When live music dried up in mid 2020, our nation was confronted with a mental health crisis. Sure there was a lot of other stuff going on, I get that, but when the concert industry roared back, so, too, did our collective spirit. Now I’m not saying music is responsible for our nation’s sanity, but I’m not saying it isn’t either. Live music is back, baby.
“Magic is what we do. Music is how we do it.” – Jerry Garcia
In the last full pre-COVID year of 2019, I saw a personal best 119 shows though I wasn’t writing a lot yet and never did get a year in review together. In a pandemic-interrupted 2020, I somehow managed to see 62 including a handful that I organized, promoted, and put on myself–yay Marckomitoville. I even wrote a few words that year that may even be worth rereading. 2021 turned out to be an important year both personally and musically and I made my way to 98 shows, nearly eclipsing a C-note if not for 7 shows stricken from the calendar in the eleventh hour when COVID cancellations again reared their ugly head just prior to Phish’s New Year’s run @ MSG. An interesting excerpt from 2021’s year in review follows; I think I kinda nailed it.
Ironically–or not– 2021’s live music calendar mimicked my spiritual journey. Emptiness, followed by difficult work, creativity, growth, passion, fullness, soaring highs, the quasi-return of complacency followed by a big kick in the dick and here we are again. The arts were taken from us, slowly to return, only to be taken once more. COVID will likely never be gone, but we’ll learn to live either with it or in spite of it, hopefully with love for our neighbor and a conspicuous absence of judgment present in equal proportions to self-care and self-love. Growth, however, is never linear and 2021 was no exception.
2022 was no exception either but I already wrote a spiritual review and this one’s about the music. Who am I kidding, they’re one and the same. Anyway, I made a lot of changes, saw a bunch of concerts, and had a shitload of fun in ‘22. I also had some dark days, alone in my head with a lot of questions and very few answers. Music may not have exactly kept me alive, but it sure did keep me sane and it seems I wasn’t alone. For the entirety of 2022, live music fans like myself ravaged the opportunity to buy tickets and see their favorite artists at in-person live events and we paid a healthy price for it, too, more than ever according to both Pollstar and the auto-sum feature on my concert spreadsheet. That same spreadsheet reports that I saw 116 concerts in 2022, just three shy of 2019’s personal best.
Pearl Jam, Motherfuckers
The most devastating strikethroughs on my 2020 concert spreadsheet consisted of nine entries (San Diego, LA, Oakland, NY, & MD) from Pearl Jam’s Gigaton tour. At that point, though they had played a few shows in 2018, PJ hadn’t had a proper tour since 2016 and those postponements ended up kicking the can down the road over two years! A few festival sets in 2021 at Sea.Hear.Now and Ohana helped pass the time, but there’s absolutely nothing in the world like seeing the best arena band of all time in their natural habitat and I was champing at the bit when the postponed shows were finally announced, one of them set for 9/11 of all dates in the World’s Greatest Arena. Serendipity, yo.
I waited, and waited, and waited some more, which only made the eventual payoff that much sweeter when I eventually made my way to LA for 2 of PJ’s first 3 shows of the year at the Fabulous Forum. After a 6 am flight that landed at 9 local time, I went straight to the GA line and did the work that ultimately put me in the second row between Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder. Without question the most magnetic performer these eyes have ever seen live, when Ed looks in your eyes at a show you want to bottle that split second and spend the rest of your life in its warm embrace. ((If you’ve never been that close to EV at a live concert, do everything in your power to change that before it’s too late.))
Before the originally scheduled MSG show, PJ was set to play a Sirius-XM invite-only exclusive for industry insiders and a very few lucky contest winners at The Apollo that I had all but given up on attending. Over the last few years, however, in partnership with the awesome fucking team at Live For Live Music who not only gives me a platform to share my words but then also polishes them to a shine, I guess I formed a relationship of sorts with Pearl Jam by writing a review of the aforementioned show at Sea.Hear.Now. and then being a credentialed member of the media team at Ohana, the festival EV curates in Dana Point, CA. Oh yeah, L4LM also lined up an advance copy of his latest solo album, Earthling, and not only did I write what I think was a pretty sick review but I was also the only fan in the room (besides his wife who was sitting next to me) to know the songs before he debuted them live at The Beacon this past February. Then I covered both LA shows with media passes that put me on Pearl Jam’s guest list. Pinch me.
All that good will led to me being an invited guest at the rescheduled Apollo show and the fact that I got there on my own merit was one of the coolest and most life affirming things I’ve ever done. The fact that it was all born of my creative outlet with words was almost too much. Almost. Straight from one of the smallest and most exclusive shows in PJ’s history (1500-capacity) on a Friday night, it was a straight shot down 7th Ave. to MSG where I arrived as the fifteenth person in line just before 1:00 am Saturday and wrote my Apollo review in the shadow of Penn Station before grabbing a few ZZZ’s on 8th Ave. in a beach chair.
Sleeping on the street in Manhattan turns out to be one of the smartest things I’ve ever done and I was rewarded with a dead center rail spot in front of EV for one of the most memorable nights of music I’ve ever experienced. In Ed’s words,“You really brought it and allowed it to be one of the most memorable shows in all the times of us playing. It was very, very powerful to be in that room with you that night, in that building, in that proximity, and on that date and we’re so very grateful for that energy.” You mean my energy? I got you, EV. A few nights later I would repeat the feat from the second row for a Camden heater where I also snapped the second best concert photo in my life (I have a knack for catching EV in flight.)
I Am 100% Sold On Goose
An indie boy-band jamband from Connecticut took America by storm in 2022 and it seems the whole world took notice including icons Phil Lesh, Trey Anastasio, and Outkast’s Big Boi with whom they shared stages. Goose even made a network sweep of CBS, ABC, and NBC with Good Morning America, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon but they first stole my heart on Halloween 2019 in the Mercury Lounge and I haven’t looked back since. I saw Goose 1x that first year, 6x in 2020, 11x in 2021, and 23x in 2022. I’ve published reviews for 37 of the 41 total Goose shows I’ve seen to date as well as two more that I didn’t attend, two years in review (‘20 and ‘21), and one album review. 2022: The Year Of The Goose remains a work in progress and is next in line for completion after this one. (Add one more sit-in and published review to the pile as now, at the time of writing, I just covered Goose’s guest performance at Dead & Company’s Playing In The Sand in Mexico and none other than Bob Weir sat in). Looks like ’23 is gonna be pretty cool, too 😉
Goose dominated my time, my resources, my energy, and my intention and I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I’m the type of guy who is fueled by passion but most of my passions are mine alone. Goose is the first passion (outside of family) that Diana and I have ever shared and it sparked our marriage in the most unimaginable and very best way possible. Music and its accompanying emotional rainbow are everything to me and ever since watching my two friends–then high school sweethearts and now married with two kids–share “Brokedown Palace” arm in arm under Jerry Garcia’s gaze at the Nassau Coliseum in 1993, I’ve longed to share that part of myself with a romantic life partner. Somewhere along the way I gave up hope, figuring that it just wasn’t in the cards but then Goose came along and changed all that and the significance of that fact simply cannot be overstated. I may be riding an emotional rollercoaster in the midst of great change, but I’m also living the dream and the reasons why are never lost on me.
Let’s bring it completely back to Goose and segue from the love of my marriage to what I consider to be a healthy man crush. Rick Mitarotonda is number one on my depth chart (sorry, Eddie Vedder, but we’ve never actually hung out) and seeing him step into Phil Lesh’s band for three shows right before co-headlining a tour with Trey Anastasio was life affirming stuff. It was a special year for Rick, for Goose, and for me. (Add Bob Weir to the mix and Rick is collecting torches in historical fashion.
I know what I like and I fell hard for Goose that first day back in 2019. As I’ve said before, “They had me at hello.” As they started to soar, it became pretty obvious that Red Rocks was in the cards at some point. I kinda felt in my bones, even early on, that when Goose took their maiden voyage to Red Rocks, I would take mine as well and we both made good on that promise in 2022. That magical trip to Colorado also included two shows in what I believe to be America’s most beautiful venue, the Dillon Amphitheater (sorry, Gorge, though admittedly I’ve never been). I also drove eight hours solo for a weekend of shows at Legend Valley, Ohio (the venue formerly known as Buckeye Lake) and made my first ever trip with Diana to New Orleans where we had one of the best weekends of our lives in the Crescent City. When it was all said and done I saw 23 Goose shows in 9 states plus another 7 Goose-adjacent side projects (Orebolo x1, Great Blue x1, Elephant Proof x2, and Rick w/ Phil & Friends x3). Radio City Music Hall was pretty cool, too 😉
I end nearly every published review the same way–every show is the best show since the last show till the next show–and it’s true every single time. Still some are better than others and a few of my favorites were 3/12/22 @ Fillmore Philadelphia and 3/2/22 @ 9:30 Club, Washington DC. I’ll never forget the two-night runs in Chrysalis in MD (8/12-13), Dillon, CO (8/16-17), Richmond, VA (9/29-30), and New Orleans, LA (10/8-9) or the two nights of Taboose Tour that I was lucky enough to catch in Syracuse, NY and Reading, PA. If I can see 23 more in ‘23, it’ll be a great year.
Dogs In A (Motherfucking) Pile
Damn these pups grew up fast. From the hallowed grounds of Marckomitoville! in the summer of 2020 to The Capitol Theatre, Peach Fest, and Sea.Hear.Now in just two short years, Dogs In A (MF) Pile fucking destroyed 2022. Don’t forget a few Stone Pony sellouts, tours supporting both Pigeons Playing Ping Pong and Twiddle, a jam packed festival season, and a calendar jam packed with almost 140 total shows nationally and these dudes are as up and coming as it gets. There’s something about a Dogs show that feels like cliff diving into the fountain of youth and I chased that feeling with great success for 14 nights last year. Still, fun and music aside, the best thing to come out of my backyard in the summer of 2020 is two-plus years of friendship with some of the best families and most quality homies in the business. Keep crushing boys!
The Best Of The Rest
I’m setting a New Year’s resolution to spend more time at the Village Vanguard in 2023. I’ve legit never been disappointed by a show there and more often than not I leave with my mind pried open and my jaw on the floor to match. Jazz awakens my senses and my creative process and just challenges me as a listener and lover of live music in a different kind of way. It forces different synapses to fire and I love that. I only visited twice this year, once for the Vijay Iyer Trio w/ Linda May Han Oh & Tyshawn Sorey and again for John Zorn’s New Masada Quartet with Julian Lage, Jorge Roeder, and Kenny Wollesen. Those were my only two jazz shows of the year and there’s no reason to pick favorites but I’ll just simply say, more, please.
Hold that thought. Stepping foot in Preservation Hall in New Orleans for the first time was probably the most emotional hour of music of the year. Every single thing about this hour-long afternoon set was stunning from the room to the fact that Charlie Gabriel fell and cancelled his show and was subbed out by a local troupe who no one had ever heard of, Kevin Louis & Friends, who played the most authentic, heartfelt, and genuine set of music I saw all year. Thanks, Rev.
Without a shadow of a doubt the most exciting discovery of the year was Cimafunk. I first caught them at the Brooklyn Bowl last March and they are the very essence of fun, performance art, and musicality–the total package if I’ve ever seen one. Horns, percussion, culture, star power, and epic dance moves, they’ve got it all. I would manage to see them again at Sea.Hear.Now. and after that at Georgiana Platt’s 60th bday party at The Warehouse at FTC, the most fabulous party I’ve ever attended and there is no second place. If you made it this far and get nothing else from these pages, GO SEE CIMAFUNK!
Not To Be Forgotten
Kruanghbin at Radio City; Neal Francis at Music Hall of Williamsburg; Scott Metzger solo, with Josh Dion, & Andy Hess at Freaks Day Out; Subtonics at Letlove Inn; Summerfeet w/ Subtonics and Flight 467 at Nublu; Maggie Koerner at Tipitina’s; Fungkshui at The Wonder Bar (my local discovery of the year); and, oh yeah, 10 Phish shows, one Trey solo, and four TAB. Not too shabby.
Summary: Pearl Jam fucking rules and is the best fucking band of all time ever. Or maybe that’s Phish. Or was it the Grateful Dead? Is it Goose? Even I’m not going there yet, lol, but since all my worlds are colliding and Goose already checked the Trey Anastasio and Bob Weir boxes and Rick is practically a permanent member of Phil & Friends, is an Eddie Vedder sit-in with Goose too much to ask? At this point, nothing seems impossible.
Live music for what ails ya friends.
Many thanks to Jordan August Photography for the cover photo. With a uniquely creative eye and a single click of the shutter, Joradn captured the feeling that I spend my entire life chasing . But the best part is that a friendship was born on the heels of this one pic; music is truly a gift that never stops giving. Thanks, brother. Keep crushin’.
