2009-A Year In Review

Ah, 2009. It's unbelievable how fast you went. Thankfully, you left a trail of great music and even some decent television shows! My favourite album of the year is almost a toss up. Decibully's World Travels Fast is near perfect, but at the same time The Lawrence Arms's Buttsweat and Tears is pretty amazing. It's too tough to call, so I'm going to call it even. I waited such a long time for both and listened to them way over 10 times in a week.

In 2009, I discovered a band that has been around for a while. Tegan and Sara. One night, they played the Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien and rocked their new single "Hell". It was very Alkaline Trio-ish and I had to dig deeper to see what else they can do. My guitar player is a huge fan, and ripped me his favourite songs. All of them catchy and brilliant.

This year I didn't go to too many shows due to my wife and I purchasing a house in March. We did go to two great shows. Maritime+ The Smoking Popes at Turner Hall in April, and most recently, Decibully in December. Both shows were very memorable. After the Popes show, Jill because a big fan of them, and for the first time in many many years, Bryan and I got to go to a concert together.

And now, some of my favourite songs of 2009

The Slowing Drink At the Saddest Bar On the Snowiest Day in the Greatest City

-The Lawrence Arms

Somewhere in the World

-Decibully

Hell

-Tegan and Sara

Best God in Show

-NoFX

Airport Security

The Bouncing Souls

Hurricane Season

The Emergency Room

As far as television is concerned, Modern Family wins for best sitcom. We watch it every Wednesday, and it's pretty hilarious. Even the idiot from Married With Children is funny in the program.

2010 should be a pretty good year. Alkaline Trio has a new album coming out. I've already heard a few songs from it on youtube from live performances and they sound pretty good. Ted Leo has a new album coming out. Obviously that'll be awesome. So here's to another year, and cheers to 2010.

Maritime+The Smoking Popes @ Turner Hall

First of all, forgive my late-writing on this epic show. I have moved recently and have not had the opportunity to write a review of the show. With that out of the way, Here's how the night went down. Upon arriving at the show, my wife and I ran into Maritime singer Davey Von Bohlen before the show. Every time we see Maritime, we always run into Davey, so it's always nice to catch up with him. He was graduating from college the day after show. So after a brief chat, I grabbed my tall can of Pabst and chilled during the opening band's set. THEN I ran into one of my favourite drummers of all time. Niel Hennessey, the drummer for The Smoking Popes/The Falcon/ The Lawrence Arms. We had a good chat about what's next for some of the bands he drums in. He told me TLA will release some new material at the end of the year...I was pretty stoked to hear about that. Anyway, The opening band were from Chicago and had some fun playing. Maritime was next. They had a nice-sized crowd for their set which is great because the last time we saw them in Waukesha, probably 15 people were standing there. Including us. Anyway, the set was heavily influenced by some new material they were testing on the crowd. All very upbeat songs. They opened with Guns of Navarone which is exactly what I thought they would play. Ha! Other songs they played were Tearing Up the Oxygen, Parade of Punk Rock T-Shirts, Protein and Poison, German Engineering, Calm, For Science Fiction, With Holes for Thumb Sized Birds and probably a few more. During For Science Fiction, Davey started out singing on the wrong key and the song went slightly down-hill from there, but they recovered and finished out the song. Overall, they played a relaxed set with some fun bantering and it was a great time. Next: The Smoking Popes.

I haven't always been into these Chicago musicians, but upon hearing Destination Failure, they quickly have become an influential band. They played a very strong set hitting some of the new material off Stay Down and older material. Some of the songs included Off My Mind, Rubella, Need You Around, Writing A Letter, It's never to late (For Love), I Know You Love Me, Midnight Moon, Welcome To Janesville, Grab Your Heart And Run, Meghan and others. Josh, the lead singer came back on stage to do some solo songs including, First Time which the crowd sang the back up vocals on. He also did fan-favourite "Pretty Pathetic". The ended the night with Brand New Hairstyle, which was the perfect ending to an amazing night. My wife and I left very happy that night. We knew we were moving early in the morning, but the show was well worth the late night packing.
So if by some luck the Smoking Popes roll through your city, try to catch them live.