Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Avalon Boston, MA
Tuesday May 29th, 2007
Grade: A
Let me just start by saying I fucking Love BRMC. I listen to them more often than any other band. I've been to a lot of shows and they're still probably the best band I have ever seen live. It might have something to do with how they have an album that's mostly acoustic so they throw in a few acoustic songs in the middle of their set to switch things up a bit. The two front men Peter and Robert also switch instruments during their set now, as on their latest album Baby 81 Robert plays guitar (instead of his usual bass) on a few songs.
I was "interviewed" by some girl who said she was from BRMC's label. She told me to talk about the band and say what I thought about them, my favorite song on their new album, and a song I'd like to hear them play. She put a camera on me and I went into complete fan mode and said how they're probably my favorite band that's out right now, how I love the song "American X" on Baby 81, and how I really hoped they'd play "High/Low" (a B-side from the "Stop" single). I don't really remember if I said anything else but that's not really important.
Some Boston band called Wild Light opened the show. They looked like one of those bands where when you see them you can't help but wonder if there's a minimum hair length required to be in the band. It also seemed like they had the idea to all wear black shirts, but all the drummer had for a black shirt was a black polo with his work logo on it or something. Not many people were there when they went on, and to be honest they didn't miss much. They weren't a bad band. They just weren't very good, and extremely forgettable. They also tried to use vocal harmony among the three vocalists, but their attempts at that consisted of such staggeringly beautiful lyrics like 'Na Na na' or 'whoa-o-o' or whatever the hell it was. I was trying to think of who they sounded like after the show and I couldn't even remember what they sounded like in general.
After a set-up time that wasn't too long BRMC took the stage and went right into "Took out a Loan" followed by "Berlin". I thought it was a little weird that they played the first two songs off of their new album consecutively. I remember it making me wonder if they were going to play "Weapon of Choice" (third track on new album) next, and how I thought that could be a bit uncool. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club does not disappoint though, the next song they played was "Lien on Your Dreams", still from Baby 81, but I was glad they didn't keep going in order of the album. Next they played "In Like the Rose", one of my favorite songs from their second full length Take Them On, On Your Own. The first song they played from their third full length Howl was "Ain't No Easy Way", a great sing-along song on which Peter's harmonica didn't want to work. Next they went into fan favorite "Whatever Happened to My Rock & Roll" from their debut album B.R.M.C. I'm not going to keep saying which song they played next, that'd get really boring. When they played "666 Conducer" they turned it into an extended jam, very different from the album version. That was interesting to see. I wonder if it's going to be like "U.S. Government" was on the Howl tour, and they're just going to always play it that way and end up recording an alternate version of it sometime. Robert ending up standing on his cabinets by the time the song was finished, which made me really bummed out that I didn't bring a camera. Robert and Peter switched instruments for the next two songs. The first song they played after the switch was "Need Some Air", with the second being "American X". I said it was my favorite song on the album during that 'interview' and I almost added 'but I know they won't play it because most bands don't play 9 minute album tracks live'. So yeah, I was a little surprised that they played it. After "American X" the band walked off stage and Peter returned alone with an acoustic guitar to play "Fault Line", he then went into "Devil's Waitin". The rest of the band came back on stage at the end of it to provide backing vocals. Then everyone but Robert Left and he grabbed an acoustic guitar and played "Mercy" a song from the Howl Sessions EP (You're going to have to eBay that one). He said what the name of the song was before he played it, probably because he figured no one would know what it was....that, or he saw me writing at the beginning of every song. The rest of the band came out and they played "Love Burns" and "Rifles" from their first album. They played the intro to "All You Do is Talk" until Peter realized his guitar tech didn't tune his guitar properly for that song, so he re-tuned it and they started it over. That song ended their set.
When they came back out for an encore they said "You call it", a couple of guys towards the front of the stage yelled for "High/Low". Robert said he didn't remember it that well and that they hadn't played it in like 10 years, I think he then realized their first album came out in 2001 and changed it to something like 5 years (which still has to be wrong). He then asked if the lyrics he was thinking of were correct. Then he turned to the guys that yelled it out and asked them if they stole that song on the internet. Then Peter started playing the beginning riff. I was really surprised they actually played it, you don't usually get to see old b-sides live and even though I had previously said I hoped they'd play it I didn't expect them to at all. They tried the same thing for the next song, but people kept yelling out different songs so Peter just started playing "Six Barrel Shotgun". They followed it with another song they decided to play, "U.S. Government". Then for their last song they asked the crowd again and people were yelling "Stop" (I was trying to get them to play "Heart & Soul"), so they played "Stop" to end their encore.
It was another great show from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. On the way to the car my girlfriend mentioned how good of a show it was a couple times and I couldn't have agreed more. If you have the opportunity to see them, you owe it to yourself. Also, buy all of their albums from them at their shows if you can, if not follow the links.
Set List- Took Out A Loan
- Berlin
- Lien on Your Dreams
- In Like the Rose
- Ain’t No Easy
- Whatever Happened To My Rock & Roll
- Weapon of Choice
- Howl
- Windows
- Not What You Wanted
- 666 Conducer
- Need Some Air
- American X
- Fault Line
- Devil’s Waitin
- Mercy
- Love Burns
- Rifles
- All You Do is Talk
Encore
- High/Low
- Six Barrel Shotgun
- U.S. Government
- Stop
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