This marks the third time I've seen Yo La Tengo. The indie great. What a fucking waste of time though. But let's immerge ourselves into the whole picture, which has been the reason for the misery of any sane person that's attended tonight's Yo La Tengo performance in Madrid.

You'd pay a most unreasonable 29 Euros in advance only to queue up for about half your lifetime in front of the most hopeless venue that you've ever come across in front of a river where random skanks shake their cunts about the bushes, squeezing out a miserable drop of pee pee. And then after you've entered the circus tent, realizing that the show has already begun, you'll be amazed at the colossal palm trees that stand in front of half the crowd. That's because these palm trees are in the middle of the venue. Wow, thanks. Great.

Surely music is more about listening than seeing what a fat guy, an old woman and some guy are doing. But wait... La Riviera hasn't considered that more than about 15 people might attend their shows, the venue which offers space for about 3000 overweight Americans. This means that speakers are found nowhere beyond 15 ft. away from the stage.

When I arrived though, they were playing Little Eyes off 2003's Summer Sun, which is a song that's reasonably loud compared to the incomprehensible acoustic set that was about to follow. It sounded like I was attending a show from a mile away.... That's when I decided to leave the venue, which is offensive to sane people and should be burned down to the ground. Here are two pictures though. Sorry for the bad quality (which is much like the sound, atmosphere or audience in La Riviera).

That's the bar...

Ahhh. I only hope Ira was talking about the city rather than the venue when he proclaimed "It's good to be back!".

I missed the majority of their set in november when they opened for A Place To Bury Strangers at the Moho Live but what I already knew back then was that they must be one of the most energetic bands around today.
That's why my expectations were rather high for this gig. Not only because of the few songs I witnessed the first time but also due to the headlining spot and the better venue; better sound and a real stage with no divider between band and audience (who invented that crap anyway?).

First impression when I got there was the fact that it appeared to be sold out (or almost so) and the people came out for Japandroids and Japandroids only. This fact was probably a let down for openers Driver Drive Faster, which, besides the quite horrible band name, impressed me with their distorted guitar and analog synth sounds along well-put basslines and drummer who looked almost as dangerous as Thor from Shearwater but playing a softly and modest style. Vocals must've been a hit or miss but I thought it fit the music quite well. Not bad for a local band, presenting themselves more mature and "professional" than most hipster undergraduate local bands.

After their 30+ minutes performance the crowd began to fill the room more densely and I had to give up my good position for a place in the back (who else would've gotten me another Trof lager, an affordable house lager that tastes surprisingly good). When the duo Brian and David entered the stage shortly past ten, the audience cheered as if some kind of a reincarnation of Joy Division appeared in front of them (notice the design on the singer's t-shirt). Singer/guitar player greeted us with "I can already see now that this is gonna be a lot better than fucking Leeds yesterday"). He was in a good mood. A better mood he's been in for a long time, he repeatedly confirmed and even excused himself for. And it began just as I remembered them; guitars from 3 vintage Fender amps (well two vintage, one not so vintage hot rod deville as a monitor), fed by a Fender Telecaster through, I think, a distortion and some kind of chorus effects. Their sound is not very hard to describe; sounds like 90s emo, rather uncontrolled drums (fills only, hardly ever steady beats) and repeated lines of nostalgia touched lyrics. Very posi, naive and young. The kind of thing that not necessarily captures your attention on record for more than 5 spins, but works very well on a stage and a few beers. The audience was out of control and I couldn't help asking myself where they had been a few months earlier in a rather empty venue with the same album and t-shirts on the merch table.
Anyway, amazingly the energetic performance was kept up till the end of the set. Highlights undoubtedly were a rare rendition of Crazy/Forever, the recently published Big Black Racer X cover, and, finally and unsurprisingly greatly appreciated, a cover of Mclusky's To Hell With Good Intentions as a last quasi-encore.
Everyone left with a smile on their faces, got a last beer, some bought the (Ltd.!!! white vinyl!! ;>) record and I went home with the feeling that Japandroids managed to exceed my expectations. Good times, if you want those, go see Japandroids!

Didn't take pictures myself.. but I'm sure flickr has got some great ones (click the picture to see the whole set):

Yes this is the only actual picture taken from the concert I'm including here. I bought a cheap camera a few months  ago precisely for concert pictures, well, it turns out the cam does everything okayish except for that kind of thing.
This was the first concert I went to all by myself ever . The doc-crew is a bunch of busy bees, apparently. But we're talking about Hot Water Music and since I 've only seen them once (at the Bizarre festival when I didn't know them all that well), I had a ticket before I even asked anybody.
I took the train from Aachen via S-Bahn straight to the 'Essigfabrik ' in Cologne. It's a very quiet part of Cologne and quite ugly (although I'm not sure, it was dark already), but who cares?
Strike Anywhere had already started when I arrived. There were a lot of people standing outside, most of them just taking a smoke, so I got in pretty fast. Once you got in you had to stay in , fortunately the entry point wasn't at the hall itself, the tickets were checked in front of a blocked outside area with wooden tables, chairs etc. in front of the building.
The main concert hall is big, like atelier-big. The stage is on the righthand side when you enter the hall, which by the way, was already very crowded at this point. It didn't suprise me too much though, Strike Anywhere being no underdogs. I decided to fight through the crowd even though I wasn't interested in seeing them.

Strike Anywhere