I have to say that for the most part they didn’t disappoint.  They band sounded good and put on a good performance.  Tom Keifer’s voice has lost a little with age, but nothing dramatic.  My main gripe with the show was the setlist.  It leaned heavily on their first album and didn’t contain anything from their last album which was unfortunate since it’s one of their strongest releases:

Second Wind
Push Push
Somebody Save Me
The Last Mile
Night Songs
Bad Seamstress Blues/Fallin’ Apart at the Seams
Heartbreak Station
Coming Home
Shelter Me
Nobody’s Fool
Gypsy Road
-
Don’t Know What You Got
Shake Me

That’s almost half the set devoted to the first album and there are a lot better songs that they could have picked.  I see why they did it though, Night Songs is probably their best seller and the one most people are familiar with.  From what I saw, the crowd was really into the show and almost every song they played.  Nostalgia shows like this are always a roll of the dice but they put on a good show and I’m glad I went.

Going into the concert I had no idea that opener Nigel Dupree was the son of Jackyl’s Jesse James Dupree until someone explained to me that 98.9 had been talking it up leading up to the concert.  I wasn’t sure what to expect but he ended up being one of the best openers I’ve seen in a while.  There wasn’t much of Jackyl’s southern rock influencing his sound but instead he gave a hard rock performance that was solid from beginning to end.  I was really impressed and hope to see him again.

Kansas City’s own Federation of Horsepower didn’t fare as well.  It seems like I’ve always missed their sets whenever they’re on a lineup so this was my first time seeing them.  The band was sloppy - and not in a good way.  The songs sounded like they had potential but the sound was so muddled that their set started to get annoying after just a few songs.  I thought this was the fault of the sound crew but my friend told me that they sound the same way every time he’s seen them so who knows.

It’s just about that time of year again, where 50,000 Kansas Citians drink beer and get sunburned while a lucky few get their cornea scratched.  The 2010 Rockfest lineup was announced, and it’s definately one of the weaker ones I’ve seen.  I don’t want to hash through the entire lineup but the fact that Godsmack is headlining the whole thing says a lot.  I keep wondering if they had a larger headliner in mind and had them cancel at the last minute. 

The biggest problem seems to be that the lineup is too predictable.  Maybe it’s my imagination but there are too many bands that seem to come through Kansas City all the time.  The most obvious one is Drowning Pool who put on a good show a couple of years ago at the City Market but they were just in town a few months ago.  Same with Rev Theory and Three Days Grace.

For all my complaining I’ll probably still go, with everything depending on the arrival of a new baby.  The promoters smartened up and scheduled the thing a month earlier on May 15 which should be pretty nice weather.  I think the advantage of the weak lineup is that there’s no one I’m dying to see so I can leave whenever and just enjoy myself.

I originally heard about It Might Get Loud - a documentary focusing on guitarists Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White - from an issue of Guitar World.  Despite what common sense would dictate, this sort of documentary didn’t get a lot of press outside the guitar community.  It played at Lawrence’s Liberty Hall a couple of weeks and then went away.  I really wanted to see it, but I’m really bad about procrastinating with movies and unless they’re complete blockbusters they end up going away before I can see them.  I ended up  seeing it last night after it popped up on my cable system’s on demand service.  Again without fanfare, it just sort of showed up.

The bottom line is that it’s good, but I was hoping for a lot more, although I’m not sure what.  The film tracks the career history of the three who talk about their influences and motivations for playing.  With a couple of exceptions I was familiar with the sections about Jimmy Page, which makes sense based on all the interviews of his I’ve read over the years.  The Edge covered U2’s origins and discussed the different effects he uses to get his sound. 

When I was younger I used to really dislike The Edge’s playing because he wasn’t Jimmy Page or Yngwie Malmsteen.  Over the years I’ve come to appreciate his playing more, and appreciating that he’s doing his own thing.  That came out even more during the film and after seeing it I can see the path he’s going down as a guitarist.

Jack White ended up being the most interesting character in the film, mainly because I’m not sure what to make of him.  I’m not sure if everything he said in the movie was sincere or not.  At one point in the film he pulls out a Son House album and describes how one of his songs is what drives him to make music.  On one hand this seems like the sort of thing that a phony hipster would do - bring out a relatively unknown but not too obscure blues musician and really talk it up in order to seem deep and intelligent.  On the other hand, I pulled out my White Stripes albums today and I can totally see where Son House influenced his material, especially how he described the passion and energy of his music.

So that’s how he goes throughout the movie.  He has his odd hipster clothes and his off-brand guitars and the whole thing seems sort of pretentious.  However he seems very sincere about the whole thing and I hope he is.  The world needs more people who listen to Son House.

The movie culminates with the three guitarists meeting in London comparing notes and playing together.  They play Zepplin’s “In My Time of Dying”, U2’s “I Will Follow” and the White Stripes’ “Dead Leaves and Dirty Ground”, along with “The Weight” as the credits roll.  This sounds like it would be incredible but for some reason left me flat.  Both Jack White and the Edge seemed a little tense and it came out in the playing.

Overall it’s worth watching.  The archival footage is great and gives some pretty decent insight into the minds of guitarists from three different generations.  Now I have a great idea for a sequel featuring Yngwie Malmsteen, Glenn Frey, and that guy who used to be in the Foo Fighters who wore a dress…

The end of April is getting filled with a bunch of crazy good concerts.  Unfortunately that’s also when my wife is due for our new son.

So to summarize, I will be missing the following shows:

- Jeff Beck, who is the last on my list of living guitarists that I really really really want to see.

- Mastodon playing at Liberty Hall.  Not a huge deal since I saw them with Dethklok, but it kills me that they’re playing just a few minutes away from my house.

- Steve Martin playing a bluegrass concert.  The guy is an amazing banjo player and I would really like to see this.

- Public Image Limited, who canceled their Las Cruces show that I had tickets to back around 1990 and I’m still bitter about it.

Maybe Paul McCartney can go ahead and schedule an appearance in Kansas City at that time as well.

What I thought was interesting was how the two genders broke down.  The men all leaned toward classic rock and really not a whole lot that is recent.  “Back in Black”, “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, “Kashmir”, and oddly enough “Rockin’ in the Free World” were all mentioned.

The women had a more diverse selection, with songs by the Black Eyes Peas, “Dominoes” by the Big Pink, and “How Bizarre” by OMC all being picked.  Rebecca Sinclair also picked “Eye of the Tiger” which I was sick of hearing at sporting events back in the 90s, but that’s my problem.  Nakagawa mentioned that Kelly Clark supplies her own Christian rock music.

The difference between the men’s picks and the women’s picks were interesting.  It seems like the women gave more thought into what they picked and maybe selected something that was meaningful to them while the guys just used the first song that came into their head.