{"id":76,"date":"2007-06-17T23:30:19","date_gmt":"2007-06-18T05:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=76"},"modified":"2010-09-19T10:17:52","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T16:17:52","slug":"the-black-keys-the-warehouse-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/the-black-keys-the-warehouse-houston\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Keys, The Warehouse, Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been back in Houston for four months now, and decided that it was about time I got back into the live music scene.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no-one I desparately wanted to see, playing, but I fancied a night out, so I took my chances with The Black Keys<\/strong>, at the Warehouse.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t heard anything by The Black Keys, but I’d heard some positive things about them, so I thought I’d give it a go.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Finding out that Dinosaur Jr.<\/strong> were also on the bill was the decider – although I couldn’t believe that J. Mascis & co. were relegated to the support slot.\u00c2\u00a0 Both Pearl Jam and Dinosaur Jr. have been tagged as early grunge ‘pioneers’ (despite their fairly different sounds), but to see Pearl Jam where they are, and Dinosaur Jr. where they are now (relegated to support slots for bands younger than they are), depresses me no end.<\/p>\n

OK, so maybe Dinosaur Jr. are a bit past their peak – J’s hair is now completely white (but still as long) and he does need to hold his guitar to the side to avoid his paunch – but they can still kick it!\u00c2\u00a0 Right from the opening couple of guitar notes, the sound was unmistakably theirs – despite the absolutely appalling quality.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if their sound guy was having a day off or what, but the sound was terrible <\/em>– J’s vocals have never exactly been strong, but here they were barely audible.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a good job he let his guitar do most of the talking – reiterating, to my ears, how underrated a guitarist he is.\u00c2\u00a0 Most impressive, though, was the bass player, who played like he was on rythym guitar, thrashing away like a man posessed.\u00c2\u00a0 Anyway, a 45-minute set – about half of which I recognized, so I’m guessing they were showcasing their new album – and they were done.\u00c2\u00a0 It was good to see them live (another stellar band I can add to my ever-growing list<\/a>), but the sound quality really didn’t do them any favours.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the sound for The Black Keys was fine, as they proceeded to make more noise with less people (two, to Dinosaur Jr’s three). Given the fact that there are two of them (drums and guitar), and that they also focus on lo-fi blues, comparisons with (pre Get Behind Me Satan<\/em>) The White Stripes<\/strong> are inevitable – in fact had I not already seen Jack and Meg do it on the Elephant<\/em> tour, I’d have been blown away by the ability of two people to generate this level of full-on, widescreen noise.\u00c2\u00a0 Where they differ is that The Black Keys stick a bit closer to pure blues scales than the White Stripes (really!) – although vocally they drift a bit closer to My Morning Jacket<\/strong>‘s Jim James’s singing than Jack White’s all-out screams.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 You could argue that they are fairly derivative – to the point where on several songs I thought they were starting into Hendrix<\/strong>‘s Voodoo Chile<\/em> – but the approach and intensity was all their own, and it was difficult not to be won over.\u00c2\u00a0 Although I didn’t recognize a single song (having heard nothing by them before) it was very easy to connect to the music and get into what they were playing. Again, considering there were just the two of them, they managed more than fill the room whith sound, with Dan Auerbach wringing some agressive solos from his guitar, and drummer Patrick Carney – eyes fixed on Auerbach – pounding away a super-tight rythym, occasionally beating on his drums with a maracca or a tambourine, in place of the traditional sticks!<\/p>\n

Overall, it was a pretty good gig, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that The Black Keys seemed to be having a great time – Auerbach commenting “Thank you so<\/span> much”, with obvious sincerity, after several bursts of applause from a very appreciative audience (although I could have done without the skinny white boy in a bandana in front of me throwing rapper shapes, throughout).\u00c2\u00a0 The only complaint I have was the overt corporate sponsorship.\u00c2\u00a0 The tour is being sponsored by Camel, which meant that we had advertising posters up everywhere, video screens either side of the stage running ‘arty’ Camel adverts, and a booth at the back (next to the merch stand) handing out free cigarettes.\u00c2\u00a0 Surprisingly, despite all of this, there weren’t that many smokers in the hall, and there was certainly no smoky atmosphere – other than the occasional whiff of ‘reefer’ (do they still call it that, these days?).<\/p>\n

Anyway, a good night out, and well worth the $14.95 ticket price.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus $4.95 Ticketmaster ‘handling fee’ (despite it being a ‘print your own ticket’ deal).\u00c2\u00a0 Plus $10.00 downtown parking (paid to a guy who promised to keep an eye on my car and was then nowhere to be seen when I got out of the gig).\u00c2\u00a0 Plus $4.00 a can for Red Bull.\u00c2\u00a0 Hmm, maybe not such a cheap night out, then.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, at least I got a free pack of cigarettes…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been back in Houston for four months now, and decided that it was about time I got back into the live music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[32,42],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigs","category-music","tag-gigs-2","tag-music-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}