Potpourri: Holy Sh!t!

The last couple weeks have been loaded with exciting music news, and I thought I'd gather a bunch of it into one place for all you lovely people. I know, I truly am benevolent and wonderful. So, in roughly chronological order:

The Dead Weather at the Palladium, 7/21/10

My concert extravaganza--three shows in three nights--finished on an extremely strong note with The Dead Weather.  I raved about them last summer, and rightly so, but a lot of that was the excitement of something new.  This time around, they had a second record worth of material to choose from and a year of touring together under their collective belt.  The result was a band that has more than come into its own.

The Dead Weather at the Wiltern, 8/25/09

It seems obvious to say that you have to see a band live to fully appreciate them, especially since the live experience is where they show their true mettle; much like a Mexican restaurant with bad salsa, and band with a lackluster live show is just not worth the time. But what about a band that already has an unstoppable record and still manages to make it seem tame in person? That is a lot more rare and special. 

Guitar Heroes, or Why Linkin Park is Awful

As you can probably tell from the majority of the content here, I listen to music quite a bit, and I lean toward the rockin' end of the spectrum. I also really enjoy movies, despite my previous statements about their shortcomings. Taking those two facts into account (or was it three? I hate math), it should come as no surprise that this movie would be so appealing to me. It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggenheim's documentary about three guitar icons of the last forty years, came out Friday. Guggenheim, who directed An Inconvenient Truth and was a producer on Deadwood, has brought together Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather), to talk about music, their history of playing the guitar, and to play to and with each other. In addition to an apparent attempt at an apocalypse of awesome, it also looks like a good film for any guitar buff, or just people who have ever loved any of the music these guys make.