Tuesday, September 26 2006, 1:59 AM

I've been pretty busy lately, which is one of the reasons I haven't written about this show yet. The other is the fact that I've been pretty lazy with the website. Not a good formula for timely posting. Oh well.

I was anticipating this show a good deal, since Clutch is one of my favorite bands of late, and I'd get to see them in a pretty intimate setting - the Temple Club in Lansing. I would say that the Temple club could hold maybe a thousand people at most, which is pretty small on the grand scheme of things. I went with a buddy from work, Gene, and bumped into Bryan, a former co-worker, as well.

The first band to play was Year Long Disaster. They were a solid three piece hard rock band with a lot of energy. Gene and I were a little worried when we heard them while waiting in line, but they grew on us as their set progressed. They seemed to have a lot of early hard rock/metal influences in their sound, like Motorhead and Judas Priest, so it wasn't too hard for me to like. I'd definitely say they were worth another listen. Grade: B

Next up was The Bellrays. They were a bit less in my ballpark style-wise, but their set was a lot of fun. They seemed like a great opening band, because their set was really energetic and they were devoted to getting the crowd pumped up for the headliners. I really don't know how to classify their sound, but I think it's pretty safe to say that they were a straight-ahead rock band with a certain amount of punk influence musically. In any case, they were decent, even if not completely in my wheelhouse. Grade B-

Clutch closed out the show, and they did it with a vengeance. I was pretty worried early on, though... After the first or second song, they lost part of the stage power, and it took a few minutes to fix. Neil Fallon seemed pretty pissed, and I had toughts in the back of my mind of Axl Rose and all of his antics, but the power was restored and things progressed swimmingly. Clutch has some pretty rabid fans, and they were present en masse. Clutch ate it up, and gave it back. The TC was a-rockin'! They played most of the songs I would expect to hear, and quite a few new songs as well. Neil Fallon played guitar on a good quarter of their songs, which I found odd. When I saw them a year ago at Harpos, he only played on one or two songs, and they played two full sets worth of songs. I think most of the songs he played on were the new songs, which might explain it. Overall, they were great. Being twenty feet from the stage makes for a great show when the band is on, and they were. Grade: A

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Wednesday, July 26 2006, 8:03 PM

Another string of sweet concerts just came down the concert news wire, and all in a ten day span. It would seem that my hearing is going to take a beating... :)

2006/09/15 - Mastodon at The Majestic Theater, Detroit, MI

2006/09/19 - Clutch at The Temple Club, Lansing, MI

2006/09/24 - Gigantour 2 at Pine Knob (a.k.a. DTE Energy Ampitheater), Clarkston, MI

I just saw Mastodon a few weeks ago, but they were in an opening slot and didn't get to play that much. They're headlining this tour, and should have ample room to play a ton of their songs, which will make for a sweet show. It's totally neat that Clutch is playing right here in town, so I won't have to go very far to see this one. The Temple Club isn't that big, so tickets may be hard to come by. This year's Gigantour has another round of sweet bands, including Megadeth, Opeth, Arch Enemy, and Lamb of God. Those four bands are probably enough to force an accident in my pants, but the idea of Gigantour is to have nothing but technically excellent bands who know how to rock, so I'm sure I'll find more bands to enjoy as well.

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Tuesday, April 26 2005, 11:32 PM

I made a commitment to myself a few weeks back to get out of the house more. I've been far too much of a homebody as of late, and I think it's been contributing to my generally dark mood over the past few months. So far, I've been doing well. Last week I had dinner with my cousin Alex and hung out for a while afterwards. Nothing terribly special, but still enjoyable. He lives like 5 miles away, and yet I still hardly ever see him.

On saturday Steven invited me out to see a few bands play over at the Temple Club in Lansing. We had both missed out on a work-sponsored casino trip the night before, so we were ready to let loose and have a good time. We all took a cab over to the show so driving wouldn't be a problem, and got our jag on. Phil showed up somewhere too, contributing to the madness. The first band that played was Hillbilly Nightmare. I enjoyed their sound the most out of the three bands. To me it sounded a lot like what you would get if you took ZZ Top and gave them a lot of beer and cranked their distortion up a bunch. Very deliberate, but a lot of fun at the same time. The second band was The Fightin' Hellfish. They had a more punk sound, and they were a lot of fun too. Everybody else seemed to know the songs they were playing, but I didn't. Oh well. Third up was Eight-Ball Grifter. Steven's talked these guys up a bunch, and they were a lot of fun too. They also had a very punk sound, but they dropped a lot of other stuff in there too. Very cool. A good show overall. Afterwards, we went back to Steven's house, where his wife had prepared whole plates of delicious snack-type goodies. Very good stuff!

Tonight I went out to dinner with my aunt Pam, Uncle Brad, and cousin Hannah, and then went to see Alex play in the MSU concert band's last show of the school year. Alex plays Oboe, and is quite good. He had a solo in the first song he played in, and it was quite neat to hear.

In less happy news - round two of my eye surgery is now only 8 days away. My project at work is progressing, but I've now got more of a firm deadline. My eye surgery won't help with that at all, so I'm probably going to have to be a hermit the next few days and crank out some code so I don't have to try to program with one good eye and another that looks like I just left a boxing match with a pinkeye infection. I'm not in a bad spot as far as what I've got working, but there's still plenty of stuff to hammer out.

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