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.

However, with the release of the excellent Sonic Boom I thought I would give them another chance. I was hoping that the addition of Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer would revitalize the band. Based on their performance at the Sprint Center, that’s exactly the case. Their performance reminded me of their better shows I’ve seen, with an energy I haven’t seen since they put their makeup back on.

The night started off well between finding two dollar parking across the street from the Midland Theater and then buying tickets with a $75 face value for $40 from a scalper.  This is the first time I’ve gotten cheap tickets from a scalper right before a concert.  I’m thinking I might try it again for AC/DC in April.

The set list was about what they’ve been sticking to for the past few years (standards like “Strutter” and “Deuce”) but with a couple of surprises thrown in (most notably “Parasite”, one of my favorite Kiss songs). Unfortunately a couple of my favorites, “God of Thunder” and “Firehouse”, were given the boot but they didn’t play any song that I absolutely despise.

The stage set up was impressive. In addition to the large video screens there were several smaller video screens across the stage with a different set of images for each song. The other usual things you expect at a Kiss concert were there too - a lot of pyro and Gene Simmons’ standards like spitting blood and blowing fire.

I’ve read a lot of complaints about Paul Stanley’s voice and while it’s true that his voice isn’t as strong due to his age, I don’t think it impacted the show too much. The overall quality was good and more than made up for any vocal shortcomings. That being said, I purchased a CD of the show and listening to it the weak vocals are more evident on repeat listenings.

Setlist:
Deuce
Strutter
Let Me Go, Rock ‘N’ Roll
Hotter Than Hell
Shock Me
Calling Dr. Love
Modern Day Delilah
Cold Gin
Parasite
Say Yeah
100,000 Years
I Love It Loud
Black Diamond
Rock and Roll All Nite
———————
Shout It Out Loud
Lick It Up
Love Gun
Detroit Rock City.

As I texted my wife, the crowd was mainly my fellow middle age burnouts, a lot of whom brought their kids.  Normally I cringe when I see kids at concerts (like Ratt…really, you have to bring your kids to Ratt?) but for some reason this seemed like a good one for them.  Paul Stanley’s stage rap hasn’t changed much since I was young, but it’s definitely toned down from their non-makeup days.

I absolutely love the idea of being able to buy a recording of a show.  They were available for the Metallica concert last year and the set from Kiss is pretty nice.  It was pretty reasonable at $20 because I figured that this is one of those things they would try to gouge you on.

Lawrence’s own The Dead Girls opened up the show. Despite being an odd match for the Kiss crowd they put on a great performance. I’m completely ignorant on the local music scene but definitely plan on checking them out in the future.

I was so close but the holiday turned out to be my downfall.  I had posts already written for the five days I would be out of town and figured I would publish one each day since I haven’t had much luck scheduling posts to be published in the future.  My laptop wouldn’t be much use since there aren’t any free wireless access points around my mother’s house.

Things turned ugly Wednesday night when my phone no longer had internet access.  I thought about staying up later to see if it came back online but I was exhausted from the plane trip so I just went to bed knowing that I wasn’t going to finish NaBloPoMo.  The phone was still having problems the next morning so I was glad I didn’t stay up.  It’s not that big a loss anyway, I just had a bunch of goofy pictures of Yngwie Malmsteen.

Anyway, I’m still glad I did it.  Hopefully it will get me writing more on this site because the posts got easier to write as the month went on although I did feel like I cheated whenever I just posted Youtube clips.