The Ten Shows Of Summer

From the Sahara to Staten Island, live music is my soundtrack to the season

Watching Pixies last Saturday night at Mass MOCA, my partner Paula, who as a High School teacher was about to start back at work just two days later, turned to me and said “You do realize this is how I started my summer, don’t you? Watching a big concert with you?” This prompted me to consider going back over and somewhat categorizing my top Shows of Summer 2023 – with an eye not so much on individual concert reviews, nor on a personalized diary of gig-going, but on the variety of options out there, especially in terms of summer venues. There is also the question of what makes a summer concert a success, or indeed a surprise - because in summer, shows tend to move outdoors, into venues traditional and otherwise and almost every year brings somewhere new into the gig-going picture.

There were more good summer shows than the ones listed here - including the surprise bonus of seeing a Costa-Rican-fronted Spanish-language psych-rock group, Mal Maīz (below), hit a beautiful sunset in Burlington, VT, as recently as August 31. There was also one excruciatingly long drive to Boston and back for a rain-out, and some others I wish I had gotten to, especially one particular Jamaican-artists reggae show by Minori in Woodstock; there is always more to see and hear than I can get to. Videos uploaded where I took them, links provided direct to artist sites where possible. Live music has been the bread and butter of my life, and looking at the list that follows, I seem in no danger of starving any time soon!

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1)      SHOW OF THE SUMMER

MAKER PARK RADIO 6-YEAR ANNIVERSARY MUSIC FEST, MAKER PARK, STATEN ISLAND, JULY 8

Geese at Maker Park

The 6^th Annual Maker Park Radio Fest was set to be a winner from the moment my younger son Noel tipped me to it after being alerted that his fave band, Brooklyn’s still ludicrously young and highly rated quintet Geese (who just released their second album 3D Country on Partisan/PIAS) were on the bill. I was able to inform him in turn that we are all best friends with the Maker Mark Radio station’s co-founders, Kristin Wallace and husband Tom Ferrie and that I was not only down for the drive to the butt borough of Staten Island, but was all for bedding down in the promoters’ basement and making a weekend of it.

I was even more delighted when we showed up to find the event taking place in a scrappy little park right on the Island’s Manhattan-facing waterfront, the kind of place a band of Geese’s stature should not be playing but nonetheless kept their commitment to. Noel was beyond thrilled; when you’re still a teen and still looking up to bands whose records you buy, the opportunity to talk with them at their merch table where they spent much of the day reinforces that it could be him on stage, and that bands are just bands, regardless of acclaim. But this was so much more than a one-band bill. I was additionally psyched to see the group Gift– a young Americans’ update on classic British 1990s shoegazing and as good at it in concert as on record based on this showing. (They then spent the rest of the evening up front and grooving to the acts that followed them; it was that kind of communal event.) Vega Maestro and Thus Love also had plenty to offer, and while Geese were duly brilliant –  think The Strokes channeling Radiohead with doses of prog-hardcore extemporizing – the star of the show was… the headliner Kevin Devine.

A Staten Island native who’s built a solid career on the periphery of wider acceptance, this was a major homecoming for him, and I was moved close to the tears by the sight and sound of grown men and women, sporting the tats, the beards, the bellies and the other souvenirs of a working-class life on Staten Island, themselves moved to tears singing along to songs that for them, meant every bit as much “Born To Run” or “Jungleland” does to a native New Jersey-ite (see clip below of “Ballgame”).

Devine was everything I had hoped for from Ted Leo’s solo set at Tubby’s earlier this year and yet failed to get, and his performance was the icing on the cake of a long day during which I, for once, enjoyed several of the special-commissioned locally brewed beers, given that I had Noel as my designated driver back to the promoting couple’s nearby house. The weekend was cemented by a Sunday morning chilling with Tom, hearing his recent Hi-Fidelity-style record-collection-acquisition stories and knowing that Maker Park Radio, which counts Vince Clarke amongst its DJs, lives on to thrive another year. Cheap, cheerful, cozy, community-oriented, charity-minded and chock full of chocka acts, this show was hands-down the hit event of our summer – and a reminder that we look down at the Staten Islands of this world at our peril.  

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2) SAHARAN WEDDING BAND OF THE SUMMER

ETRA DE L’AIR, OPUS 40, July 1

A lot of the Desert Blues that has been all the rage of late is performed by social function bands – your average inner city dive bar or local pub is thin on the ground in the Sahara. This means that if you are northern Niger’s Etran de l’Air and the music with which you make your everyday living – a guitar-based funk-rock with distinct North African rhythms and blues underpinning - suddenly becomes an international craze, you are not going to question it, but will get on a plane and happily tour countries you had only previous seen on television. Thanks to Mike Amari of Chosen Family productions, Etran de L’air became just the latest North African act to make it to the Hudson Valley and their lengthy set outdoors at the outdoors Saugerties rock sculpture park that is Opus 40 was impossible not to love – nor get up and dance to. The music is somewhat one-dimensional, and those who have seen Mdou Moktar would tell you there are some much better guitarists on that scene, but between the environment, the weather, the demographically varied audience’s enthusiasm (yeah I know the clip below is all hippy-chicks but the older folk were inspired by them and joined in soon enough) and the fact that, lacklustre food and drink choices be damned, some of us just ignore the rules and bring our own food and drink and enjoy a picnic while desert blues ignites  the sunset, made this a summer evening to treasure.

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3) CLOSE-UP-AND-PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THE SUMMER:

The Alarm in New York, June 25/26

I saw The Alarm more times than I could count back in the day, including the Spirit of ‘86 show in Los Angeles, my first ever trip to the USA. But until June 25, the official start of our summer school holidays, I had not seen Mike Peters perform in decades. And though we had an amazing conversation a couple of years back for One Step Beyond about his equally amazing charity work with Love Hope Strength (for which he has rightly been awarded an MBE), we hadn’t see each other in person for decades either. That was rectified at the Gramercy Theater on 23^rd Street in Manhattan, a special trip back to my old happy days neighborhood that involved an overnight stay at a Hilton Garden Inn in Midtown, a surprisingly pleasant location.

I only caught the second night there, at which Mike performed first with band for soundcheck guests who attended both concerts, then a solo acoustic show for the public, then a full-on band show. We saw about three hours of live music by him, and it was A LOT! The show was great, especially for the band’s exceptionally loyal American fans who have had rare opportunity in recent years, but the meet-up on Sunday was cooler. Fans were invited to assemble at the Bethesda foundation in Central Park for a Love Hope Strength walk to Strawberry Fields; it was a chance for the audience to commune with each other and for me to talk to Mike about his lovely acoustic-electric guitar and the people who make it. At Strawberry Fields, Mike and his wife and work partner Jules sweet-talked a busker into making space for 5 minutes, and he led the assembled walkers in a chorus of “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” exactly six months out from Boxing Day!

The connection between fans and artist has never mattered more than in this digital streaming age where musicians struggle to make a living the old-fashioned way and many can only do so by treating their music like the cottage industry it  is, with lots of one-on-one interactions and great customer service. Mike excels at this and I love him for it.

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4)  COLOMBIAN CUMBIAN CROSSOVER COMBO OF THE SUMMER

Meridian Brothers at Tubby’s, Kingston, July 18.

Meridian Brothers hail from Bogotá and have occasionally been cited as just a very modern upgrade of Colombia’s indigenous “cumbia” music, but that only tells part of the story. Founder, songwriter, guitarist,  producer, and inevitably band-leader Eblis Alvarez has also studied at the Danish Institute of Electronic Music, he is greatly influenced by the Latin American psych-rock tradition, and he clearly takes great delight in mashing all of this up, along with large doses of Equivel-style “space age bachelor pad” synths, into a danceable yet always experimental live band that defies, as you can now surely tell, all easy categorization. Another Chosen Family booking, Meridian Brothers played two nights this summer at Kingston’s tiny Tubby’s, where the announcement “only 25 tickets left” usually means “we’ve only sold half the tickets so far”. If you enjoy seeing music up close and personal, Tubby’s is the place – and especially when it’s not aggressively in your face. So happy to have witnessed this ongoing evidence of the thriving South American scene.

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5)     SUNDAY AFTERNOON PUB BAND OF THE SUMMER

Freek’s Garage at West Kill Supply, Kingston, August 20

Who doesn’t love a Sunday afternoon summer session, sitting outside at your local  pub/craft beer joint with a tipple of choice? And who has not had it ruined by a below-par and likely too-loud live performance that the pub/craft beer join in question insisted on booking in as live “entertainment”? But then there are bands like Freek’s Garage, whose front pair include one of The Who’s touring tech team (Mark Sidgwick, who stepped in at short notice to play lead guitar brilliantly at my R.E.M. event in April but plays bass in Freek’s Garage) and one rock artist veteran manager doing a little bit of moonlighting (Jake Guralnick). Along with drummer Doug Wygal and the excellent keyboardist Tim Geany, Freek’s Garage are purposefully conceptual – all instrumental but for the occasional guesting beat poet, and all decked out in garage mechanic uniforms, per the boiler suit of The Who’s greatest live years. In short, these guys are good, very good, with special props to Geany for emulating the Hammond organ better than many a player can do on a Hammond itself. Check the clip here of “Big Bird” which I duly filmed, sent to my friend Eddie Floyd, who co-wrote the song with Booker T. Jones, and of course sung it, and by the time the group came… well, not so much off-stage as out of the sunshine, Eddie had replied with a thumbs-up. My friends in Freek’s Garage took the compliment in stride, because, well, they know what they’re doing and where they’re from and know that it’s all good fun.

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6) OUTDOOR CORPORATE ROCK SHOW OF THE SUMMER

Weezer at the Maine Savings Amphitheater, Bangor, June 30

This was a bonus experience gifted on to the end of five nights with my great friend Steve Peer in Ellsworth, ME. Steve gets comped at the local shed to pen some words of review alongside expert photographer Kevin Bennett’s killer shots for the local classic rock station, and on this night I got to tag along. (My phone had died the day before so no video clips.) I’d seen Weezer once before – when, a little to my surprise, Pixies opened for them – and while I don’t listen to their recordings much, and might normally lean on the less favorable side of the love-hate divide they seem to inspire, I had found the live show to be not just suitably but joyously arena-sized, with a big fat wink to their own sincerely-ironic (or ironically-sincere) take on the fabled genre of big riffs, big choruses and big on-stage statements.

It was the same here in the big outdoors of the big corporate rock venue, sponsored by a local bank that presumably approves of the $14 beers. (I cite this price as it’s the only thing I bought, but everything from water to burgers to whatever else gets similarly marked up at every similarly corporate indoor and outdoor venue in the country. While I applaud the Amphitheater’s friendly staff – some of whom walked up and down the main road wearing t-shrts emblazoned “ask me for help” or similar – I stay away from these shows iun general because I don’t want to be treated like a sucker.)

That complaint aside, Weezer were great once more, their stage set this time out designed as the inside of a “summer road trip” car, with illuminated dashboard and a windscreen that did double  service for video projections. Sparsely attended perhaps, and I was frankly disappointed by support act Future Islands’ monochromatic set (I had truly expected more from them), but Weezer are just enormous fun – thanks in no small part to their spectacular musicianship, Rivers Cuomo’s exceptional songwriting, and some genuinely emotional hits. Many of these songs now date back decades, and I got as big a kick out of watching various “Stacey’s Moms” singing along to the rockers and ballads of their youth while their own kids looked vaguely bored and a little aghast, as I did watching other kids already sporting the souvenir t-shirt and singing along for themselves. I still don’t play the recordings, but I’ll never turn down a freebie to Weezer’s brilliant live shows.   

Weezer in Bangor. Photo: Kevin Bennett.

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7) SEE THEM WHILE YOU STILL CAN SHOW OF THE SUMMER

Richard Thompson at City Winery Hudson Valley, July 27

I wrote about this Richard Thompson concert on one my previous long weekend articles, so no great need to repeat myself. Just to say it was the concert I treated myself to this summer, by a venerable artist who comes through the area so often that I can no longer afford to take it for granted, and who not only has sung and wrote some magnificent and memorable songs over the years, but who remains one of the greatest acoustic guitarists anywhere – and all the more so considering his age. What you hear below is the sound of just one 75-year old man, I assure you. (And for my first time to City Winery’s Hudson Valley location, it was a good one. I’ll  be back.)

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8) YOU NEVER KNOW WHO MIGHT SHOW UP OUTDOOR LIBRARY FAIR OF THE SUMMER

Cindy Cashdollar and Happy Traum, Woodstock Library Fair, July 22.

And on the subject of old men with nimble fingers who play guitar better than most 20-somethings, this year’s Woodstock Library Fair (an event now in its 92^nd year) awarded Community of the Arts Honoree plaques to a number of names you may recognize from past, present and fantastic, such as photographer Elliot Landy and writer Neil Gaiman. It also awarded them to Cindy Cashdollar, one of the world’s great pedal steel players as perhaps confirmed by her five Grammys,  and to Happy Traum, one of the original Greenwich Village folkies. (His group The New World Singers recorded the first version of “Blowin’ in The Wind.” He additionally founded Home Spun Tapes and is one of many Woodstock-area residents I interviewed for my book All Hopped Up and Ready To Go.) If Cindy Cashdollar can be considered still in the prime of her playing, then Traum, at age 85, ought to have endured arthritis or worse many years back. But no, as exemplified in the clip below of “He Was A Friend of Mine,” the cat can still play. This short surprise set proved that while the village of Woodstock can often seem as but a caricature of its legend, sometimes it ninetheless confirms instead why that legend persists, and that great musicians and artists of all stripe can be found hanging out on the Library Green just like the kids some 70 years Happy’s juniors.    

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9) OUTDOOR MASS(IVE) CONCERT OF THE SUMMER

Pixies, Modest Mouse and Cat Power at Mass MOCA, Aug 26.

This tour was a triple-bill of distinction and, playing mainly if not exclusively outdoor locations, bound to be a winner wherever it landed. But I felt like I got especially lucky with choice of venue, for while I’ve been to Mass MOCA in North Adams before to check out exhibits, this was the first visit for a concert. It was an incredibly pleasant experience, with easy parking nearby, very friendly staff everywhere, access to the various coffee shops and bars on the way in, and food trucks galore with great options and equally good prices… you see, all you corporate rock arenas, it’s not impossible. Plus, plenty of room for lawn chairs, wonderful sound and lights, a good-natured crowd… What more could you want? Oh yeah. Three great bands, all with deep and dense catalogues, legions of fans and all on form. For me, a first time seeing Cat Power (below top) and she was great, a second time seeing Modest Mouse (but a first time where they really connected) and while I’ve seen Pixies many times before (below bottom), they never fail to deliver, starting out so damn strong that you wondered if the great songs wouldn’t dry up. But of course they didn’t, and while I lamented that there was only one from the album Beneath The Eyrie that I witnessed and documented the recording of, they nonetheless plowed through 75 minutes of solid music with, as ever, nary a word to the audience, took their familiar and customary bow, and a crowd of several thousand people went home, I would posit, very very happy with proceedings. It was a two-hour drive home for me, a tough call at this stage of live where, gig-going be damned, I’m a dawn riser, but I’ll be very much on the look-out for more outdoor shows at Mass MOCA… next summer of course by now.

10) EMOTIONAL HIGHLIGHT OF THE SUMMER

Rock Academy’s Radiohead tribute at Woodstock Playhouse, 18-19 August.

This was always going to be both a joyful and somewhat sad occasion, given that it was the graduating show for no less than five Rock Academy students, including my son Noel, who would probably cite Radiohead his fave band (instead of Geese) if he could be convinced they have not broken up. Graduates get to choose a song from the set to claim a lead part on (otherwise, parts for Rock Academy casts are assigned from above) and Noel opted for “Let Down.” I think it’s safe to say that even if this was not my own son singing – and reverting to the $300 Martin Junior he has had since get 6 and with which he busked around the world in 2016, a value purchase if ever there was one - I would be happy to share the clip. I should also note that young Phoebe Siegel alongside him, delivered a roof-raising vocal on “Exit Music for a Film” of her own, which you can find over at my Instagram.

I may yet write a whole piece about how music education has changed in my lifetime, but let me say for now, from my own Rock Academy director’s perspective (I did not direct this particular show), that being able to help young kids play the music that they want to play, has been one of the more rewarding experiences of my life. I’m so glad that kids today have options like this, and I was suitably bowled over my own son’s finale. I hope you are too.