A Month of Fun Days

 We gobbled up a healthy amount of live music over the course of the past month.

 

The big event was a trip to Denver for the Outside Days festival the final weekend of May. The impetus was the appearance of Grouplove, my partner's favorite band. (See below.) On Saturday night we satisfied longstanding curiosities by checking out the Flaming Lips (just as silly and mildly entertaining as I expected) and My Morning Jacket (who were just too jam-band for our tastes at the 10 o'clock hour). The final night crescendoed with a lively set by Cage the Elephant. 

Frontman Matt Schultz brought the Jagger swagger, and the set list did not disappoint. It helped for me to be surrounded by rabid young fans on the urban college quad. My favorite number was the '60s-inflected garage workout "Mess Around."

 

The month-long run began on May 15 with Broncho at the Launchpad; it's a band I had known only tangentially from their service on the dear-departed jukebox at the nearby downtown pool hall Anodyne. Much of the first half of their set consisted of sludgy psych-pop, though Ryan Lindsey and his mates veered more toward the pop side in the second half. A highlight was the infectious "What":

The Supersuckers passed through Albuquerque, as these road dogs do just about every year. They opened with "Born With a Tail" and wrapped with "Pretty Fucked Up," and in between they touched on just about every era in their 35-year career as rabble-rousers. We previously tossed out those two classic Supersuckers tracks 10 years ago here. Opening for them was Scott H. Biram, torching the stage solo with his brew of folk-rock-blues. Supersuckers leader Eddie Spaghetti joined Biram -- now a haggard greybeard -- for his centerpiece, "Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue":

 

Here is a short acoustic set from Biram from 13 years ago on KEXP. He was more plugged in during his Albuquerque, working a drum machine with a foot pedal.

Warming up for Grouplove was the sister duo Girl Tones. They felt like a work in progress, aspiring to the fuller sounds of the White Stripes or Black Keys (if not the grunge of Flat Duo Jets), and they amiably tried to get the outdoor crowd amped up. But it wasn't until Grouplove stormed the stage that the audience came alive through the sheer exuberance of the band, which comes off as Up With People but with chops. Grouplove jumped out of the gate inducing singalongs with the opening track "Deleter," and they did not let up from there. They teased an upcoming single "Sh Sh (Fall Apart Together)," leading up to the big hit "Tongue Tied":

 

A year ago I communed with Joe Jackson in Santa Fe, coming to terms with my lonely fandom. He returned to New Mexico again this June, at the historic downtown KiMo Theater, and this time he brought a band to plow through his hits. No gimmicks this time, just a tight best-of set. He started out solo, in a dapper suit, knocking out "Is She Really Going Out With Him?," allowing the audience to fill in the backing vocals. Then the great bass player Graham Maby came out for a duet on "Different for Girls," followed by the rest of the band for a couple of new songs. (Maby's bass should have been higher in the mix.)

Classics included "Sunday Papers," a powerful take on "Another World," "Real Men," "Home Town" and, of course, my favorite, "Be My Number Two." Despite battling the high-desert altitude, Jackson was in fine voice. The best new song (one of three featured from the album "Hope and Fury") was the nostalgic "End of the Pier," a modern lament echoing his upbringing in Portsmouth, England: 

Jackson kicked off a three-song encore with a cover of David Bowie's "Scary Monsters" (this version recorded the next night in Denver):

 

We jetted off to Chicago in mid-June, and the centerpiece concert we picked was Amyl and the Sniffers at the Salt Shed on Elston Avenue, on the grounds of a former Morton Salt warehouse, with views of the city's skyline, set aglow at sunset. Amy Taylor -- clad in a 1970s gym-class outfit, her face smeared like a drag queen's -- stomped the stage and led punk sing-a-longs, fronting a grungy three-piece band. The Aussie frontwoman was idolized by a diverse crowd, who lapped up her message of inclusion and empathized with her bafflement at the state of American politics. But she mostly let the music do the talking. The band reached back to their 2019 debut album for the first encore song, "Got You":

Here is a good sample of Amyl and the gang live, from a year ago in Seattle (she is wearing the same outfit):

 

Finally, the day I arrived in Chicago, my Boomer brother had an extra ticket to see two of his favorite bands, the Doobie Brothers and Santana, who co-headlined a tour that stopped at the outdoor venue in Tinley Park. Due to ridiculous traffic (as if they had never hosted a concert before), we missed the first few Doobie songs, but we caught most of the hits in a 16-song set. The band has lost a step or two, though Tom Johnston's voice remains strong. (Michael McDonald, on the other hand, is getting a bit raspy these days.) They truly felt like an "oldies" act; the boys fronted a screen that displayed retro videos featuring their various lineups. There are few things in life as joyful as a smile on Patrick Simmons' face. Let's lament one of our favorites that we missed, Simmons' "Depending on You":

And another favorite, one they did not play (but did later in the tour for the first time live since 1982), McDonald's solo R&B jam "I Keep Forgettin'":

 

Then Santana hit the stage and tore the roof off the pavilion. Their set was a near-nonstop burst of Latin poly-rhythms, high energy out of the gate. Carlos Santana, pushing 80, leaned on a stool a lot as he rippled out his soaring, searing guitar licks. His wife, Cindy (an alum from Lenny Kravitz' band), annihilated her drum set, assisted by players on bongos and timbales. Two singers traded off lead-vocal duties. The hop-scotching set mixed in a little rap, covered the Zombies' "She's Not There," and offered a mashup of Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" and a phoned-in "Come Together." 

Highlights included "Samba pa ti," "Oye Como Va" and the mesmerizing "Jin-go-lo-ba"

I never expected Santana's high-powered jam session to be a highlight of that month of fun days. But sometimes the Boomers can still bring it.