Just saw him with his new band last night, and it was amazing. If you’re at all a fan of Sugar, Husker Du, or his solo efforts, you owe it to yourself to check this out. I’ve never seen him this on fire; he was having a great time, tearing up the guitar like a rock star. Thank God he isn’t doing mediocre techno anymore and is back to his rock ‘n’ roll roots. He went through his whole history and played for more than two hours. His band–including Brendan Canty (ex-Fugazi) on drums–was perfect. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn they’d been playing together for years instead of months.
Again, I can’t recommend this tour too much. If you like rock music at all, you should check this out. I’m not even that huge a fan, I just went out of a “something to do” motivation, not expecting anything special, especially since this was a new band and Bob hadn’t played rock in years. By the end of the show, everyone in the audience was just completely blown away. Best show I’ve seen in a long time.
Oh, I love his work - glad to hear he’s gone back to rock, even though I didn’t mind the mediocre techno so much after a few listens. Heard anything about new album plans?
I think they’ve been working on a few new songs, but they’re still feeling things out. Album plans may be premature. This tour is definitely a celebration of the old stuff. They might have played a few new songs, but they may have been old songs I didn’t recognize. I ran into Brendan on the street a few months ago–we used to work together–and he said Bob’s really happy to be playing guitar again. He sure looked happy on stage: He was grinning even during the sad songs.
I don’t have anything against techno, though I’m not a big fan, but I always thought it was kind of pointless for one of rock’s most distinctive and best songwriter-musicians to be playing a form of music he wasn’t particularly skilled at. Not bad, but not great either. Like a friend of mine said, It’s like watching Michael Jordan play baseball. I like baseball, but when I see Michael jordan I want to see him play basketball, dammit!
I’m going to see him this Friday in San Francisco.