Ack!! The fantastic Lake Street Dive (LSD you know) has been riding that peak, and their latest record, Free Yourself Up, is just another monster (though not as good as Side Pony IMO, past their peak??). It features their new keyboard player, Akie Bermiss, and has some of their strongest songs. It includes their first non-personal-relations song, Shame Shame Shame, which is huge IMO.
But I love Lake Street Dive, as boring boy-girl drama as they might express, and we got tickets immediately when they announced a November 17th show at the Wang Center. And we got pretty good ones without breaking the bank, 7th row of the mezzanine/balcony, center!
There were ticket complications, and we were complicit. They announced that at the door they'd just swipe the credit card you'd used to purchase tickets. But our complications were that Dave had bought tickets with my credit card and that that credit card was now defunct. No joy calling the box office, so after showing up down in Quincy and helping to install Christmas-computer gear, we headed for the Theater District through the dangerously-swelling early Saturday-evening traffic in Boston.
Parked at the garage on Charles in Park Square and then got the ticket situation straightened out tout suite with the friendly (at that time) people in the Wang Center Box Office. It was still just a little after 5 and we had to get dinner ... and this was a problem! We stopped into four or five restaurants in the area and they basically all told us that they were booked until 8 ... when the first show was going to start. That's the Theater District for you, don't expect us to work on your schedule, you will work on our schedule and love it. And as we'd driven up there from the expressway we'd seen that Jacob Wirth's, the second oldest restaurant in Boston, was currently dark! I hope they get back open soon ... and that they clean their bathrooms.
So we headed back up Tremont in the direction of the Hill, but then Dave took us off on a side street, seeking an obscure Mexican restaurant. And we found it, Fajitas and Ritas [sic] in a fold between Chinatown and Downtown Crossing. We got a seat there right away and had some fine beers and some ok quesadillas, and a chicken burrito with guacamole. Sorry to say, I forget what (non-home made) green sauce they had, but I loved it.
Jeez, time seemed slow but then caught up and it was time to go! Wended our way back down Mason ('s Children) Street and Head Place (no lie!) towards Tremont and Boylston and then re-entered the Theater District. There was a small area for us to catch our breath, get out of the wind, and light up the one-hitter after we'd made it the few blocks over to near the Wang entrance. Talked to some Wilbur personnel there and asked them if all the dead balloons on the sidewalk were because of a birthday party? They knew we were kidding, this was the detritus of the dentist convention last night.
Anyway, time to go in, and we were way early in a way. We had gone to will-call and gotten the tickets we'd straightened out before, and then joined a line close by the doors. In the meantime the crowd surged around the entrance and the staff got nervous. They knew that when they "opened the gates" then a large number of the people would not get in smoothly, because of situations like ours, which we'd already fixed. And it was just like that. In fact, when we went in they at first tried to deny us because they weren't supposed to be accepting paper tickets, like what had just been issued to us by the box office!
Everyone got in eventually, but this was not smooth and it took an extra hour or more to get the majority of people seated. There must be a better way of deterring scalpers. Anyway, there we were in our excellent balcony seats and we realized that that couldn't be LSD's setup, there was going to be an opening act! And Jalen N'Gonda went on on schedule, though to a bunch of empty seats, a fantastic opening act for LSD.
He had a bass player and a drummer and entertained us with beautifully-crafted song after beautifully-crafted song. A large number of us were paying attention, we were waiting for the fucking crowd to get to their seats and we peering around them frantically, trying not to let his spell get broken. And we sure let him know we appreciated his act. He owned his own sound like you want a big-league act to do, and at the same time with his high but rangy vocals and ready-to-squeal guitar he was very much in the soul-funk-blues tradition. This was a great set, though he kept it short so they could have plenty of time to set up LSD.
The 4-piece (now 5) came out and played perhaps the best concert I've heard from them. I've seen LSD many times, in many different settings, and they always excel (except for Mike Olson on trumpet). We'd seen them in the HOB and I thought that was perhaps as good as it gets sonically, but they sure had the Wang Center resounding to their confections. Can they get better than this? I was just giggling inside to the sound, it was wonderful.
Mike Calabrese is always amazing and on this night he was three times as good as normal. You could say the same thing about Bridget Kearney. She only had one or two short solos but she dominated the string end of the spectrum, and with MikeC they were riveting themselves, especially when they harmonized behind Rachael.
And Mike Olson was incredible on guitar, fuzzing out his amp and playing with a rock-solid beat you rarely hear from him. He was strangely not in the vocal mix as much as usual, perhaps to give Akie a chance to fill that niche. I don't like his trumpet playing but he concentrated on guitar instead.
Rachael was being Rachael, in a billowy skirt. But hang on, she was extraordinary too! She just exuded an incredible energy, grooving to all four instruments around her and then topping them with her phrasing, volume, and emotion. She is an incredible singer and as good as her band is, she's the one when they play. And play they all did ... as I say, this was perhaps the best I've ever heard them.
Here's their one long set:
You Are Free
You Go Down Smooth
Red Light Kisses
Baby, Don't Leave Me Alone With My Thoughts
Better Than
Bobby Trilogy: Bobby Tanqueray / Spectacular Failure / Doesn't Even Matter Now
Darryl
Hang On
I Can Change
You're Still the One (Shania Twain)
Got Me Fooled
Seventeen
Call Off Your Dogs
Musta Been Something
Shame, Shame, Shame
Bad Self Portraits
Good Kisser
Encore:
Strangers (The Kinks)
Dude
I Want You Back (Michael Jackson)
Well dressed and well behaved crowd, but there were a good number of hoots and hollers as the night went on, and most of us stood up for the long encore. Great night of music and then they and we were gone to the wind. Not as crazy a Theater District scene that night (though crazier than average) but we got over to the parking garage, said goodbye to Dave as he struck off for the T, and then barely got out of Boston through the crazies. Back about about the same time as Friday night, two incredible concerts this weekend!
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