then came Dinosaur Jr. Gulp. They opened with See It On Your Side which is the last song on Sky. It was rad, but the sound was weird. They didn’t really get the sound fixed all night. They didn’t sound as awesome as normal, but they were actually playing pretty awesome. The Bluebird sound guy sucked it up. With all that said it was still an awesome show. They played six songs off the new album and a slew of Dinosaur classics including Sludgefeast which is my favorite live song ever. I probably drank too much. It seemed whenever I was almost finished with a beer someone (normally Fuzz) would hand me a beer and say “It’s your night man enjoy!” So awesome. Thanks to everyone for making it such a fun night and if you didn’t already know Dinosaur Jr is the greatest band of all time.