Dan's hair was a little shorterHappy Belated 4th of July! The holiday still means a lot to me, but I'll be honest, the day loses a lot of its charm and excitement when no one else around is involved with the celebrating. Like drinking alone. Besides spending the entire day relaxing on the couch with Katie and Season 4 of Dexter, a highlight was chatting with one of my best friends who is currently serving in Afghanistan. Through the Facebook. God bless technology, right? He wasn't in the field yet so had an opportunity to spend some time in an internet cafe on base, across from a TGIFridays. Sounds like a hard life. We didn't talk for very long, just some quick blurbs about this and that. But it was a little surreal to feel connection with him at the 'front', actually in the war. He wasn't doing anything special for yesterday, just getting on the road in/to Kandahar, I believe. He seemed nonchalant, just business-as-usual. It was both calming and frightening. I can't imagine going in to work in the desert in a humvee, in violent hostility. But I'm not him. It's not my job and it's not my war. I pray for him and the others. We wished each other a happy 4th, and happy Canada Day, and that was it.
A week ago - better late than never - Katie and I went to the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for a second week of Summer concert festival. Previously it was 'Dirty Dutch vs. The World' dance-stravaganza (blogged it a couple posts ago) and this time it was 'Rockin' Park', a Sunday full of concerts. A couple big names: Ben Harper, Stereophonics, Rise Against, a little band out of Seattle named Pearl Jam. But we went for The Black Keys.
'I didn't realize how nerdy they are!' was Katie's first response to seeing Dan and Patrick walk out on stage. They were pretty signature: Mr. Auerbach in a western-check oxford shirt and Mr. Carney in a tiny vintage 'Ohio State Nat'l Champs' tshirt. And glasses. Yes, they looked a little nerdy. But nerds harbor some of the most angst in society. And nerdy angst is like lighter fluid for guitars and drums. These guys have been on fire for several years delivering soul-deadening blues-rock to the underground masses, though the world finally began to like them about a year ago. It's always bittersweet when a beautiful lesser-known group blows up but, greedily, I love that I could see them play in Holland.
The show was perfect. Their set lasted for an hour in the early afternoon of an unusually hot Dutch day. Everyone was already pretty dirty and sweaty, which is probably why folks didn't bunch up close to the stage like at the previous week's dance fest. It was nice to have space to rock out, mere feet from Mr. Auerbach himself doing the same. But the heat and grit went perfectly with their industrialized blues. Theirs is not a clean music, musically. And not necessarily fast. Katie remarked 'It's the kind of music you want to dance to somehow, but you just can't.' You can only bounce, juke and nod your head.
Theirs is the great-great-great grandchild of the Devil's music. Inspired by Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Junior Kimbrough and the like: the soul of gospel with the driving repetition of slave songs and the profound hurt of love gone bad; The Black Keys electrify the sounds of their founding blues fathers in a simple yet full way that just makes your soul heavy. Which happens to be the name of one of their songs.
They played a great mixed set, opening with half a dozen tracks from various albums. Later they were joined by a keyboardist and bass player to run down some tracks from their latest, Brothers, then closed out with another half-dozen with just the pair again. No encore, no stupid dialogue with the crowd, just filling up the whole hour with as much rock as possible. Later, from the beer table we saluted them, souls on the floor.
A week ago - better late than never - Katie and I went to the city of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for a second week of Summer concert festival. Previously it was 'Dirty Dutch vs. The World' dance-stravaganza (blogged it a couple posts ago) and this time it was 'Rockin' Park', a Sunday full of concerts. A couple big names: Ben Harper, Stereophonics, Rise Against, a little band out of Seattle named Pearl Jam. But we went for The Black Keys.
'I didn't realize how nerdy they are!' was Katie's first response to seeing Dan and Patrick walk out on stage. They were pretty signature: Mr. Auerbach in a western-check oxford shirt and Mr. Carney in a tiny vintage 'Ohio State Nat'l Champs' tshirt. And glasses. Yes, they looked a little nerdy. But nerds harbor some of the most angst in society. And nerdy angst is like lighter fluid for guitars and drums. These guys have been on fire for several years delivering soul-deadening blues-rock to the underground masses, though the world finally began to like them about a year ago. It's always bittersweet when a beautiful lesser-known group blows up but, greedily, I love that I could see them play in Holland.
The show was perfect. Their set lasted for an hour in the early afternoon of an unusually hot Dutch day. Everyone was already pretty dirty and sweaty, which is probably why folks didn't bunch up close to the stage like at the previous week's dance fest. It was nice to have space to rock out, mere feet from Mr. Auerbach himself doing the same. But the heat and grit went perfectly with their industrialized blues. Theirs is not a clean music, musically. And not necessarily fast. Katie remarked 'It's the kind of music you want to dance to somehow, but you just can't.' You can only bounce, juke and nod your head.
Theirs is the great-great-great grandchild of the Devil's music. Inspired by Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Junior Kimbrough and the like: the soul of gospel with the driving repetition of slave songs and the profound hurt of love gone bad; The Black Keys electrify the sounds of their founding blues fathers in a simple yet full way that just makes your soul heavy. Which happens to be the name of one of their songs.
They played a great mixed set, opening with half a dozen tracks from various albums. Later they were joined by a keyboardist and bass player to run down some tracks from their latest, Brothers, then closed out with another half-dozen with just the pair again. No encore, no stupid dialogue with the crowd, just filling up the whole hour with as much rock as possible. Later, from the beer table we saluted them, souls on the floor.
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