Jaked On Green Beers

I went to the Alkaline Trio/Cursive concert. It was fun. I got to hear "From the Hips" - the only Cursive song I know, but their set motivated me to try a little harder to check out their catalogue. A while back I even bookmarked the free download section of Cursive's website, but I haven't made any progress on listening to them. Their set was very tight. They played with a passion for their music that wasn't over-the-top or threatening, but made you want to sing along and rock out with them even though you don't know the words. That's exactly the type of performance that makes me want to drive down to the record store after a show and buy their record. Good job Cursive.

Alkaline Trio wrote some really good songs. Then they took the riffs and structures of those songs and tweaked them just a little and wrote more songs. Songs that sound kinda almost like the ones that they already wrote, but are a little different here and there. I guess many bands are guilty of that, but Alkaline Trio do it best. They unpredictably opened with "This Addiction" (their new single) and closed with "Radio" and by "unpredictably" I mean "totally expected." I was "stoked" to hear "Mr. Chainsaw", "Goodbye Forever", "Nose Over Tail", and "97." "Armageddon", "Fuck You Aurora" and a Misfits cover of "Attitude" were nice touches as well, but I had a tough time recognizing songs from the rest of the set. Some of it is due to the aforementioned similarities many of their songs have, but also the fact that I am reluctant to give their last three records a listen. (C'mon Joe - Hey I have better things to do like write blog posts once every two weeks and watch The Office marathons on TBS) On the plus side, "97" might be one of my favorite songs of all time and hearing it live was awesome. It reminded me that I recorded a cover of it the first time I laid down some demos with Mike "Mad Dog" Safran. What's that? You'd like to hear it? Okay, but I'll warn you, it was recorded all the way back in 2006. So was I motivated to go buy the new Alkaline Trio record after hearing their set just like Cursive's set influenced me? No, not at all, but I do have Alkaline Trio's back catalogue and it will always get me excited even if their new records don't.