Tag: Dave Matthews Band

Road Postcard #1 (6/30/19) – DMB in Indy

Posted on by Eric

Road Postcards are a (hopefully) recurring series of random thoughts, details, and anecdotes from a recent road trip, most likely to see a concert. They are shorter (if not necessarily short), looser, and less fussed over than a typical DAE post/review. Some days it’s hard to tell whether I write in order to justify staying busy with events and such, or whether I frequent movies and concerts in part to have something to write about. Thankfully, there is no day on which the distinction particularly matters.

Continue reading “Road Postcard #1 (6/30/19) – DMB in Indy” →

The Ballad of Lefty Pitdweller and the Ticket Master

Posted on by Eric

ticketmaster springsteen

NOTE: What follows is a long, winding, bumpy, and circular road, even for this blog. Caveat reador.

My relationship with Ticketmaster – the nefarious online concert access cartel – has been a long and contentious one, though never particularly complicated. My feelings on the subject are not at all mixed but, rather, pure as the driven snow. Ticketmaster stands not just in mere ideological opposition to me. It vexes me, tweaks me with purpose and zeal, and does just about everything during our regular, uncomfortable interactions but spit in my eye. It is my rival, my enemy, my nemesis, and the bane of my concert going existence, which has otherwise brought me so much joy, both fleeting and lasting, and memories built for a lifetime’s contented recollection. Continue reading “The Ballad of Lefty Pitdweller and the Ticket Master” →

Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (rubber match)

Posted on by Eric

dmb

Riverbend Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio – May 20, 2016

Everyone enjoys his or her “down time” differently. Some people only truly come alive as a part of a group. They seek out others by instinct. Some people travel for the sake of it. Others commune with nature. A raging introvert from the womb onward, I’ve never particularly minded my own company. I love concerts, and movies in the theater, alone or not. Failing that, I tend to hunker down in my bomb shelter of a ground floor apartment and cycle through an array of entertainment options (books, games, music, movies) sufficient to make Chris Hardwick blush. Considering the subject matter this site routinely traffics in, tell me you’re surprised. Being outside isn’t exactly my default mode, though it can actually serve to make me much more appreciative of, excited by, and up for a particularly nice day, just not necessarily to see a show. Despite my friends who love them, I generally despise the obscene quantity to quality/expense to return ratio of all those ubiquitous multi-day summer festivals, preferring, as at any other time of year, to make my showgoing bones day-to-day in intimate, compact, dimly-lit clubs. Continue reading “Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (rubber match)” →

Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (second opinion)

Posted on by Eric

dmb nobles

Klipsch Music Center, Noblesville, IN – July 18, 2015

The Dave Matthews Band is among the great singular outliers in my personal musical landscape – itself a massive, loosely bound, often logic-optional continuum that, built up over the course of thirty years, was already surprisingly lousy with them. As a dyed-in-the-wool metal fan, my longstanding passion for this particular band has led, variously, to rounds of strident interrogation, sound condemnation, and, occasionally, clandestine approval*, from my peers, though that’s really nothing compared to the dismissive shade I’ve seen thrown from more respectable corners of the pop, rock and indie arenas. “Is Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming any good 20 years later?” shouted the headline of, to me, a particularly provocative AVClub article on the occasion of the album’s inevitable anniversary reissue last fall. I read with bated breath. Continue reading “Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band (second opinion)” →

Post No. 75: Unlimited Mileage

Posted on by Eric

mileage

Every 25th post, darkadaptedeye takes a planned break from normal business to plumb the shallow depths of its author’s psyche and/or overtly explore the locked attic of memories it only ever really dabbles in otherwise. You might think of it as a pit stop, or maybe a soft reboot. In “Danse Macabre”, Stephen King termed his own such digression “An Annoying Autobiographical Pause”, which I choose to think was kind of charming. Please know I take seriously the challenge of making patent self-indulgence interesting – actual results be damned – and I appreciate you being game. We’ll return to our irregularly scheduled programming shortly…

I traveled to my first ever concert, even if that only involved driving twenty minutes to a neighboring town. I was twelve at the time, eyes wide and overwhelmed, senses primed for meltdown, attention seemingly focused everywhere at once and dutifully lip-synching along to the “hits” even as I struggled to pick words out of the all-encompassing sonic wash. The act in question – whose identity, assuming you don’t already know it, you will only learn from my deathbed – hardly warranted such excitement, but I was content with what I had to work with. That wouldn’t always be the case. Continue reading “Post No. 75: Unlimited Mileage” →

Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band

Posted on by Eric

DMBSummer2006

First Niagara Pavilion, Burgettstown, Pennsylvania – June 28, 2014

2014 marks my twentieth year as a fan of The Dave Matthews Band, and almost every year of that twenty, I’ve had the good fortune to see the band live at least once. DMB has, in that time, assumed the mantle of a true successor to The Grateful Dead as the sort of critically marginalized but super-successful live draw that inspires a peculiar strain of fanatical devotion from a surprising cross section of (not necessarily but often) young people. They follow the band around the country, reveling in the live experience like no other fan base I know, collecting live recordings both in person and secondhand, memorizing absolutely everything and obsessing over minutiae with their fellow afflicted. Comparatively, my own affliction is mild. Continue reading “Concert review: The Dave Matthews Band” →