Deano Bravo's Modern Life

As a pre-pubescent teenager, the classic double album by Pink Floyd called The Wall was the third cassette I ever bought (the first two were The Repo Man Soundtrack and Led Zeppelin’s ZOSO). I vividly recall listening to it for the first time walking to track practice, and listening to its frank passionate emotion made me suddenly break down crying. The sincere tears of empathy and sadness streamed from my eyes as the tunes wafted from my Walkman, and I knew, for the first time, the intense emotional power that music contained. From that day, I set down that path to embrace all music and art for just for a taste of that zealous embrace of expressive ecstasy. As I got older, I began to realize the bigger metaphor behind the album. Apart from the raw deep emotion contained within, it is an illustration of how the mind protects itself after years of damaging experiences and can build a largely subconscious wall to shield itself from further harm. After to many cruel characters and unhappy incidents, you can become isolated behind a wall of these protective barriers. There are also greater analogies to this wall, like the intolerant blockades that lead to war and violence and even the fortification that forms with fame that separates you with the audience that you try to connect with. It leads you to conclusion that to live and connect in the wider civilized world, you must tear down that fortification and risk further harm. This amazingly deep observation of the human condition was told musically through the eyes and the life of one man by the name of Roger Waters.

Waters was bringing that very album that first opened my eyes to the potential power of music to Denver’ massive Pepsi Center. No, this is not the full famed experimental quartet of Pink Floyd, but Waters himself, with a large accompaniment, reviving the original massive shows of 1980 and ’81 that visually recreating that masterful album in it’s entirety. Of course, with the years of technological advancement since those shows, this tour displays a stunning variety of enhancements that would shock those that saw those performances some three decades ago not to mention those who witnessed him relive it just two years ago on the first go around of the The Wall (like myself, who got to catch the him at NYC’s MSG). Pink Floyd was, of course, the band that he helmed for the better part of their 70’s heyday period that encompassed other such famous rock experiments such as 1972’s Dark Side Of The Moon and 1975’s Wish You Were Here, but in the 80’s the band splintered in a very vile and nasty way that brought these four normally very camera-shy musicians into the public spotlight, and tore these former friends apart in a bitter feud until just very recently. In my preview coverage, I went into great detail about their long career and harsh breakup, but sufficed to say, I’ll stay somewhat more on brief this time.

The Floyd’s history goes back to the mid 60’s, when Waters, keyboardist Rick Wright, and drummer Nick Mason were joined by a genius guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett, who virtually invented the group’s avant-garde sound and cutting-edge multi-media stage shows that turned them into the premiere psychedelic band of the 66/67 London Underground scene. Barrett had problems with the fame, and soon succumbed to a combination schizophrenia and the acid burn out of drug abuse. After attempting to add a fifth member, guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour (Syd’s childhood friend), to take over when Syd couldn’t or wouldn’t play, it was Waters who ironically first suggested they could go on without their sole songwriter and front man, and, after a period of deep mind-bending group experimentation, he took the role of solitary lyricist and musical visionary, a role first heard (again ironically) on an conceptual album about the eventual mental collapse of their one-time leader Barrett called Dark Side Of The Moon. Although it was the first to feature Waters as primary songwriter and lyrist, the others had pinnacle roles of their own: Gilmour doing most of the vocals and jam constructions, Wright building the mellow jazzy interludes, and Mason erecting much of the deep renowned soundscape of sound effects. As that album breached the pantheon of ultra-commercially and artistic “rock god” success, Waters darker emotional sound came in conflict with Gilmour and Wright’s mellower harmony style (very evident on 75’s Wish You Were Here), as well as admitting a growing divide between him and his growing legions of extremely loud fans, which came to a head on the ‘77 Animals tour, during which, he could nightly be heard screaming or even seen spitting on fans he found loud or disruptive. Around this time, he claims he experienced a mental meltdown of his own, one which produced the largest bounty of intense musical material of his career.

When the Floyd next met in 1978, he presented them with two largely complete, albeit extremely rough, demo versions of two separate albums. He let them choose between a nightmarishly hostile pre-vision of his wife leaving him called Hitchhiker, and a tale of his own isolating breakdown originally entitled Bricks In The Wall. The band chose the latter, as they simply heard more promising material on that one, and they then went about the massive undertaking of recording this very different kind of Floyd album. Although Waters constructed almost all of the project’s components, Gilmour was “allowed” to have some input, as Roger obviously saw that Dave might very well leave the band to proceed with an already successful solo career if he did not. So, Dave was added as co-producer, the main musical conductor, and even brought in a few songs he was writing for his second solo album (that received lyrical treatment by Waters, of course). Other firsts for this album included: the album cover art was now done with dark illustrations by British political cartoonist and animator Gerald Scarfe (replacing their career-long visual director Storm Thorgerson and his company Hypnosis) working off some rough sketches by Waters himself, it also contained the first official singles they had released since 1969, on top of there only being two producers (instead of the whole band) this time, an outside producer was added for the first time in almost a decade to evade creative differences between the two, in the form of Alice Cooper, solo Peter Gabriel, and punk pioneer producer Bob Ezrin (who also co-wrote the album’s finale), it also contained lots of backing musicians to augment their own instrumentation as another first, as well as the reduction to just a three member Floyd, as Wright was given the boot early on due to his apparent lack of creative input (although it has been rumored since that it was actually due to drugs), only to be brought back on towards the end as a paid session musician with the understanding he would quit on his own accord after the project’s completion (and in another irony, becoming the only Floyd to make any money off the project for many years to come because of the project’s immense expense).

Next, of course, was the epically large stage production starting in 1980. It was so big in fact, they could not actually tour it, as they just played it in three locales in 1980 (L.A., N.Y.C, and London) and one more in Berlin in 1981. It was so huge, it lost massive amounts of money (despite selling out every show), but, as they were planning on turning it into a live movie, they thought it would make up the money in the end. Once again, however, Waters overstepped all logical and financial bounds, and wrote up a brief script treatment, and it was soon a full-fledged movie, with then freshman Alan Parker directing, Scarfe art directing, and Boomtown Rat front man and activist Bob Geldof playing the lead. With no dialogue and no typical rock n’ roll movie cheesiness, it made for one of the most overpowering and emotional films of all time. Soon after its release, when they were refused permission to play it next to the Berlin Wall as a protest to the Cold War, Waters vowed to never again play The Wall live until the wall came down.

After the following aptly-titled Final Cut in 1983 was all but an entirely Roger Waters solo piece. In 1985, he called an end to Pink Floyd. Gilmour, Mason, and even eventually Wright soon after picked up the name and carried off on their own, much to the vile anger of Waters. The two sides spent much of the next decade fighting over that name and who deserved to own it. Finally, as the century almost ended, Waters went out to tour with a brand new open and happy attitude, one that extended to both his fans and even his former band mates. Over the last decade the band has, on occasion, gathered together, but this is the time for Waters to finally take full charge of his creation.

For this tour, Roger Waters has amassed an enormous band to match the uniquely talented sound of the original Floyd. He is joined on stage by a touring ensemble that includes four musicians to cover his former band-mate and Wall co-composer David Gilmour alone; including Snowy White (the original Floyd backing guitarist from those days), and guitarists Dave Kilminster (taking many of the soaring leads) and GE Smith (best known as Hall & Oates axe man and musical director of SNL for nearly two decades) as well as Robbie Wyckoff pulling off those tenderly high Gilmour vocal parts. Also joining on are keyboardist and vocalist Jon Carin (who has also surprisingly been Gilmour’s backing keyboardist of the last 20-plus years, but has also been pulling double-duty as Waters’ right-hand man for the last decade) and Roger’s own son Harry Waters playing organ, Graham Broad on drums (who has been also been playing with Roger for over 20 years), as well as Jon Joyce, Pat Lennon, Mark Lennon and Kipp Lennon singing backing harmonies throughout.

To personify this vivid view into mental collapse on stage, Waters took great care to use as much metaphor and analogy as needed to get the point across both visually and conceptually. In the original shows, the four Floyds came out to rock out the ominous march opening of “In The Flesh,” only to take off masks at the end to reveal that it was actually the four backing musicians impersonating them, setting a tone of conceptual trickery and intangible imagery that the audience carries with them all through the rest of the show, and, like many of the other cues, really makes you think about what it’s really all about. On this resurrected tour, the show starts with a mannequin figure ominously placed center stage with a tall coat and hat. In the last tour Waters came up to the stage dressed as a homeless person pushing a cart with anti-war slogans hanging from it around the floor, and when he popped up on stage and it turned out to Waters, you still felt the same sting of trickery, but this time came out rocking along side his sizable band, as flagmen dressed in black with symbols of hammers intertwined (that resemble the Nazi’s Swastikas) rise into the sky on mechanical platforms, whilst pyrotechnic explosions bring the song to a dramatic climax with what seems to be a full-sized war plane strafing the audience and crashes into the stage for an amazing climax. At this point you see many uniformed workmen moving giant white Styrofoam-looking bricks out, one by one, building a wall some 40 feet high in front of the band as they continue on with the rocking show. The entirety of the stage (and the growing wall) is used as a movie screen, which with better projection technology can be more manipulated over the entire expanse of a much bigger wall, playing high definition videos of many of Gerald Scarfe’s original stunning animations, like the famous “flowers” scene during “Empty Spaces,” and some updated ones like the CG bombers dropping corporate logos instead of bombs on “Goodbye Blue Skies,” and some digitally manipulative security-looking video during “One Of My Turns,” and even a mind warping animated live animated bit of him playing on “Run Like Hell” and messages of many kinds are sprawled out across it’s expanse. There are many times that the spaces in the wall itself are used as effects, like bright lights shone from behind the bricks in different patterns, and times when projections of the bricks themselves fool you visually as they blow apart or melt into mind-bending shapes. Big time special effects blow your mind throughout, like a giant 50-some-foot inflatable puppet teacher with giant spotlight eyes (marionetted by huge cranes) taunting the audience and a bunch of school kids on stage singing along to “Another Brick In The Wall pt.2.” In addition, this time around Waters added a new song to the line up, another “Another Brick In The Wall,” a song performed somberly acoustic that seemed more of an anti-war theme as pictures of his own father was sprawled out across it. As the last brick is put in place, just after Waters sings his touching “Goodbye Cruel World” hanging out the last remaining opening, the first set ends with a sad whimper instead of a bang.

The second set opens with a dimly lit and fully complete wall, as the band, presumably behind the wall, plays the heartbreaking “Hey You,” as they did in the original (although this time the band is supposedly under the stage playing), but you have to take their word for it, as they could be using pre-recorded audio for all you know. Waters then makes an appearance sitting in a recliner watching TV in a Broadway-styled set that pops out of the wall to sing “Nobody Home.” After Waters plays a few songs all alone in front of the wall, he is joined by the David Gilmour-replacing lead guitarist and singer high atop the wall for “Comfortably Numb” and then the full band, now dressed in black hoody terrorist-looking uniforms play as the hammer logos fill the whole venue for “In the Flesh” and “Run Like Hell,” and then is accompanied by a giant inflatable pig with spotlight eyes that menacingly hovers above the audience. “The Trial” brings on many more giant animatronic inflatable characters and animations until a brutal climax that ends with the wall blowing into bits. The band then comes out into the rumble to preform the last number in simplistic fashion with accordions and ukuleles. Throughout the show you also can’t possibly miss the pristine sound acoustics akin specially to only to a Floyd-oriented performance, as sound quality has always been to the most upmost importance to Waters. From the birds that sound as if they chirp on your shoulder to “Goodbye Blue Skies” to the cutting of the bat crashing into a TV that sounds like it slices through your very head in “Another Brick In The Wall pt. 3,” the timbre of audio phonics is more precise that if you even had the best earphones in the world on. 

Now, just as Pink Floyd has just released The Wall Immersion box set, with discs full of demos and live material from that effort, it seems appropriate that Waters has again set out on the road bringing The Wall to even larger concert venues, setting out an even greater expanse to the show. It is a show that delivered many new surprises and will be an truly epic no one should miss, and an experience you will forever remember. Everyone should break down their walls, come out of their shells, and see Waters deliciously revel in his own most beautiful masterpiece one more time.

Portugal. The Man has for years made a name for themselves by playing small venues and working tirelessly on minor labels to arise from a small band from Alaska to a prominently hip and premiere Portland rock band. Their move to the big time is now seemingly complete, as they have now signed with Atlantic Records and are playing bigger locations like the Ogden Theatre for their show in Denver last Wednesday and having big-time sponsors like this tour’s benefactors Jägermeister, whose logo was plastered and projected all across the venue. The crowd has also grown with locales and labels as the house was packed and the floor was full of hot-looking young girls and hipster dudes. Still, newfound success has not been easy for Portugal. The Man, as just last month the group lost two members after longtime keyboardist Ryan Neighbors left to pursue a side projects and their touring drummer quit (or was fired, depending on who you believe) in the middle of a recent gig, and yet the band has carried on. For this tour keyboardist Kyle O’Quin and drummer Kane Ritchotte have joined on, although both were almost hidden behind the branched trees of big-bulbed lights branching high above and across the stage and strung into to the rafters. In whatever form, this band have always been tireless workers and produced at least one album every year and have toured almost continuously, as they are now in support of their new album In the Mountain, In the Cloud.

Mr. Dee Jay was the DJ for the event, and as I walked into the festively lit Ogden, he was already cranking out the jams, playing lots of contemporary favorites like Foster The People and Fun., songs that would fit into the general sound of the headliner, and got in all into the celebratory atmosphere of a Jägermeister-powered party.

A local band called The Epilogues opened up the band portion of the night’s band show, admitting they had literally just been added to the show, but were overjoyed to be playing this big show. With a drum kit glowing brightly with their name blazing across it’s bass, Jason Hoke pounded out some wonderfully tricky rhythm changes and intense power drives with the help of an impressive bassist and some great soundscapes on the keys by Jason Hoke. Still, it was clearly mostly about front man Chris Heckman’s catchy lyrics, smooth voice, and killer guitar solos that carried their set, and his nicely intense spasms during high jams gave the apex of each solo a gravitas. “The Fallout” stood out as a real powerful beguiling alt-hit with a nice touch of brooding darkness. “Hunting Season” also had that wondrous world of complex rhythm and tonal changes combined with raw but captivating vocals. I would be expecting to hear more from this band in the future and are really worth checking out.

Washington natives The Lonely Forest were next, and defined themselves with tremendously catchy songs that really superglue themselves to your head like in a Two Door Cinema Club way, with a Doves-like melancholy atmosphere, and raw self-deprecating themes that gave it a formidably raw garage-punk-pop sensation like that of Teenage Fanclub or XTC. Fronted by bespectacled guitarist John Van Deusen, who would often loose his glasses during his spastic mosh-bobbing between well-timed vocal spurts, the band had a real tightly impressive sound. “Turn Off This Song And Go Outside” still runs in repeat over and over in my head, and I’ve just listened to their new Arrows album in its entirety, and the songs loose none of its raw clout off stage.

Mr. Dee Jay came out once more between sets with the three Jägermeister girls to drunk down a shot for a final plug for the liquor. Then, opening with a track from last year’s In The Mountain In The Cloud, “All Your Light (Times Like These),” Portugal. The Man front man John Gourley, standing far stage right, sang his wonderfully high falsetto to an enchanting melody and set the tone for the whole show. In an appreciative manner, bassist Zach Carothers uttered “I know a lot of bands come out and say it every night, but we really do love it here. We have more friends in Denver than anywhere else in the world, except maybe home.” And by the way, “Is the naked hippie here? That shit was crazy.” Apparently, there was a naked streaker at their last show at the smaller Bluebird down the street last time they played here. The globe lights began undulate and glow into appropriately moody atmospheres with lasers slicing through at apt times as Ritchotte’s impressive drumming led the band through many changing temperaments, from guitar-warring solos to shoe gazing gloom, like the off-beat groove of “The Woods,” from my favorite of their albums The Satanic Satanist, that somehow was warm and cold all at once. “So American” and “Work All Day” both grooved in glaringly mellowing zones between those two albums. Then they landed on a sinister tone with an odd song called “The Devil” from an EP (one I actually didn’t have) called The Pines & The Devil from ’06 that morphed into an immensely powerful cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” (not surprising as I hear a lot of Beatles in the sound). Well done Portugal, well done. Somehow a girl got past security and somehow appeared in the middle of the stage, looking as bewildered by her place there as everyone else until she finally started dancing along to a crowd favorite “AKA M80 The Wolf,” only to very politely being escorted by security after the end of the song, showing that there was a kinder gentler tone during this show. That’s when the show got really good to me, as a phenomenal string of songs commenced mid-set with the smooth “Shade,” the sing along-arama to Floating (Time Isn’t Working My Side), “The Sun,” and my personal favorite (and probably their most popular Lennon-inspired song) “Senseless,” that morphed into “Bellies are Full.” Totally sublime!  ”My Mind,” had a wonderfully jammed out ending, as many songs did, carried away in outro atmospherics and swirling leads. The crowd’s enthusiasm exhausted me and I had to get to the back to re-hydrate! “And I” closed out the set fittingly before they came back out for an encore. With “Do You” and “Everyone is Golden,” they gave the great feeling that everyone was saved and being raptured away. They complimented Denver again, before the final encore “Everyone Is Golden,” the cry rung out among the crowd as Gourley professed. “One thing I don’t say every night is that I love coming here, if I don’t, I just say fuck it and don’t say anything. I love coming here!” What a great show!

(all images courtesy Pink Floyd world) 

Iconic classic progressive rock composer Roger Waters is bringing one of the biggest rock n’ roll shows of all time to The Pepsi Center in Denver this Monday to play a show that no one should miss! This is a reproduction of the classic 1979 Pink Floyd album The Wall, and, in particular, an updated reproduction of the original monumental 31 live shows that the Floyd staged in 1980 and 1981 in support of the album. You may have seen big rock stage shows before, as maybe you have seen U2 or the Rolling Stones pull off an stunning stage show, but take it from me, until you’ve seen a Pink Floyd show, you have not seen a real epic show of this proportion. You see, this is a spectacle of not only amazing visuals, but also one emerced in concept, both in form and physicality. It is not an illustration of a literal wall, like The Great Wall Of China, The Wailing Wall, or The Berlin Wall, but a metaphorical one, the kind that the mind builds up to protect oneself from being hurt after repeated damage through wounding events and treatment, but also one that can cause cyclical destruction by excessively isolating oneself after repeated trauma. This album (and show) tells the story of one such broken soul, as Roger Waters narrates his own story of isolation and madness.

First, it should be said that this is just a performance of The Wall album, in its entirety and even elongated, with no assortments of greatest hits added on. Secondly, this not actually the group Pink Floyd. Instead, it is just one of the members of the original rock quartet with a big band backing. Roger Waters was not only bassist and one of the three vocalists of this classic multi-front man experimental rock group, but also the sole lyricist and major music writer of this entire double album. This was his story, his semi-autobiographical tale of self-destruction and isolation, and the most profound emotional outcry of his entire career.

The original Wall album narrates the story of an aging rock star by the name of Pink (Floyd, of course), who has barricaded himself in his hotel room as he recounts the many events and characters that added their own special bricks to a wall that now almost intirely encases him. From a father who was killed in WWII before he was even born, to an over-protective mother, to peers that taunted him, to teachers that berated and abused him, and an audience (and presumably a band) that never understood him, he is walking on a razor’s edge and dangerously close to falling into the abiss of madness as he is tortured by his demons. It turns out to be his wife leaving him for another man, only to be found out over very desperate phone call, that lunges him over the edge into insanity. He brings a groupie into his room and (presumably) violently attacks her in a last desperate fit of rage and finally relents to his dark insulating madness. After contemplating suicide, he finally says goodbye to the world and falls sweetly into psychosis. The second disc opens into the seductively dark meloncally of this mental seclusion that continues to grow deeper, until his manager and others break into his room and find him in this catatonic state. A doctor pumps him full of drugs to bring him out of this “Comfortably Numb” state and then throw him out on stage to play a show. It is then he is reborn as an evil Hitler-type figure, commenting on the strange totalitarianism that is celebrity as he spreads his vileness and hatred to his audience to an image that ironically resembles the tyrannical Nazis that killed his father. After this persona’s loathsome anger eats away at his last remaining hints of humanity, characterized by worms (or maggots) eating at his will to live, he is forced to make a decision, and in his mind puts himself on a trial of sorts, to confront all these characters that forever damaged his life of happiness. He chooses to tear down the wall, and in the aftermath, spooky voices of school children sing in unison to the ideal of rebirth as it ends with the same ghostly Vera Lynn song “We’ll Meet Again” playing in the background as the album starts with. There is also a hidden voice at the very end that says “Isn’t (or is) this where…,” as the album also begins with a hidden voice saying “begin.” If it does say “isn’t,” it implies the perpetual cycle of its endless, unbreakable nature, yet does nothing to otherwise attempt escape, ending it all on a hopeless note. On the other hand, if it is “is”, it gives more of a hopeful tone, as it is he saying, “Oh, right, I remember this. This is where everything started going wrong for me. Well, this time things will be different…” Which it actually is, and what outcome occurs, we may never know. It is perhaps one of the deepest emotional concepts for any musical albums ever, and one that few people will actually ever capture in its intense psychological meaning. 

To personify this personal take of the human condition and vivid view into mental collapse on stage, Waters took great care to use as much metaphor and analogy as needed to get the point across both visually and conceptually. In the original shows, the four Floyds came out to rock out the ominous march opening of “In The Flesh,” only to take off masks at the end to reveal that it was actually the four backing musicians impersonating them, setting a tone of conceptual trickery and intangible imagery that the audience carries with them all through the rest of the show, and, like many of the other cues, really makes you think about what it’s really all about. On this resurrected tour, the show starts with a shadowy figure center stage talking to the audience, that most believe to be Waters, but many will begin to notice what seems to be a homeless person pushing a cart with anti-war slogans hanging from it around the floor. When the bum pops up on stage and it turns out to Waters, you still feel the same sting of deceit, but now he rocks out the opening with his sizable band, as flagmen dressed in black with symbols of hammers intertwined (that resemble the Nazi’s Swastikas) rise into the sky on mechanical platforms, whilst pyrotechnic explosions bring the song to a dramatic climax with what seems to be a full-sized war plane strafing the audience and crashing into the stage. It is early on that you see many uniformed workmen moving giant white Styrofoam-looking bricks out, one by one, building a wall some 40 feet high in front of the band as they continue on with the rocking show. The entirety of the stage (and the growing wall) is used as a movie screen, playing many of Gerald Scarfe’s original animations, like the famous “flowers” scene during “Empty Spaces,” and some updated ones like the CG bombers dropping corporate logos instead of bombs on “Goodbye Blue Skies,” and some digitally manipulative security-looking video during “One Of My Turns” that really does warp your perception. There are many times that the spaces in the wall itself are used as effects, like bright lights shone from behind the bricks in different patterns, and times when projections of the bricks themselves fool you visually as they blow apart or melt into mind-bending shapes. Big time special effects blow your mind throughout, like a giant 50-some-foot inflatable puppet teacher with giant spotlight eyes (marionetted by huge cranes) taunting the audience and a bunch of school kids on stage singing along to “Another Brick In The Wall pt.2.” As the last brick is put in place, just after Waters sings his touching “Goodbye Cruel World” hanging out the last remaining opening, the first set ends with a sad wimper instead of a bang.

The second set opens with a dimly lit and fully complete wall, as the band, presumably behind the wall, plays the heartbreaking “Hey You,” as they did in the original (although this time the band is supposedly under the stage playing), but you have to take their word for it, as they could be using pre-recorded audio for all you know. Waters then makes an appearance sitting in a recliner watching TV in a Broadway-styled set that pops out of the wall to sing “Nobody Home.” After Waters plays a few songs all alone in front of the wall, he is joined by the David Gilmour-replacing lead guitarist and singer high atop the wall for “Comfortably Numb” and then the full band, now dressed in black hoody terrorist-looking uniforms play as the hammer logos fill the whole venue for “In the Flesh” and “Run Like Hell,” and then is accompanied by a giant inflatable pig with spotlight eyes that menacingly hovers above the audience. “The Trial” brings on many more giant animatronic inflatable characters and animations until a brutal climax that ends with the wall blowing into bits. The band then comes out into the rumble to preform the last number in simplistic fashion with accordions and ukuleles. Throughout the show you also can’t possibly miss the pristine sound acoustics akin specially to only to a Floyd-oriented performance, as sound quality has always been to the most upmost importance to Waters. From the birds that sound as if they chirp on your shoulder to “Goodbye Blue Skies” to the cutting of the bat crashing into a TV that sounds like it slices through your very head in “Another Brick In The Wall pt. 3,” the timbre of audio phonics is more precise that if you even had the best earphones in the world on.

For this tour, Roger Waters has an extensively huge band to match the massive set. He is joined on stage by a touring ensemble that includes four musicians to cover his former band-mate and Wall co-composer David Gilmour, with original Floyd backing guitarist from those late 70’s early 80’s days Snowy White, and guitarists Dave Kilminster and GE Smith (of Hall & Oates and musical director of SNL for nearly two decades) as well as Robbie Wyckoff pulling off those tenderly high Gilmour vocal parts. Additionally, keyboardist and vocalist Jon Carin (who has also surprisingly been Gilmour’s backing keyboardist of the last 20-plus years, but has also been pulling double-duty as Waters’ right-hand keys man for the last decade) and Roger’s own son Harry Waters playing organ, Graham Broad on drums (who has been also been playing with Roger for over 20 years), as well as Jon Joyce, Pat Lennon, Mark Lennon and Kipp Lennon singing backing harmonies throughout. 

Although many Floyd fans would have loved to have seen the full band touring this year, it is likely never going to happen. As most rock lovers know, Waters and the other three Floyds have been embroiled in an bitter and unusually public war over the name Pink Floyd since the mid-80’s up until quite recently, a battle which brought these four normally very camera-shy anti-celebrity rockers kicking and screaming into the public eye. Waters apparently strongly opposed guitarist and vocalist David Gilmour, keyboardist and vocalist Rick Wright, and drummer Nick Mason carrying on as Pink Floyd without him, stressing that he was the major composer, sole word bard, and conceptualist behind their 70’s heyday hit albums like Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, and, of course, The Wall, creating a massive divide amongst these one-time close friends, as well as dividing many other their millions of fans into two camps. As often is the case, the story was not simple, as this was not the first time fans divided over a lead songwriters’ untimely departure.

You see, the Floyd’s story goes back much further than their 70’s heyday period, as they were actually an influential part of the mid-60’s London Underground scene with their highly experimental music. As Waters, Wright, and Mason were architecture students trying, as many college students do, to be rock stars, playing in a couple cover groups together, until they decided to form a band of their own, called The Abdabs. Still, they were stuck playing R&B and blues covers until Waters’ close friend and painting student Syd Barrett joined on. Syd was an extremely talented singer, songwriter, experimentally minded guitarist, visionary, colorful dresser, and drug lover. In other words, he was the perfect rock n’ roll front man. It was he who literally invented the band, from writing and fronting all their early songs. He pushed the evolution of their sound from their early American blues-loving rawness heard in late ‘65, to the expansive free form sound of lengthy experimental instrumentals that took the scene by storm through 1966 (and in many people’s minds started the whole Progressive Rock movement), and into the devolving Beatles-on-acid sound that made them such a hit after they were “discovered” by EMI in early 1967. Syd was instrumental in designing their massive multi-media show (as only an artist could do) that was far beyond what anyone was doing at the time. He even came up with the name Pink Floyd, from what he described as a vision floating in the air, although many have since figured out it actually came from an acid-dropping party during which Syd repeatedly played a rare wax disc he acquired of Georgia blues legends Pink Anderson and The Floyd Council. After a couple of Syd-helmed top 10 singles, it was his own passion to capture that multi-frontman, three-part harmony feel of his favorite band The Beatles that made him convince Waters and Wright to start writing and fronting more songs of their own, as was initially evidenced on their first ground-breaking concept LP of spacey childhood visions The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Not long after though, Syd began to show signs of what some today call “acid burn-out,” mixed with pre-existing markers of Schizophrenia, which produced a personality and mental disintegration that made him virtually unable to preform. He would space out on stage or disappear for days or weeks, and was all but entirely unable to finish songs in the studio. This led the rest of the band to come up with a desperation play: to add a fifth member to the band to take over when Syd couldn’t (or wouldn’t) play. This plan was styled after another of their favorite groups, the Beach Boys, whose lead composer Brian Wilson was also suffering from a hallucinogen-powered schizophrenic meltdown. Syd would hopefully still write most of the material, while the band would record and preform without needing him to show his face in public or the studio. This was still a worse case scenario, as the fifth member ended up being David Gilmour, an extremely talented guitarist and vocalist on his own right, whom also happened to be Syd’s BFF from childhood, implying a hope that Gilmour’s presence would bring Syd back to the real world, at least most of the time. This did not pan out, however, as Syd continued to have dangerous bouts of self-destructive behavior, as when he mixed homemade hallucinogens in with his hair gell before a show, only to have it set ablaze under the heat of stage lights, and literally frying his brain, and horribly shocking the band. Ironically, it was Waters who first suggested them not picking Syd up for practice, and soon after, that they could and would go on without him.

As Barrett went on to a predictably erratic solo career, Pink Floyd went on was well, despite many of their fans contending there could be no Floyd without Syd. They found their own sound and direction, initially depending on Waters’ darker more seriously psychedelic songs and Wright’s dreamier harmonic jazz-pop tracks (as heard on their transitional A Saucerful Of Secrets), and soon after reliant on Gilmour’s more confidently sure musical hand helping form them into a tight musical outfit onstage and in the studio, and he even eventually rose as the clearly more versatile vocalist. They, of course, went through a few years of deep experimentation in the process, like the aptly unpronounceable Ummagumma in ‘69 or the 1970 almost-all instrumental/orchestral/choral/sound effects experimental epic Atom Heart Mother) but finally coming out with a more profound lyrical sense as well, as on 1971’s angelically harmonic Meddle. Still, mainstream success seemed to evade the Floyd, until, in another case of tragic irony, their first front man Syd Barrett finally succumbed to his physiological problems while attempting to record his third solo album in early 1972, experiencing a mental break from which he never fully recovered. When his ex-band mates heard of this, they began immediately composing their first concept album since their initial disc, this time all about madness, called Dark Side Of The Moon, which became one of the most creatively and commercially successful rock albums of all time. It was the first album Waters officially wrote all the lyrics to (and much of the music), but the rest of the band had important roles as well, with Gilmour doing most of the singing and constructing many of the jams, Wright assembling many of the mellow jazz-inspired interludes, and Mason amassing much of the sound effects that created a deep soundscape that carried you to the very frontiers of the audio limits.

It was this massive wave of newfound success that first lulled Waters into creating this wall between him and his audience, as his once awestruck fans that would politely clap after each number was suddenly replaced by seas of loud drunk morons screaming for them to play “Money” throughout each show and generally disrespecting the sound he and the band were trying to create. This disconnect showed in their huge stage shows that increasingly separated the band from the crowd with lights and effects, and also effected the relationship with his band, as Gilmour and Wright’s mellower musical vision came into direct conflict with Waters’ growingly edgier and darker sound, as can be easily heard on their next direct ode to Syd album Wish You Were Here in 1974, and even more evident on 1977’s nightmarishly gloomy and raw hard-rocking disc Animals, on which Gilmour was the only other band mate to have any artistic input, still writing and signing on about a third of the material, which was clearly still a challenge to Waters’ bitter detachment to his band. The following ’77 tour is when he finally broke, as he nightly was heard or seen screaming, seething, or spitting on some loud or rude audience members. He contends that it was the beginning of a self-described mental breakdown, which, in turn, resulted in the largest bounty of quality musical material of his entire career.

When the Floyd next met in 1978, he presented them with two largely complete, albeit extremely rough, demo versions of two separate albums. He let them choose between a nightmarishly hostile pre-vision of his wife leaving him called Hitchhiker, and a tale of his own isolating breakdown originally entitled Bricks In The Wall. The band chose the latter, as they simply heard more promising material on that one, and they then went about the massive undertaking of recording this very different kind of Floyd album. Although Waters constructed almost all of the project’s components, Gilmour was “allowed” to have some input, as Roger obviously saw that Dave might very well leave the band to proceed with an already successful solo career if he did not. So, Dave was added as co-producer, the main musical conductor, and even brought in a few songs he was writing for his second solo album (that received lyrical treatment by Waters, of course). Other firsts for this album included: the album cover art was now done with dark illustrations by British political cartoonist and animator Gerald Scarfe (replacing their career-long visual director Storm Thorgerson and his company Hypnosis) working off some rough sketches by Waters himself, it also contained the first official singles they had released since 1969, on top of there only being two producers (instead of the whole band) this time, an outside producer was added for the first time in almost a decade to evade creative differences between the two, in the form of Alice Cooper, solo Peter Gabriel, and punk pioneer producer Bob Ezrin (who also co-wrote the album’s finale), it also contained lots of backing musicians to augment their own instrumentation as another first, as well as the reduction to a three member Floyd, as Wright was given the boot early on due to his apparent lack of creative input (although it has been rumored since that it was actually due to drug use), only to be brought back on towards the end as a paid session musician with the understanding he would quit on his own accord after the project’s completion (and in another irony, becoming the only Floyd to make any money off the project for many years to come).

Next, of course, was the epically large stage production starting in 1980. It was so big in fact, they could not actually tour it, as they just played it in three locales in 1980 (L.A., N.Y.C, and London) and one more in Berlin in 1981. It was so huge, it lost massive amounts of money (despite selling out every show), but, as they were planning on turning it into a live movie, they thought it would make up the money in the end. Once again, however, Waters overstepped all logical and financial bounds, and he wrote up a brief script treatment, and it was soon a full-fledged movie, with then freshman Alan Parker directing, Scarfe art directing, and Boomtown Rat front man and activist Bob Geldof playing the lead. With no dialogue and no typical rock n’ roll movie cheesiness, it made for one of the most overpowering and emotional films of all time. Soon after its release, when they were refused permission to play it next to the Berlin Wall as a protest to the Cold War, Waters vowed to never again play The Wall live until the wall came down.

The now three man Floyd were virtually bankrupt after it was all said and done (and because of financial mismanagement and heavy British taxes, they had largely been poor since the late 70’s), prompting them to sign a then record-breaking multi-album deal, and going about recording a bunch of rejected Wall songs that was aptly entitled The Final Cut. Waters’ now well-known nasty and totalitarian attitude was directed at just about all those around him, but especially towards Gilmour, whom he berated as worthless, especially when he tried to bring in some of his own songs to the effort to make it more of an all-original effort rather than just reworked rejected Wall tracks. It got so bad that Mason officially left the band before the album was done, wanting to keep both as close friends rather than loose them both, and by the time it was done, Gilmour had made a B-line to another studio complete work on his second solo album, About Face, which like his first was a big commercial success. After the all-Waters’ Final Cut ultimately flopped both creatively and commercially (at least compared to previous Floyd efforts), he did set out on his solo path, but despite the very Wall-ish sound of 1984’s The Pros and Cons of Hichhiking, and the presence of an all-star band with legends like Eric Clapton on guitar and David Sanborn on Sax, it too flopped, like it’s predecessor, having a far to angry and dark sound to be commercial and a couple of bloody-well awful commercial airplay attempts that did little to create more interest. His attitude also did not improve with the solo move, as Clapton left mid-tour due to the bitching, he was banned from MTV after going off on a VJ during a relatively simple interview, and bumped heads continually with the record company who were feeling stiffed by getting one lack-luster album in return for a new contract, as well as conflicting with the Floyd’s management who were seeing a major legal collision coming, which came true in 1986 as Waters announced that the Floyd were “A spent force” and attempted to legally disband the group while he started out on a very unfortunate 80’s pop/rock conversion sound and look for his next project Radio KAOS. 

Meanwhile, Gilmour was at work on his third solo piece, comprising of many of the co-writers and musicians involved in the ex-Roxy Music front man Bryan Ferry’s mid-80’s solo projects, in which Dave played a major role as session guitarist, when Mason came in to play a couple drum tracks, apparently to repay Dave for his participation in his recent Profiles project, and talk quickly turned to resurrecting the Floyd as a two piece with Waters now out of the way, an idea that the record company and their management were, of course, overjoyed to support. Once word got to Waters however, he was enraged (to say the least) and tried to sue to stop the release of their album, and once that failed, he tried suing for everything else he could, as well as bitching of their ineptitude as nothing more than “second-rate musicians” who never had any “real artistic input” in the music to anyone who would listen. Nonetheless, Gilmour’s 1987 “story of life”-themed Momentary Lapse Of Reason was a huge success, despite it being an incomplete one front man Floyd replacing with another. Like his solo efforts, it was a “please everyone” piece, with a little bit of something for everyone, including some newer aggressive synth-pop sounds, but always managing to toe the line without going to commercial, and mostly trying to return the sound to their instrumental-heavy past. Mason’s drumming contribution was minimal, as he apparently felt out of practice, although he did go back to his role as major sound effects coordinator, and Rick Wright also returned after practically begging to be part of this Waters-less Floyd, but, at first, was only added as a session musician (the way he left) and also only playing on a few songs. Despite the hurdles, the album (that also contained the return of Ezrin and Thorgerson as contributors) and it’s following tour were huge successes, as Waters’ album and tour (which did lack a lot musically) were huge bombs, which he, of course, blamed on the new Floyd’s record release date and touring schedule being so close to his own (some nights playing in the same city), calling it professional sabotage. As the Floyd continued to tour for nearly three years, an out of court settlement came about as some loose equal four-party sharing agreement was made for the profits and control of re-releases, and both sides were finally free to go their own ways.

Waters attempted to reclaim some of the Floyd name for his own with a giant recreation of original Wall shows in Berlin in 1990 to celebrate the collapse of the Berlin Wall for charity. Unfortunately, he missed the point of his own creation with overblown special effects that lacked the dark emotional gravitas of the original and with special guest stars that mostly just seemed cheesy. His following solo piece Amused To Death in 1992 may have been overall the most profound work of his entire career with amazing musical gravitas by soundscape genius Patrick Leonard as co-producer and another ex-Yardbird guitar god Jeff Beck on axe, but it was still plagued by the same problems as every work he had done since the The Wall: the sound was so dark it made you want to shoot yourself by the end, the radio-friendly songs were so repetitive and annoying they also made you want to commit Hara Kiri, and an ever-worsening voice that, after years of smoking and screaming his lyrics, now sounded like a later day Bob Dylan or Lou Reed, all made the need for his ex band mates contributions ever more obvious. Sadly, despite some really incredible material, the album was again sold dissapointingly, and instead of touring, Waters went into virtual hiding for the better part of a decade.

Meanwhile, Pink Floyd did eventually continue out with a long-delayed follow-up sophomore effort called The Division Bell in 1994, a concept piece about how lack of good communication can destroy relationships, clearly citing Waters at points, but also Barrett, and Gilmour’s own devastating divorce from his 30-some-year marriage (that was mainly cited for the delay of finishing the album, as well as his own feelings inadequacy lyrically). This had some weak tracks too, and in return lacked much of what Waters had in his sound. It was also more heralded amongst classic Floyd fans for an acoustically ambient sound that more closely resembled their early 70’s sound, no doubt largely due to Wright’s artistic return, co-writing on at least half of it, as well as once again lending his voice to the harmony-heavy sound (even doing some lead vocals), all of which had not been heard in since Dark Side in ‘72. After another huge tour, much of the rest of the 90’s had little to no Floyd activity (except for a surprisingly impressive concept effort by Wright called Broken China in 1997).

It was Roger Waters who finally broke the silence just before the turn of the century with his first world tour in over 13 years. It was a surprise not only because the announcement came suddenly and almost out of nowhere, but also because it was, of all things, a back-to-basics, no-frills greatest hits tour. No big special effects, no big-time guest musicians, it was just Waters and a small band of friends playing smaller venues and preforming the hits of the Floyd’s three best known hit albums, with just a spattering of his other efforts, even barely scratching his own solo works. Even more surprising was his bright new welcoming attitude, one very happy to be playing to his audience and even having nice things about his former teammates. Soon after, he even re-friended his ex-BFF Nick Mason after a chance run-in during family vacations and he even played drums at a couple of Waters’ gigs in 2001. That same year, Gilmour went out on a string of real back to basic shows with an almost all-acoustic sound that also featured a newly closely befriended Rick Wright on keys and vocals. Still, half Floyd reunions weren’t what fanatics really wanted, and it wasn’t until 2005 that the unthinkable finally happened.

Who would have ever thought it would only just have taken a phone call? Bob Geldof was setting up a massive multi-show/continent event surrounding the meeting of world leaders called Live 8 to raise pressure of environmental issues, and he wanted one band more than any other for his flagship London show, Pink Floyd. So, he called them all, and much to everyone’s surprise, they all said “Yes!” There was little conflict or animosity leading up to their set, and as they played four of their classics in pure perfection and they were obviously overjoyed to be playing on stage together again with big smiles all over their faces. Sadly, as much as legions of fans wanted to see and hear them do more together, it never came to fruition, despite a few missed chances to regroup at events like their induction to the European Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame (in which Wright was in the hospital getting treated for cancer) or at Syd Barret’s memorial show (when Roger showed up with the rest of the band, playing one of his own songs early on, then bolting, as the rest stayed to bring the house down with the Floyd’s first single “Arnold Layne”). Still, half reunions were abound, with Gilmour soon after going out to support his third rather Floydian-sounding effort with Wright by his side and Waters went on a Dark Side of The Moon tour with Mason in tow.

Rick Wright died in 2008 as his cancer came back with a vengeance, and both Gilmour and Waters sadly agreed that there could be no Pink Floyd without him. In 2010, Gilmour unexpectedly convinced Waters to join him onstage for a benefit show at a small pub, only after much persuading in which Gilmour made him a deal he could not refuse, to preform at one of his upcoming tour dates in return. To the excitement of millions of Floyd fans, Dave appeared during Waters’ The Wall gig early last year. The two preformed “Comfortably Numb” at one of Roger’s London gigs and were even joined by Mason during the ending song (videos below). 

Now, just as Pink Floyd has just released The Wall Immersion box set, with discs full of demos and live material from that effort, it seems appropriate that Waters has again set out on the road bringing The Wall to even larger concert venues, setting out an even greater expanse to the show. I personally was lucky enough to see Waters perform this show in 2010 at MSG in NYC, and will never forget it. This time, I’ll be seeing it in Denver, and will be immensely honored to be able to professionally photograph the event. It is a show that promises a few new surprises and will be an truly epic no one should miss, and an experience you will forever remember. Everyone should break down their walls, come out of their shells, and see Waters deliciously revel in his own most beautiful masterpiece one more time.

School Of Seven Bells cast their ethereal celestial spell again, and as another contender for best album of the year in my book with their new concept album called Ghostory, and they came to play hard in Denver at the fun-filled tiny club called Larimer Lounge in the art gallery badland of the north. This gloomy shoegazey Brooklyn duo has been spreading their sonically heavy sound since around 2007, then being a trio, when guitarist and synth-man Ben Curtis (of Secret Machines) met identical twin sister harmonists Alejandra and Claudia Deheza (of On!Air!Library!) while opening for Interpol on their debut breakthrough tour. Together, their sound all but defined the brand new genre of shoegaze, although it turns out that sound was more familiar than you think, like spending the night listening to the harmonic soundscapes of melancholy that was Cocteau Twins catalogue and chasing it with strong shot of the darker realms of the 80’s alt-new wave with My Bloody Valentine and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Still, when I first heard their debut album Alpinisms in 2008, I was blown away by the intricate combination of the warble of Indian-tinged harmonies, lush soundscapes, angelic synchronizations, and otherworldly beats. I managed to see them back in those early days in NYC, but upon the release of their second album, the far more alt-pop heavy Disconnect from Desire in 2010, they announced that keyboardist and harmony vocalist Claudia Deheza was leaving due to personal reasons (although, it was rumored it had something to do with either a hard-partying lifestyle or her wanting to be closer to her child, depending on who you believe). Since then, I’ve seen the now-duo play in many different formations, just Alejandra and Ben with a drummer (and Ben playing and singing almost everything simultaneously), then with a soundman/keyboardist on stage, then a bassist and keyboardist most recently, but none of which sounded quite right harmonically without the twin sis dynamic, no matter how amusing it was to hear how many sounds Ben could play at once. Now that they are back to a proper quartet, Alejandra centering on lead vocals and the occasional bass, Ben now able to spend more quality time with his axe (although still clearing time to make sweet love to his vast array of complex pedals), AND a female keyboardist/vocalist, AND drummer. This was a sound that was far more familiar in its ethereal serenity. THIS was the kind of SoSBs I wanted to hear.

Opening the show to the music of aptly dark Radiohead catalogue, all flooded in darkness with eerily dim red lighting floating in from the rear of the stage crammed full of instruments, the opener, fellow Brooklyn-ites Exitmusic were here to impress (even named after a song by said ultra-successful gloom rockers). Even their sound check before doors was entrancing and attractively tight. The freakishly talented married duo of vocalist, keyboardist, and occasional guitarist Aleksa Palladino and lead axe man Devon Church make me think of two optimistic children strolling hand-in-hand into a post-apocalyptic world. As reverb roared and Palladino’s voice warbled in a howling tone, “We are sparks of light, but we hide it,” you find yourself totally bewitched. Still, both of them were bashfully shy on stage, not really interacting with the audience that much. What really set the tone off for me throughout was the standing percussionist’s wonderfully off-and-counter-time beats combined with the sharp synth rhythms of the Mac-driven DJ stuck in the corner. The result is a sound somewhere around Radiohead’s Kid A, and Portishead’s first Dummy, and some Sigur Ros ambient jam. With songs like “The Sea” from last year’s From Silence EP and presumably most of the songs off their new full-length Passage (both of which we picked up from the table afterwards), you got the full feel of the expansive long-song format they liked to swim in, with many songs being at least 10 minutes long, but somehow they never seemed to get boring or predictable.

I was very excited to see School Of Seven Bells again, and especially to hear some of Ghostory live and rejoice in the dark concept album’s songs of getting over and contrastingly reveling in the ghosts of relationships past. They too played to an extremely dark, dimly-lit stage, with the exception of two brightly glowing and undulating symbols (from the album cover) behind them swelling the mood as they played and completing the atmosphere of being spellbound. After a brief intro instrumental, they broke into one of my favs from their first disc “Iamundernodisguise,” which sounded like a ritual chant of the most tribal fashion, followed by the opener to their new album in the rapturous “The Night,” followed by many more from it like the driving “Lafaye,” the dark “Scavenger,” the seraphic “White Wind,” and the spell-bound “Low Times,” and then some tastes from their last album with empyreal “Windstorm,” the great 80’s new wave off-beat synth of “Bye Bye Bye” that makes your feet just move on their own disembodied from the mind, and extremely catchy heartbreak of “ILU“ (although sadly no “Dust Devil,” which is still my fav from that album), as well as more from the first, with the low roar and crying piano of “White Elephant Coat” and the swirling cyclone of “My Cabal” as the slamming closer. The new keyboardist seemed positively terrified throughout, as she did miss a few cues, but she really did add that all to important complementary vocal character, as Alejandra did her wonderfully ravished twitchy dance groove center stage, even smiling into the packed house many times between deeply emotional glowers, and in his own specific way Ben’s two-step dance while deeply engrossed in the beats was enticing the crowd to dance with his sharp moves. Not quite done yet, they quickly popped back out for an encore with two more early classics, personified by their first big sleeper hit “Half Asleep” and the deeply hypnotic and lengthy “release” of the spiritual ender “Sempiternal/Amaranth,” that had a much more electronic beat-heavy feel than other interpretations I’ve heard them play in the past. It was a greatly stunning show that solidified my belief in their continuing genius and I highly suggest praying at their altar in a venue near you.

The raw rockin’ Jersey trio Screaming Females played in Denver last Sunday, under the threatening clouds of stormy weather, to an extremely small crowd, even for the relatively tiny bar setup of Marquis Theater. From the beginning, I could tell this would be a meek showing for such an incredible force of nature, as they would pack much larger venues in places like NYC, where I have been fortunate to catch them a few times in the past. Still, playing to smaller enthusiastic crowds is nothing new for this group, who infamously built up their following playing tiny New Brunswick basements years before landing on a huge sleeper hit album Castle Talk in 2010. They have just released a new album Ugly, which is already one of my fav releases of the year and has finally come along with some bigger industry hype.

The opening deluge started with a couple impressive local Denver bands, the first being the raw garage rockers Skeleton Show. Fontman and guitarist William Tyler Campbell carried a high-octane power that rocked out some driving rhythms, as they all seemed to gyrate around the small stage, especially on a animated new track called “In The Radio,” and they are definitely worth checking out o n their own right.

Next was a fun party trio called Dirty Few, whom I had just made good friends with, even hangin’ out in their tour van briefly before the show. Comprised of brothers Spencer (on axe and vocals) and Seth (on drums) and the spunky Kat (on bass), they clearly upped the ante on high-energy performance, spinning around the stage like mini hurricanes. You can tell the fervor they spread just by song titles like “Oh Yeh! Oh No!” “Outta Control,” and “My Head Is Spinning.” Towards the end, Seth was clearly getting sick behind the drum pit, as personnel propped up a trash can next to him so he could finish out the set, but somehow, still pounded the drums like a quarryman hacking away on some hard marble.

Such dedication despite illness seemed to be the mantra of the night, as I was chatting with lead Screaming Female Marissa Paternoster pre-show and she confessed she was deeply ill. Her tiny stature belies her towering command on stage. This four-some foot girl with a thick mop top haircut and little all-black Sunday dresses might fool you into believing you’re talking to Wednesday Adams herself, but once she steps on stage she becomes a tempest of sound; wailing on the guitar with more zeal and power than greats like Jimmy Page of their heyday; and sings with such great directness, you’ll soon become overwhelmed by the rage of screams and the gales of deep warbling howls before the first song is even done. The L7 mixed with Dinosaur Jr. on coke power trio sound was further driven by the bass of the colossally tall King Mike, and the dexterous Jarrett Dougherty on drums, who all cumulate with a very fresh and angry sound..

The setlist was, like many other recent shows, way to short, but they made up for it in raw power and by stretching through their catalogue for some great picks. The new disc Ugly, once again, has gorgeous pen and ink illustration work by Marissa herself and was represented with a live staple for sometime that opened the show called “Rotten Apple,” and the impressive new single “It All Means Nothing” that blended right into an unexpectedly slower version of “Tell Me No.” “Foul Mouth” from their first 2006 album Baby Teeth rocked so hard you felt your fillings get shaken out, “Starve The Beat” from 2007’s What If Someone Is Watching Their T.V.? featured a great screaming howl, “Lights Out” from 2009’s Power Move, and then “Sheep” and “A New Kid” from the afore mentioned Castle Talk.  I would have like to have heard two of their best known tracks “Boyfriend” and “I Don’t Mind It,” which always seemed to make it on their setlists before, but it was clear from Marissa’s rough guttural final goodbye at the end that she was lucky to have made it through the show anyways and it was all still awesome scramble my head-banged brain while fist pumping while hanging over the low stage with some twenty super-cool people enjoying a gorgeous storm of debauchery with me, and it all seemed to whirl by like a flash storm of epic proportions. 

The NYC-based band Cults brought their brand of moody and brooding rock to Denver on Thursday and awed fans with a singalong-heavy set enhanced by colorful-yet-shadily exquisite visuals and a pristinely angelic sound mix. This was my third show of the week at east Denver’s historic movie theater turned music venue and smallest little big stage The Bluebird Theater, and by this point, it was seeming not unlike my own personal play den, but this was clearly the winner of the three performances. The last time I saw Cults was at a show called the Vans House Party in a small Brooklyn, NY warehouse with virtually no stage show and sandwiched between largely punk and noise bands. This was my first chance to catch them in their own cultivated environment, and it was sure to be a whole other experience altogether.

The two opening acts did impress in their own ways. The surf rock-tinged rockabilly of the Cali band Mrs. Magician, whose sound is encrusted with salty hooks drenched in waves of reverb and barnacled fuzz, did really rock it out. It took them a few songs to get loose and going, but when they did, they oozed confidence, and did, indeed, rock the house. Front man and rhythm axe man Jacob Turnbloom was relatively stiff, but was offset by the explosive and boisterous energy of the lead guitarist Tommy Garcia, whom blew out every chance to crank a serious solo. They just released a heavily touted album “Strange Heaven,” and I would be expecting to hear much more from this foursome in the near future.

Next up was the Yorkshire, UK outfit called Spectrals. The redheaded and bowlegged front man Louis Jones looked and sounded like he was the lead Dublin character taken straight out of the Alan Parker movie The Commitments and brought on the soul and iconic backbeat flavor of his homeland with a vigor that was all but a complete throw back to those classic early 60’s sounds. It wasn’t quite as powerful and didn’t retain quite as much stamina as the previous band, but was nonetheless enjoyable with a doo-wop, a rawness, and a colorful off-beat time signature. Their new track “Bad Penny” had a great early Beatles feel and was very catchy. Even though Jones was actually the sole creative mind behind this outfit, he too had a stand-out character in his band with his bootie-shaking and bald-headed bassist making quite a spectacle of himself while even frolicking with a Paul McCartney styled Höfner bass.

As Cults strolled onstage with a first shimmering guitar notes of an opening instrumental, it was clear this would be a whole new level of stage show. As the whole of the room was suddenly bathed in color and spinning shapes with a powerful A/V projection, the stage and the entire north wall of the Bluebird, from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, every member of the band, and even most of the front audience was washed in a psychedelic picture show that contrastingly felt not only dark and mysterious but also vibrantly colorful and imaginative. After that unexpected intro, the opening voices and sound effects of their first hit from last years’ stunning self-titled debut, “Abducted” rang out through the theater along with the resounding sound of whole of the audience clapping in time, to the delight of the now packed house. Adorably cute front woman Madeline Follin did her shy dance front and center, often bashfully hiding behind her long hair and in her own little dance trance back bopping and forth often daintily holding on to both sides of her cute skirt while occasionally being silhouetted from behind with throbbing hazy lights and rarely speaking directly to the audience. That conversational sense came largely from the band’s other co-creator (and Madeline’s boyfriend) Brian Oblivion, as he wailed out the cavernous musical soundscapes on many instruments like guitar, on the keys, even over the xylophone, and generally holding down the tight musicality of the show. There were also three other similarly longhaired band members lurking behind the two, in the form of keyboardist and occasional guitarist Gabriel Rodriguez, Marc Deriso’s agile drumming (and shorter blonde hair for diversity), and Nathan Aguilar’s deeply hypnotic bass. Together, they all smoothly strolled through almost every song on that wonderful album, initially continuing with another favorite “The Curse,” but just three songs in, they broke out a new one, aptly entitled “Slow Song,” which indeed did sway and bring the show down to a slow mellowing cruising speed. “Most Wanted” brought the speed back up a bit, as Madeline leaned into the mic for the soulful “You Know What I Mean” with a passionate embrace for the audience from a normally distantly tranced and wary front woman, as she even smilled and the under aged girl the had flocked to the edge of center stage to adore her. Follin added that bit of breaking voice when she switched from chesty verses to heady choruses and even a growl or two. Without vibrato or flourishes, she put a lot of power into a more relatable and even tone, which was the case of their next 50’s girl group mixed with 70’s Blondie-styled punk with “Bumper,” which was my favorite off the album. “Never Saw The Point” and “Rave On” almost seemed to pick up the Breeders/Pixies era with their own flavor mixed in. Next was a very unexpected cover of a song by Leonard Cohen called “Everybody Knows,” that many people also know from Concrete Blonde’s iconic version, but this account was far more menacing and dark as well as washed in deep soundscapes and off-beat rhythm signatures. A couple other crowd favs like “Walk At Night” and “Go Outside” were then expanded, after which Oblivion said something to the effect of “We’re not going to do the rock star fake out and run off stage for a few minutes for a cigarette,” although it was hard to hear what exactly his warbled message actually said, before going right into their last song and ended the show. The fans that were shouting for an encore and were denied didn’t seem all that sad at the short setlist, as their cherry had been popped, the peak had been reached, and all the important songs (and then some) in their still young repertoire were played, and so all poured out onto the sidewalk afterward with wide satisfied smiles on their faces. 

Seeing the twenty-plus member band The Polyphonic Spree is a spiritual experience of a rock opera extreme, and this was the last stop on this leg on the road for the robed disciples to spread the word and try out some new tunes for their first new LP since 2007 highlighted by a new song “What Would You Do?”It’s not that they’re all dressed in robes, often singing about non-specific religious spiritualism, or even singing like an ethereal chorus and orchestra that gives their shows this heavenly ambience, but instead, it’s the energy and passion that they create in their audience that creates the rapturous orgasm of feeling, like a travelling sermon bringing the word of love and music to the masses.

As I came into the Bluebird Theater in Denver, the small pack that got there early had started off largely drowsy-looking for a Tuesday night, as a lone guitarist sat looming over center stage cross-legged ringing out some smooth tunes. That mellower opening soon changed, as another very different solo act called the New Fumes kicked off the wild stage show with a sonic wail of kinky electronic sounds. The Dallas aural creator Daniel Huffman with a big demonic mountain goat head mask atop his head (that never ended up covering his face) loomed over a large pop-up table of electronic mixers and a very personalized laptop computer, strategically controlling his creations in front of an accompanying psychedelic video montage that often started the numbers off with classic TV show openings, and then continued with psychedelic formations that were quite fascinating. He also occasionally shredded his guitar and bending the sound down over his vast array of floor pedals and knobs, like on the almost King Crimson-esque assault called “Invisible Someone.” The whole set was a sight to behold, and quite overwhelming in it’s depth. There were some heavily manipulated vocal pieces like the discombobulating sway of “Millennium Crux” or the great spacy soundscape that was “Intrusion,” but much of this opener’s set seemed to be instrumental, albeit so many sound effects and samples were being utilized that you may not even know it if there were voices or singing going on with it. It was an onslaught of creativity and sound, which, at first, I considered way to different to be a real good opener for the heavenly headliner, but in the end, did in a very strange way, end up being a great set-up the whole hell/heaven paradox.

The sunshine sounds of The Polyphonic Spree that hasn’t been heard on stage in North America in four years wound up being one of the best I have seen all year. A red cloth that had been stretched across the stage to hide the set-up of the massive band spread like the first fuzziness of a hallucinogen across the mind as the massing hordes of faithful fans began to pack the venue as the show was clearly running late, all waiting for the trip to begin. As the opening xylophone sounds began to build, a mysterious shadow appeared behind the sheet and pushed his face into the stretchy fabric taunting the squealing flock on the floor. As shouts of “This is polyphonic Spree!” rang out, a hand appeared from below with scissors cutting a slit upwards and into the shape of a heart. Then, lead man Tim DeLaughter popped his tripped out face through the hole and tossed pieces of the sliced up heart shape to some of the lucky spectators before cutting loose the barrier and unleashing the opener “I’m Calling,” cutting to the massive sing-along favorite “Two Thousand Places.” They may not be a “religious” band, and they haven’t been raided by the ATF, so I am sure they aren’t some kind of LSD fueled cult, but they definitely tap into a spiritual side of life.

Since forming this band in 2000, largely as a reaction to the passing of Tripping Daisy (his previous band) partner to overdose, DeLaughter has been on a spiritual mission of sorts. Wearing white robes with hearts sewn to the front, the huge band rang out their massive hymns with guitars, bass, drums, horns, chorus, and even strings filling the modestly sized Bluebird stage with sound and praises to love, life, and the sun with a Pentecostal-revivalist snake-charming fervor. As the attractive four female singers bounced and bobbled their heads, DeLaughter often leaped up on the front and center onto the pediment, lurching into the audience to get everyone into the action, as giant confetti cannons on both sides of the stage erupted in jubilation, and the lights brightened to reveal nothing but wide eyes and smiling faces. As the ringleader of this wandering band of tripped out minstrels, he has infected his band mates with his boisterous charisma. Horns blared, a cello was held overhead, and the stage was in constant motion. Nearly 30 songs of their full-length albums, three EPs, and countless soundtracks were in effect, telling their story of hope, faith, love, and the sun. When the first few notes of The Who’s “See Me Feel Me” rang out, it surprised more than a few in the audience. All that have seen the Spree before know, they’ll always radically reinterpret a cover or two during their shows, but this medley of Tommy tunes really came out puuurfectly dead-on. Flowing right into the more rocking “Pinball Wizard,” the crowd went insane! They killed it, and the crowd shouted the chorus with fists pumping and hair flying. Without a breath they went right into one of their radio hits “Soldier Girl,” and it added a tenderer note to end on although DeLaughter did end up ringing out a few notes of another cover as a lark at the end. “Everything Starts At The Seam” was a great thumping surmon, and “It’s The Sun” turned out to be the real peak of the trip. The entire night just seemed to happen, and before I knew it, they were closing with their biggest hit (and well known as a car commercial) “Light & Day” and the opus “Reach For The Sun,” both of which perfectly pinned the unearthly night in a chorus of perfectly toned voices. It’s a show anyone who loves great expansive music should appreciate and perhaps even have a spiritual experience of your own to.

Neon Indian’s main brainchild and front man Alan Palomo said mid-set that the last time the band was here in Denver there were a lot fewer people, and this time, in front of a packed house at The Bluebird Theatre, he said, “You guys have been an absolutely incredible audience!” The horde of faithfuls had gathered here to catch one of the modern premere indie rock/electronic artists spin his tapestries, and were ecstatic for the opportunity to dance, sway, and chant along upon it’s luxurious fabric.

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“It’s never too late for teenage dreams,” but now “I’ve grown up, I wonder what was that world I was dreaming of.” As those new lyrics would imply, this was a night of a more defined palates and refined tastes with a smarter, more matured, and sophisticated Nada Surf, a NYC trio most often remembered from their 1998 sarcastic hit high-school angst anthem “Popular,” which they did not play this night (thankfully), as this was eve was indeed about older awakenings and ripened disciplines of mystical transcendence, a cultivated enigma which is the cornerstone concept of their brilliant new album The Stars Are Indifferent to Astronomy. Although they did not totally fill Summit Music Hall in Denver this Thursday, Nada’s sizably committed fan base that remains loyally transfixed to their every move, were here in force to truly ravenously eat up every bite of their favorite band they could, and this was a true love letter to those particularly hungry dinners.

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Day Three Excursion Journal: The third day of the assent of the Snowball Festival was incredibly sunny and quite warm, so it became clear that the worst of the climb would be behind us, but little did we know that it would turn into.

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