Nuts For Music

I was lucky enough to hear about The Black Keys playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, MA last night (5/17) from a co-worker a few weeks back. Even luckier, Kyle and I were able to purchase tickets. We were sitting up in one of the box sections on the left side of the stage, right near the speakers. Even though our view of the drummer was blocked by the pulled back curtain above the stage and nearly going deaf during the show, we had a great time. In fact, I think its one of the best live shows I’ve ever seen.

Dan (guitarist and singer) and Pat (drummer) played for about an hour or so cranking out some of the new hits off of their album, Attack and Release, like Psychotic Girl, Remember When, and I Got Mine. Kyle and I both thought that Dan was probably one of the best guitarists we’ve ever seen play. This guy could just fly with his fingers and get the entire building rocking out. Even though these guys are a two man band, they rock like bands with twice as many members. Though, I can imagine they get really tired since nobody really takes solos to give other band members breaks.

I don’t have an entire set list, but they played about 15 songs the entire night. Some I didn’t know since I don’t have all of their albums (something I’ll be remedying shortly). They’re headed out to Europe for a while (this was their last show in the States), but next time they’re back in the States in our area, I’ll definitely be buying tickets to see them play. Great show!

The Offspring‘s Smash album was one of the first CDs I got my hands onto in high school. I listed the crap out of it for sure, much to the dismay of my parents who classified my choice in music at the time as “noise”. I’m excited though since they have a new studio album, “Rise and Fall, Rage And Grace”, on the way later on this spring (June 17th to be precise). I will definitely be looking forward to this upcoming release.

Like my last post on Trent Reznor releasing his latest album on his web site, The Offspring have released the first single off of their new album on their web site for free download. All you have to do is give them your email address, country, and zip code (if you’re in the U.S.) and you’ll get access to download a high quality (almost 11MB mp3 file!), non-DRM copy of the song.

Like all of The Offspring’s popular songs its catchy and fast paced. The opening riff (which they mix into the song later on) is slower and more melodic than I’ve heard in some of their other songs, but they quickly get into a repetitive crunchy guitar riff which, if you ask me, kicks ass. These guys honestly cease to amaze me because you dont’ hear about them being a great rock band like Metallica, Megadeth, Godsmack, etc. But the consistently put out great effort after great effort. I can’t wait to get my hands on the entire album when it comes out on the 17th of June.

So Nine Inch Nails has released another album on their web site, this time its a freebie. I downloaded it and gave it a spin on iTunes this morning. I didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention because I was busy at work, however, it didn’t blow me away. There were a couple ok songs, but nothing spectacular. I’ll have to give it another spin tomorrow and maybe update my thoughts here, but for now I’m giving it a thumbs down. I definitely applaud Trent Reznor for going to this method of distributing music, even if he charged for it. In my opinion, its great for the music industry. However, I’d hope that the quality of the albums is just as good as if you were doing a typical release through a typical record label. I’m not sure this is up to that level, but I’ll give it a few more spins before completely making my mind up.