skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The Black Keys
20 March 2012: Quicken Loans Area, Cleveland, Ohio
It is a strange thing to witness firsthand as a local band you have followed and championed ascends. To see the group evolve and, ultimately, achieve widespread acceptance from the masses is bittersweet. Alongside the feeling of vindication in your personal taste, there is the feeling of losing something that belonged to you, something you shared with a core group of fans. The Black Keys is to my mid-life what Nine Inch Nails was to my young adulthood.
Over the last decade, the Black Keys have risen to bona fide rock stardom. And now, they’ve proven it with an arena tour by selling out Madison Square Garden, then turning around and adding a second date that promptly sold out, too. But on this night in Cleveland, it was about perspective. And the magnitude of playing their hometown arena didn’t escape drummer Pat Carney and singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach. The latter taking the stage in a Firestone High School “Beat Green” t-shirt (Green High School being one of his alma mater’s rivals), and extending a “Hello, our hometown!” greeting that seemed to include genuine wonderment at where they’ve found themselves.
The setlist remained steady, virtually unchanged since the U.S. tour began, opening with Brothers’ “Howlin’ for You” and “Next Girl”, followed by El Camino’s “Run Right Back”. Carney’s elastic pacesetting for the opening trio of songs seemed to speed things up considerably from their familiar album versions, with Auerbach matching him stride for stride. The mid-set quartet of classics kicked off with Thickfreakness’ title track, keeping the faithful in thrall.
Although I don't think the new album's material is as strong as their previous efforts, as is often the case, it came off well in the live setting. The two El Camino songs that proved most revelatory were “Little Black Submarine” and “Nova Baby”. “Submarine” is probably my least favorite track off the new album, but its Led Zeppelin vibe translated epically to the live setting. “Nova Baby”, which feels like a late-album filler track, was transformed into a percussive powerhouse by virtue of Carney’s chest-thrumming beats.
The main set closer, the single “Lonely Boy”, had the 11,000 individual bodies churning as one, and the three-song encore opened with a giant disco ball and Auerbach in the sickeningly sweet falsetto of Brothers’ “Everlasting Light”. The fan club seats we secured were great (and priced incredibly). Five rows from the floor on the stage-side aisle, we were positioned perfectly for the kiddo to enjoy his second Black Keys show and first Quicken Loans Arena concert. And as some of the GA attendees started to make their way past us and up to the exits while the band was still jamming, the kiddo was on the receiving end of multiple high-fives as he rocked out on his air guitar along with Auerbach and danced in the aisle!
Things have clearly changed. It was a setlist for the converted with 14 of the 21 songs pulled from 2010 or later, but the deep-catalog nuggets (one track each from the first four albums) were well-picked. And the Black Keys are no longer strictly just a two-man operation, but similar to the Brothers Tour, Carney and Auerbach were able to preserve their history with in-show selections that stripped away the supplemental musicians and reestablished their past glory as a duo. Ten years and ten days since their first gig at the Beachland Ballroom, the Akron duo delivered on all the promise of their first arena stop to the hometown crowd.
The Black Keys
24 July 2010: Nautica Pavilion, Cleveland, Ohio
We’ve taken the kiddo to a few shows over the last couple of years. He has seen Jake Shimabukuro twice, and went with us to see Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, and Willie Nelson during their minor league baseball stadium tour last summer. But this past weekend we surprised him with tickets to see an artist he loves: The Black Keys.
Tracy and I have seen the Black Keys many times over the years. We love their music and have passed that appreciation on to the kiddo. But, as is my style, we didn’t tell him what was in store for him. We told him we were going out to dinner and left it at that. After dinner, we headed north to Cleveland and the Flats.
If you’ve never been to the Flats, don’t bother unless it’s for a concert at the Nautica Pavilion. While I am a huge cheerleader for Akron and Northeast Ohio in general, I’m also the first to admit Cleveland is filled with missed civic opportunities. And the Flats is one of them. Now a mess of “gentlemen clubs” and bad comedy shows and restaurants, it’s a sad little area that straddles the east and west banks of the Cuyahoga River.
Compounding the maze of dead-end roads and industrial wasteland is the fact that you need bridges to go to the West Bank (where Nautica is located) from downtown and the East Bank. When you shut down one or many of those bridges for construction, you end up with more confusion.
Regardless, we eventually made it over to the West Bank, parked next to the Powerhouse and walked to the venue. When we got inside, the kiddo was growing more and more anxious, wondering what his parents had dragged him to this time. When we revealed it was a Black Keys show, he was stunned and overjoyed.
We’ve had some oppressive heat in the region these last few weeks, and Saturday night was no exception. Temps in the low 90s and a nasty storm rolling through in the late evening spiked the humidity, but we came prepared with bottled water and were relieved to have a cool breeze every now and again.
The opening act was Canton native Jessica Lea Mayfield. She didn’t do much for Tracy or me, and the kiddo expressed his dislike for her by announcing to me he’d rather be at Carrabba’s so he wouldn't have to listen to this band, and he’d just come back when the Black Keys start. (Why Carrabba’s? I have no idea.) He did, however, very diplomatically note after sharing his point of view that other people might like her music, but it’s just something he has discovered he doesn’t enjoy.
The high-point for the opening act set was running into our friends David and Gina, who it seems we can’t attend a Black Keys show without doing. Always good to see them and have a chance to say “hello” and visit for a bit.
Shortly after 9, the amphitheater lights went down and singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney sauntered on stage in front of a red, white, and black backdrop scrim of two hands clasped in the center of a whitewalled tire (think the "brothers" theme of the new album filtered through Soviet propaganda by way of Akron, Ohio). Although we have talked about the Black Keys many times and watched the Live at the Crystal Ballroom DVD together, the kiddo immediately turned to me and asked in genuine surprise, “Is there just the two of them in the band?!” He was beside himself at the big sound these two men were producing. Very cool parent-kid music revelation moment.
They immediately ripped into the staples: “Thickfreakness”, “Girl Is on My Mind”, and “10 A.M. Automatic”. The three of us, along with the rest of the sold out crowd, were loving every minute of it. And when they launched into “The Breaks”, the kiddo turned to me and screamed “Favorite song ever!” above the roar.
It wasn’t until ten songs into the set that they finally broke out the new material and we saw something completely foreign at a Black Keys show: Auerbach and Carney were joined onstage by a pair of sidemen. Keyboardist Leon Michels and bassist Nick Movshon added some new dimension to the Brothers song selection. Everything you’d wanna hear off the new album was played. “Everlasting Light”, “Next Girl”, “Chop and Change” (an outtake from the Brothers sessions that ended up on the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack), “Howlin’ for You”, “Tighten Up” (complete with a whistle-along opening!), and “Ten Cent Pistol”.
(I think the Black Keys should take their cue from Dylan, who puts his Oscar statuette on stage every night he performs, and bring out Frank, the dinosaur puppet from the “Tighten Up” and “Next Girl” videos, every night. Just set him on a stool and let him soak it in.)
When they left the stage after the main set, the kiddo turned to me and said, “We should go now to avoid the traffic.” I told him I was pretty sure they were gonna come back out and play some more and maybe we should stay. The kiddo was amazed and thrilled when they actually did come back for an encore. (Don’t remember when encores weren’t expected? Just attend a concert with an eight-year-old to rekindle that sense of wonder.) “Sinister Kid” was the highlight of the three-song second set, smoking hot, rocking the river, and shaking the cityscape beyond.
After the show wrapped up just before 11, we made our way back to the car and spent an hour getting from our parking spot to I-77. (A drive that should have taken no more than 15 or 20 minutes, tops! Did I mention things are a mess in the Flats?) But the people watching was amusing, and the three of us had fun rocking out to the Black Keys in the car.
It was strange to see the Black Keys joined by sidemen. I still think they are most powerful when it’s just the two of them. Drums, guitar, voice. But I’ll take them in any form they’re offering. The only thing missing was Frank.
Northeast Ohio might collapse under the pressure of LeBron’s pending free agency, but there is one thing that can cure an Akronite’s ills: A new Black Keys album. I’ve been rockin’ to the advanced tracks (“Tighten Up” and “Next Girl”) and the bonus download (“Ohio”) for a while now... completely in love with the return of one of my all-time favorite bands. Nothing can buoy hometown pride like a new Black Keys album arriving Tuesday and tickets at the ready for a late July Cleveland tour stop.
To tide you over for the next couple of days, check out the return of Frank, the sweet dancing, eharmony profilin’ funkasaurus rex and the subversive Monty Python-esque video crawl genius of the “Next Girl” video.
Buy the new Black Keys album May 18. Do it for Frank.
The Black Keys30 January 2009: Cleveland Agora Theater and Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio
We go to far more shows at the House of Blues than we do the Cleveland Agora (in fact, the last time we saw a show at the Agora was to see the Black Keys in 2006), so I don’t know if it’s normal or not, but it was “hell frozen over” cold in there Friday night! Fortunately, we had the warm velvety fuzz of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney's music to heat the joint up.
Last time we saw the Black Keys here, we showed up way too late, parked blocks away, and sat up in the pot smoke-filled heights of the balcony. This time, after fish tacos and cerveza at Marcelita’s, we purposely got to the Agora early enough to get a great parking spot on the street behind the venue (the guy in the car parallel parked in front of us was playing the same Black Keys song as us when we got out of the car: “Girl Is on My Mind”) and killer seats for the general admission show.
The Agora is set up with a lower level dancefloor in front of the stage, then two or three tiers of tables and chairs rising up to the back of the hall. Up in the balcony is theater seating, steep to the ceiling. When we got into the theater, we grabbed a couple seats at the back of the first tier. Realizing that once the place really filled up we wouldn’t be able to see a thing, timing and luck helped us out when the people at the front corner of the first tier (at the railing) up and left. We snagged the seats and settled in for the evening.
I don’t think the heat works in the Agora, because we could see our breath the whole night. It was like an outdoor concert with a roof over our heads. We originally left our coats in the car because we thought it would heat up in there and we did want to lug our coats around. Well, as my wife pointed out, sometimes I guess it pays to look the older responsible adult part, because – despite the giant “No Re-Entry” sign above the door – the ticket scanner guy was totally cool to let me run out to the car to grab our coats and gloves after we realized it simply wasn’t going to warm up in there.
I ended up running into Hank LoConti, the Agora owner and founder, as I came back in. I don’t know how well he really remembers me, but I had interviewed him at length for my Pop Conference paper on Michael Stanley a few years ago. We also ran into David before the Black Keys took the stage later that night, too. It wasn’t entirely unexpected, though, because we'd discovered back in December that we had both given tickets for the show to our wives for Christmas.
The first opening act, the Other Girls, took the stage sometime after eight o'clock. The lead singer’s voice was shot, which was unfortunate because the songs had potential. About an hour later, though, Buffalo Killers ambled on-stage and tore up a fun set of Cincinnati southern rock. Hints of Allman Brothers, Hendrix, and the Black Crowes all blended for some great ‘70s-style jams. (Check out the four-song 2007 live concert download over at TapeCast.)
And an hour after that, the stagehands rolled out Carney’s drum riser and an inflatable homage to Akronite Peter Toth’s “Trail of the Whispering Giants” Indian sculptures and Carney straight-away began breaking drumsticks on the first song of the night. The guys ripped through some great tunes, like “Have Love Will Travel”, “10 A.M. Automatic”, “Strange Times”, “Your Touch”, “I Got Mine”, “Busted”, "Stack Shot Billy", and my (and my kiddo's) personal favorite Black Keys tune: "The Breaks".
The Black Keys get better every time we see them. I love their music and a playlist with nearly 50 of my favorite cuts from all six of their albums is always in rotation on my iPod. But as much as you think you can appreciate their recorded music, it is always striking to see them perform live, because it is continually stunning to realize the full wall of sound is coming from just a couple of guys on guitar and drums!Along with the concert tickets, I also got my wife the new Black Keys live DVD, Live at the Crystal Ballroom, for Christmas. We haven’t watched it yet, but with the temperatures in the teens these days we just might turn off the furnace and the lights, open some windows and see if we can’t recreate the live Agora experience.
It is a strange thing to witness firsthand as a local band you have followed and championed ascends. To see the group evolve and, ultimately, achieve widespread acceptance from the masses is bittersweet. Alongside the feeling of vindication in your personal taste, there is the feeling of losing something that belonged to you, something you shared with a core group of fans. The Black Keys is to my mid-life what Nine Inch Nails was to my young adulthood.
Although I don't think the new album's material is as strong as their previous efforts, as is often the case, it came off well in the live setting. The two El Camino songs that proved most revelatory were “Little Black Submarine” and “Nova Baby”. “Submarine” is probably my least favorite track off the new album, but its Led Zeppelin vibe translated epically to the live setting. “Nova Baby”, which feels like a late-album filler track, was transformed into a percussive powerhouse by virtue of Carney’s chest-thrumming beats.
The main set closer, the single “Lonely Boy”, had the 11,000 individual bodies churning as one, and the three-song encore opened with a giant disco ball and Auerbach in the sickeningly sweet falsetto of Brothers’ “Everlasting Light”. The fan club seats we secured were great (and priced incredibly). Five rows from the floor on the stage-side aisle, we were positioned perfectly for the kiddo to enjoy his second Black Keys show and first Quicken Loans Arena concert. And as some of the GA attendees started to make their way past us and up to the exits while the band was still jamming, the kiddo was on the receiving end of multiple high-fives as he rocked out on his air guitar along with Auerbach and danced in the aisle!
Things have clearly changed. It was a setlist for the converted with 14 of the 21 songs pulled from 2010 or later, but the deep-catalog nuggets (one track each from the first four albums) were well-picked. And the Black Keys are no longer strictly just a two-man operation, but similar to the Brothers Tour, Carney and Auerbach were able to preserve their history with in-show selections that stripped away the supplemental musicians and reestablished their past glory as a duo. Ten years and ten days since their first gig at the Beachland Ballroom, the Akron duo delivered on all the promise of their first arena stop to the hometown crowd.
Posts
