Rebelution @ House of Blues, Cleveland

Drive to Cleveland, OH to see a reggae concert? A white, non-drug using couple? Why? Well, I discovered Rebelution about 5 years ago when talking to a girl in Hawaii about music. They were always on my iPod, just sitting there never being listened to. Last year, the wife, a friend and I went to the Dave Matthews Band Caravan tour in Atlantic City, NJ and among the 40 bands there, there Rebelution was. Their set, though short, was incredible. They had everyone moving and rocking in minutes. That being said, Rebelution has been on heavy rotation for me since then and were worth the 2 1/2 hour drive. 

Peace of Mind, their 3rd album, came out in January. It is a triple disc-er! One full band album, an acoustic version and a dub version. Someone for everyone. 

With that little background, lets get to the show. After a first opener who was pretty ok, and The Green, who completely rocked their set, it was time. The House of Blues is a pretty nice venue, small, new club feel, lovely $5 beers, haha. Opening with Attention Span and finishing with Lazy Afternoon, the setlist was full of old and new stuff. The heavy green lighting and forest feel set a great mood for the show. 

The members have great chemistry together. Eric, an Aziz Ansari looking fella, is the leader who is an amazing guitar player, Marley the bass player moves around the stage waving his bass getting the crowd pumped up and still hitting every note and groove. Jesse, the keyboard player keeps everything together with his synth riffs and organ grooves, Wesley the drummer keeps songs moving and full of fills and Khris, the sax player adds the element that Rebelution has among most reggae bands, a solid sax player. 

Some of my favorite songs of the night were Safe and Sound, Good Vibes, Feelin Alright and Outta Control. All of their lyrics are just positive and moving. They keep you upbeat with their love songs and songs about life. 

"There's nothing like a clear peace of mind, to overcome the hardships in life, to sort out the wrong from the right."

They keep the crowd totally involved and entertained the whole show. Sharing their lyrics, singing along, heavy guitar solos, great sax melodies, they really have it all and they'll be around for a while making great music for everyone to hopefully get some peace of mind and enjoy life.

Eisley @ The Smiling Moose

So this is a retroactive post, it was a couple weeks ago but I'm sneaking it in. Actually, thinking about it, all of these posts are retroactive. I can only write about concerts after I've seen them. Well that was a useless conversation.
Eisley is a family band that has been around for a little while. They just released an EP that was pretty solid, and they were touring in support of that. The younger sister and brother to the band opened, along with Tall Heart, both also very sweet bands.


The Smiling Moose is a biker bar, well that's how I always saw it. They have a tiny upstairs and shove as many people up there as they can. When the wife and I arrived it was already crazy packed. Through the openers, sweating some and here we go.


You would think that a band lead by 3 girls (sisters nonetheless) and a brother and a cousin in the rhythm section would be kind of cheese, but they're tight and have some great grooves.


They really have it all, a technically advanced guitar player, a great keyboard player, synced rhythm section and, of course, the leader, Sherri, who plays rhythm guitar and gives the band the emotional counterpart to put Eisley in heavy rotation for me. They are definitely one of the harder working bands I keep up with. Their tour schedule seemed to be extensive and if they played with the same intensity they did at the Smiling Moose for every show then they probably came home completely beat.


There were certain twitter murmurings after the show that it sucked and was horrible, such a cool thing to tweet to a band you follow and like. The sound sucked, the engineer was obviously under educated and they weren't ready for a show with a band that actually carried some sort of a following and not just a local band. Yea there was some feedback and not everything was mixed correctly but I was ear protection and my industrial sized earplugs mixed the bass down ever so perfectly for me.


People who are trying to ruin their ears aside, the concert was a great time. Oldies (Golly Sandra) and newies ((yea i sometimes make up words) Deep Space) were played and everything in between. Brought me back to when they were still referencing Star Wars in their name (Moss Eisley). Sniff sniff.

Intro

Hey there. Lets jump right in. I'm Dan. This is my first blog/blog post. I guess I should tell you why I created this blog. I've been going to concerts almost my whole life, playing guitar music for 12 years, and most recently working in the audio field for about 2 years. I grew up in the tri-state area, studied audio engineering in NYC and am living in Pittsburgh, PA.
I feel like my background is semi-relevant seeing as I will be blogging about all concerts and music. The background lets you know I'm qualified to comment on this stuff. Sort of.
I've been concerting for quite a while, and more recently a heck of a lot. I always tweet about my concerts and someone finally said, when are you going yo start.blogging about these concerts? I kicked it around for a while and now I'm here.
I get super excited for shows and sometimes geek out like a little girl, so bear with me.
Concert season is starting up for 2012 and I'm excited to start talking about it and hopefully meet some people along the way!
(ps if I'm doing this blog thing wrong, let me know. I'm down with constructive criticism)