Regardless of your opinion on modern country, country pop or whatever you call the songs and videos that get played all the time on the radio and CMT, it's kind of tough to find a hole in Kenny Chesney's game.
The looks are killer: 10-gallon hat, chiseled frame, GQ-worthy face. Tunes like "She's Got It All," "All I Need to Know" and new hits like "The Boys of Fall" are put up on a tee for him by crackerjack songwriters, but he's the one with the golden voice who knocks them out of the park.
So why wouldn't anyone with even a mild interest in country music want to check out Chesney's Goin' Coastal tour when it comes to Lincoln Financial Field at 4:30 p.m. Saturday?
How about the ticket price?
Admission to see Chesney and the Zac Brown Band is $99.50 on the low end, $246.40 on the high end (they're available at www.ticketmaster.com if you have that kind of change to spend on a rock concert). This isn't meant to be a whine-about-ticket-prices screed. Instead, it's an opportunity to express sympathy to Chesney's diehard fans, and to offer a few cheaper options:
» JD Souther and Jill Andrews, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut St., Philadelphia ($25; www.worldcafelive.com). Remember The Eagles? Remember playing air guitar on the opening riff of "Heartache Tonight" or singing it out with Don Henley on "Victim of Love" to get over a breakup? You can thank JD Souther, who co-wrote those tracks and "New Kid In Town" and "Best of My Love" as well as tunes for Brian Wilson and Warren Zevon. On Tuesday, he'll be the one doing the playing. Knoxville, Tenn.-based singer-songwriter Jill Andrews opens.
» The Feelies, with opening act TBA, 8 tonight at the World Cafe Live ($20). If scientists examined the DNA of bands like Pavement, Sebadoh and Weezer, they'd find a similar strain of frenetic, herky-jerky nerdiness that can be traced back to the likes of Devo, Talking Heads, Television and the Violent Femmes. They'd also uncover a connection to New York's The Feelies, who threw more than a little jangle on top of their sound. Twenty years after their debut album, "Crazy Rhythms," put them on the map, they're back with a new album, "Here Before."
» Eastern Conference Champions, with Prowler and Illinois, 9 p.m. Monday at Johnny Brenda's, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., Philadelphia ($10; www.ticketfly.com). The Champs held a Facebook promotion earlier this year where they asked fans to request a cover tune for them to record, which they would then post online for free. The results had to have been fixed: They went with The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?", which the band knocked out of the park and must have already been cranking while recording their recently released album, "Speak-ahh." The album is smothered in the reverb, dissonance and adventurous songwriting that made The Pixies great.
Guided By Voices
I think I've figured out why Guided By Voices never hit the big-time: People who read about them get bored with the long-winded story about the school teacher-turned-rock star and get turned off and scared by the band's endless catalog.
So let's try a different approach and get right to it:
If you don't mind patches of songs that are shoddily recorded, preposterously short or have weird titles, keep reading.
If you're into The Who or The Beatles, go buy "Bee Thousand" and/or "Alien Lanes" and keep reading. If you're a fan of Cheap Trick or the late-1970s power-pop era, go and buy "Do The Collapse" or "Isolation Drills" and keep reading. If you're a fan of early Genesis, prog-rock or anything weird, go and buy "Vampire on Titus" or "Universal Truths and Cycles" and keep reading.
If you've gotten this far, go to the River Stage at Great Plaza in Philadelphia tonight and see this band live. Wavves opens the show at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $39.70 at www.ticketmaster.com.
Soul Jazz Cafe
With its recently completed arsenal of high quality restaurants, Christiana Mall has become a place to eat as much as it is a shopping destination.
Concord Mall has answered, becoming a go-to spot for soul and jazz thanks to Café Riviera.
At 7 p.m. Sunday, the restaurant will host the Soul Jazz Cafe, which features Kim Pinder Garner, who performs Phyllis Hyman classics, as the headliner. She'll be backed by the Rick Tucker Universal Soul Band. The Best Kept Soul Band opens with a set of Motown classics.
0 comments:
Post a Comment