Well, it was an interesting weekend. Friday night I went to see Cake with Andrew & Sharon and their friend Paul. Saturday night - Brenda and I went to see Alter Bridge. I promised Brenda I would let her write a blog entry on the Alter Bridge show - so I won’t comment too much on them and the show per se. But I found some things interesting about going to both shows in one weekend.
I was reading an article on Cake last week from the NY Daily News. The article talked about their sound being a reaction to grunge music. The lead singer said this about grunge: “that dumb wide-load sound that masquerades as rock. I didn’t buy its low self-esteem. If you hate yourself so much, why are you on stage turning your ampup to 11?” The article (sorry it’s not available online anymore) went on to comment: “..In response to this, McCrea made Cake’s sound consciously dinky in reaction. Along with this sound they wanted something in their sound to be “soaring and heroic”, like a saxophone, but then he thought it would be to much like a beer commercial or the end of Saturday Night Live, so they decided to go with the trumpet.”
So….
How ironic that on Friday night I went to see a band that considers themselves the “anti-grunge” and Saturday I went to see a rock band that pulls some influence FROM the grunge movement. I will say this - Alter Bridge (which is 3 of the original members of Creed plus a new lead singer) sounds LESS grungey with Myles Kennedy singing. Scott Stapp - the lead singer when they were Creed - had an Eddie Vedder-esque deep voice - so that definitely contributed to the grunge influence. Ok…I won’t say anything more - I know Brenda wants to talk about the show herself.
The other thing I noticed about the shows was the makeup of the audience. The Cake show was at the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC. It’s basically a theater with the seats taken out. The NYC hipster kids were in full force at the show. These are the shaggy haired, horizontally striped polo-shirt wearing, Seth Cohen from “The OC” wanna be kids. The ones who like bands like Death Cab For Cutie and Modest Mouse equally as well as a poppy band like Rooney or Fountains of Wayne. Cake fits that mold - although I THINK the members of Cake are closer to our age - mid 30’s - then to the college age kids. The opening act for the show was a female rap Trio called Northern State - and we didn’t even see them but for 3 minutes as when we arrived they were finishing their set. They’ve been referred to as a “female Beastie Boys” and with names like Hesta Prynn, DJ Sprout and Guinea Love - well….no comment. I think they and Cake got stuck together because they’re on the same record label. Anyway - it seemed like a good portion of the younger section of the audience probably would have gone out to a club after this show. Also - a sea of camera phones were being held up to watch the show on if you couldn’t see. It seemed like everyone had one. They’d take a picture, then you’d see them messing with it for a minute or two after. You know they were emailing that pic to all their friends’ phones, or even posting it right up on their moblog for all the world to see - “Hey dude! I’m at the Cake show!”
By contrast - the Alter Bridge show was attended by a young crowd of hard rockers. You were more likely to see a Metallica T-shirt or wallet attached with a chain in someone’s jeans. The crowd was actually pretty tame for a hard rock show, I thought - and the older folks like us were more of the older rocker crowd - you know, the ones who probably grew up listening to Ozzy and AC/DC. But I’m generalizing…. A few camera phones around, but not like at the Cake show…. I really enjoyed the show, in spite of not being that familiar with the Alter Bridge CD (I’d given it a couple of spins but other stuff has eclipsed it in my CD player).
But Brenda will give you more on the Alter Bridge show. Hopefully she’ll have some time to write about it tonight…..
–*Rob
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