In one of the most unexpected tours to come along in a while, the semi-reformed Public Image Limited will be playing the Midland theatre on April 26.

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.

After attending Dethklok’s recent appearance in Kansas City, there’s only one thing to say:  Brendon Small is amazing.  Besides the obvious stuff like creating Metalocalypse, doing the voices, and writing Dethklok’s songs, the amazing this is that he can pull it off live.  In addition to singing, he’s able to pull of most of the guitar work on the Dethklok albums with eerie precision.

Their show on October 19th was part of their co-headlining tour with Mastodon with Converge and High on Fire opening.  The show started at 6:30 (!) on a Monday night so I knew that a timely arrival was not in the cards.  I ended up arriving at the Uptown Theater about 8:00, just enough time to hear Converge’s last two songs.

A couple of asides here:  the Uptown is a no smoking venue and their outside smoking area was insane.  Essentially they put up a bunch of barricades outside one of the doors where you could smoke, except they grossly underestimated the number of smokers at the show.  The area was so dense with people it reminded me of the area in front of the state with people pushing and squeezing through the crowd in order to get back inside.  The other thing is that it looked like there were more people waiting in line for the Xbox demo than for beer, so that gives you an idea of the average age of the audience.

Anyway, Mastodon came out next.  I hadn’t heard anything by them previously, but I was blown away by their performance.  They were completely different than what I expected.  They were definitely a metal band, but they’ve managed to create a sound that’s their own.  After hearing their set I ended up going out and picking up their latest album.  I was surprised how much the crowd was into them, it was obvious that there was a large percentage that were there to see them.

Finally Dethklok came out.  As I mentioned before, Brendon Small was incredible as was the rest of the band.  Their set was only an hour long but they managed to tear through a load of songs.  The newer material from Dethalbum II held up pretty well next to their older material.  For me the best part was watching Small and the other guitarist absolutely nail the solos.  It was just amazing to watch.  Normally I’m not a big fan of bands playing their songs identical to the recorded versions but in this case I didn’t mind at all.

BrooklynVegan has some great pictures of their recent NYC show.