The Cooke Family Website

A Musical Summer

… is about to kick off!

Post-Rock

This next week we’re going to go see one of my favorite post-rock bands at a Mount Pleasant location that has lots of indie bands playing.

The band whose album art is pictured above, The Appleseed Cast, is the headliner for a bunch of other experimental bands that aren’t really well known.  Local acts, as well.  I have no idea how good they will be.

They’re kind of an experimental band that doesn’t have a lot of lyrics or singing to their songs.  “Post-rock” is basically using rock instruments, such as guitars and the like, for arrangements of music not usually found in rock-n-roll. As such, the sound that these bands produce is often varied and not easy to categorize.

Jolene is not looking forward to this.  In all instances I’ve played post-rock for her, she’s expressed a distaste for it.  She’s going with me, though, so we’ll see how she feels afterwards.

Metal

We’re going to go see the “Music as a Weapon” tour in Detroit on May 2.  Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil, and Chimaira will all be playing there.  Jolene agreed to go, primarily, I think because of her coworkers, who are also going with us in a group.

While I don’t listen to “Metal” as I did when I was younger, I still enjoy it quite a bit.  Of the above, I’m probably most excited about listening to Lacuna Coil.  They fall more into the “Rock” category and are basically known for their melodic singing by their female singer.  This is in contrast to a lot of their contemporaries who scream a lot.  If you know the band Evanescence, this band is pretty similar, but is a bit older and more developed. Their new album has just come out and it’s pretty good sounding.

Disturbed is the headliner, I believe.  I’m looking forward to seeing them as well, though their brand of music is pretty generic insofar as “Metal” goes.  Very FM radio friendly.

I haven’t heard much of Killswitch Engage nor Chimaira.  I will rectify this before attending, of course.

Jolene is not looking forward to this.  She’ll have fun since her coworkers are going as well, though.  I’m sure of it. This is probably going to be terribly loud.  Nothing can beat Ted Nugent when I saw him in loudness though.  He opened for Metallica when I saw them on New Years Eve, 1999.  Things were already loud as a regular heavy metal concert, and then Teddy started playing.  His guitar was turned up to 11, and it was all that you could hear.  The speakers were going so loud they were clipping and giving horrifying feedback at times as well.  Ted Nugent was the worst ‘band’ I’ve ever seen.  At least this won’t be Ted Nugent, I tell her!

Indie/Folk Rock

We’ll be going to Columbus, OH and spending the night there to see The Decemberists live in concert.  It will be the third Decemberists concert we have attended.  This is what I’m looking forward to most, I think.  This is by far my favorite band recently – the songwriting is fantastic, the instrumentation is strange and wonderful.

They’ll be playing their new album in it’s entirety at the concert – The Hazards of Love.  Most of The Decemberist’s songs tell a story. For their latest album, the entire album tells a story in sort of a “rock opera”.  Album of the year, for sure – at least by my measurement.

Opening for The Decemberists will be a band called “Blind Pilot”.  I have no real knowledge or information on this band, other than that they’re from Portland, Oregon and the picture above is what they look like.  A lot of my new favorite bands are from that city for some reason (The Decemberists, The Builders and the Butchers, The Thermals… hey, I’m noticing a pattern here… is it a prerequisite for Portland bands to have a “The” in the title?  Should this band be called “THE Blind Pilot”?).

Anyway, I hope they’ll be entertaining.  We have quite a summer lined up – there are tons of more bands that I want to see live.  Maybe I’ll get the chance soon.