Concert Review Site

The quartet from Columbia University, Vampire Weekend, is becoming almost impossible to ignore. The band’s self title release in 2008 garnered them praise as they became the “It” band, but also heaped a boatload of pressure for the band to follow up with a equally successful album. “Contra” (released this past January) has been a instant success and tracks like “Giving Up the Gun” and “Diplomat’s Son” have been burning up ITunes. Their most recent show at the Marquee Theater in Tempe, AZ earned great reviews from The Arizona Republic. The reviewer remarked about the growing up Vampire Weekend has done in the past two years, calling the band “full blown rock stars”. Their is a great enthusiasm for the band in young people across the country and by the next album I wouldn’t be surprised to see the band playing biggest venues…maybe even arenas.

Road warrior Neil Young will be going on a short tour this summer to play some solo shows in 2010. Opting not to tour with long time group Crazy Horse, Young will perform songs from some of the 33 albums he’s released in his career. Young will be playing shows at The Louisville Palace Theater, the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, the Spartanburg Mem Auditorium in Spartainburg, South Carolina, and two shows at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. More shows could be added in time leading up to the tour’s kick off show in Louisville on May 26th. Scotish folk legend Bert Jansch will be opening for Neil on the Twister Road Tour. Jansch was a very influential artist in the 60’s and had a profound affect on Neil’s work. Neil Young tickets are still available, but they won’t last long so book your seats now if you want to be able to be in the audience at one of the shows.

If you want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day for seven days straight, make sure you’re in Boston from March 13th-March 17th. Boston’s finest, the Dropkick Murphys, will be taking up a week-long residency at the House of Blues. The Murphys’ Celtic-punk sound has become synonymous with the city of Boston since the band first started playing gigs in the nearby town of Quincy. The band will be releasing a live album, Live on Landsdowne, recorded over seven shows last year at the House of Blues. Running through most of their entire catalog of songs dating back to 1996. If your headed to Boston for St. Paddy’s make sure you stop by the House of Blues for the best of Irish punk.

Worldwide pop icon Celine Dion has been a busy lady lately. The artist will releasing a much-anticipated concert documentary, “Celine: Through the Eyes of the World” profiling her 2008 Taking Chances Tour, attempting to have another baby with her husband Rene Angelil, and returning to Las Vegas for a three year contract. The renowned vocalist will perform around 70 dates a year at the world famous luxury hotel & casino, Caesar’s Palace. Dion’s last venture in Sin City was a huge success with her Las Vegas show, A New Day…, that ran for five years and grossed over $400 million. Celine’s next Vegas show will feature a 31-piece orchestra and have a classic Hollywood film theme. Celine Dion is quickly becoming the next Queen of Las Vegas setting a new standard for how successful a show in “The Entertainment Capital of the World” can be.

How can you not love Tony Bennett? The 83-year-old is still touring and sounding great after more than 60 years in the business. The crooner has a number of shows in Las Vegas lined up after he gets done touring around the Florida pan-handle in recent weeks. The New York City-born singer is a music icon who has certainly made enough money to sit around and do nothing all day if he wanted having sold 50 million records worldwide in his day, but he still keeps up a pretty busy concert schedule. In a recent interview the legend was asked what he does to keep in such great shape at his age and Tony responded, “I stay away from the junk. I’m not in any race to beat out Madonna.” His sense of humor remains as lively as his voice. If you have a chance to see Tony live don’t let it pass you up. The man is a living piece of American history.

The reigning two-year CMA Entertainer of the Year Brad Paisley is cranking out well-recieved performances around the country with his “American Saturday Night” tour. Paisley’s collection of sing-alongs, country rockers, and acoustic ballads combined with his down-to-earth crowd interactions seem to indear him to audiences night after night. On his trademark Fender, Paisley has been exhibiting his world class guitar playing ripping through bluesy solos backed by some of Nashville’s finest musicians. Opening act Miranda Lambert has also been treat for audiences as the promising young performer has set the tone for Paisley’s show with her hit song “White Liar” now topping the country charts. Those who get to catch the last leg of Paisley’s tour will be seeing what appears to be one of the best tours of the year.

The BBC has admitted that they went a bit overboard in their coverage of the release of U2’s album No Line on the Horizon last year. It was early in the spring last year and the BBC changed their logo to read “U2 BBC” or something like that. There were complaints from many quarters that this gave the band too much publicity on the taxpayers’ money. The network has apologized. The band, however, got a lot of great national publicity for this event and that’s good. Who knows whether people like the band that much that or whether they’ve just seen the name on the news so much that they get into the habit of listening to the music. However, they are putting forward a lot of great music, so perhaps it’s just that the network got swept up in the enthusiasm.

Girls out there might not be worried about Argentina crying for them, but they might be crying about Argentina. Apparently Michael Buble has become engaged to Luisana Loreley Lopilato de la Torre, an actress from Argentina. The sadness was practically palpable for people all over the country, as the Canadian crooner’s Facebook status shifted from “In a Relationship” to “Engaged to De La Torre”. He will still be touring and singing great music. Plus, it’s not like he hasn’t been married before. Maybe this one won’t work out either? Anyway, no one wants his relationship to end in sadness, but you can’t blame any of his fans for wishing that he would give them a chance too.

One of the most unnoticed concert stories of the last few years was the Kanye West performance at Bonnaroo in 2008. I was tempted to call it the story of the decade, just because it’s kind of entertaining to me. But it wasn’t entertaining for the people who bought lots of tickets to the festival specifically to see him. In case you don’t remember, he was scheduled to play at a certain time. But then his show was shifted to another stage on the grounds and supposed to start at 2:45 am. And his best fans waited most of the night for him to play. He showed up two hours late to do his light show mostly and it was very short. Afterwards, many fans were furious because of the money they’d spent and how disrespectful he had been. It’s similar to the Taylor Swift interruption. Not a huge disrespect for the world, but the kind of thing most stars don’t even try. Ben Sollee, a folk cellist at the same festival, wrote a song about the fiasco, telling him to do his music, because it’s good music, and don’t get distracted by the lights and thse ego that comes with them.

Amy Winehouse has just been having a terrible time. I’m sure she would love to be living in normalcy again, but it’s not happening yet. First off, she got divorced this last summer, which is hard enough without lots of people watching you all the time from the tabloids. Jus tin the last couple of weeks she was involved in an incident at a theater in England. She has been charged with assaulting the manager of the theater and creating a public disruption after she interrupted a performance of Cinderella. We really don’t know what’s happening here, but we will have to keep reading the different accounts of this event to figure out what happened and if it will affect Winehouse’s career.