Big Bad Concert Rankings: 120-111

The list is nearing the good stuff. I throughly enjoyed all of these shows and, despite adding a few more each month, the big concert year of 2019 is nearing its end. I only have a scant 8 or 9 more shows this year, so this list will eventually fill out to the 200 limit I set for myself to complete by the end of the decade.

UPDATE, April 2020: I had time to update the list cus of The Rona. If you’re reading this in April or May, some of the header photos shifted and I was too lazy to replace them. For instance, the Cowboy originally accompanied the Orville Peck post. That would make sense. Hollywood was supposed to be a reference to the below post about Cali and stuff. The palm trees are close. Also, you may notice that most of these intro blurbs don’t make any sense. And yet, here you are, still reading them.

120 - The Head and the Heart

Chuck is one of my favorite TV shows and THATH’s ‘Rivers and Roads’ plays over the last scene. It’s quite a tearjerker if you know how the series ends on a California beach. Anyway, Rivers and ‘Down in the Valley’ are the band’s two smash hits (as smash as a folk-indie group can get) and everyone in the room knew it. I just wish the band did as well. THATH’s newest album, Living Mirage, got the bulk of their energy and effort. In fact, the first half of the concert was their best. The group had better energy, vocals were more on point, and the crowd had enough time with the source material to really back them up. Encore-wise, I think everyone was expecting this deeply emotional, breakthrough moment and it just fell too short of their lofty expectations.

119 - Marilyn Manson

Sold out, huge show, longest meet-and-greet I’ve ever seen or will again, and great vocals. But there was oddly something missing. Like, the edge a metal show is supposed to have just wasn’t quite there. Now, that’s not Manson’s fault, per se. He was exactly on brand, and yet there could have been so much … more. It was a short show, maybe 14 songs, and one of them was a cover. From the caliber of the performer, mixed with the high ticket cost (was working but had plenty of friends in attendance), it felt worthy of an opening slot at an outdoor festival with some bigger act to follow.

118 - Bailen

I can’t believe I forgot they opened for Hozier. That said, it was a journey and a half to get everyone inside for Hozier, so I’m glad Bailen decided to make another GR stop so soon after that tour. The sibling trio has a ton of good songs that I encourage you to go to the YouTubes and check out.

117 - Caroline Rose [Kississippi]

Wild might be the best way to describe Caroline Rose, who played an entire song from the floor and didn’t miss a note. Her album, Loner, was one of my favorites in 2018 and she played all but one or two songs from it, which was a treat. The opener, Kississippi, was also a treat and another great act from Philly, which will have a couple more placements pop up on this list.

116 - Snow Patrol [We Are Scientists, Ryan McMullan]

I drove across the state with my mom on Derby Day and had a really nice time. I also, disregarding everything I said in the last paragraph, had beer, well, White Claws, leading up to the show after the drive.

Admittedly, Snow Patrol wasn’t high on my list of possible shows, but it was in the mix because Final Straw was a favorite of mine in high school.

As a CD hawk, it was fun to hear new Snow Patrol music that wasn’t the melodramatic Chasing Cars. Now, I have no major problems with the song itself.

But I did bring my mom, remember? Yeah, that was her jam for awhile. The first opener, Ryan McMullan, was quite the surprise. And We Are Scientists, a personal favorite from college, had a rough set with banter that didn’t hit, but pulled it back home with an amazing three-song medley of One In, One Out, After Hours, and No Wait at Five Leaves.

We ended up buying all of the CDs available (1 SP, 2 WAS, 1 RM).

115 - 311

Work and life often intersect at 20 Monroe, where the roster of shows is so diverse that it’s hard not to know someone interested in going to something. My stepdad’s favorite band is 311 and his ticket was a pre-birthday gift.

A later birthday gift was the silver-signed tour poster from this show, framed. The reason it’s lower than a few of 311’s alternative rock contemporaries is probably age.

Once the prototypical 90s skater band, the overall tone of the show is more … Amber than Transistor.

Not knocking the band, because Nick Hexum, like Rick Springfield, shouldn’t look that good at his age, but the same crowd that scraped shins on skateboards is now really feeling the effects of those compound injuries and has more aches and pains getting out of bed than they ever had bouncing off the half pipe.

114 - Gin Blossoms

I don’t know what changed in the years between Summerfest 2016 and Grand Rapids in 2018, but I was grateful. The setlist two years later reverberated with relevancy, liveliness, and standby hits sprinkled throughout, instead of just during the encore. Hey Jealousy was my favorite song for a long while and this show brought it to life like their show in Milwaukee never did. It was one of those anniversary tours, so they played New Miserable Experience in its entirety, albeit with a jumbled track listing.

113 - Tech N9ne

Up until 2017 my life was Juggalo free. That was until the Sunday night I was exposed to the Faygo-filled face painters that are the rabid followers of the Insane Clown Posse, and their musical ambassador for the night — Tech N9ne. He’s a rapper, showman, crazy, masked madman who put on one of the most memorable shows I only got to see from the pit. Why the pit? It’s not a real big part of my job. People don’t want the 6-foot-8 guy standing in front of them at a concert. No, I had to be in the pit because of two things: crowd surfers and potential accidents from the performance of Areola. Where over 100 women sat on their partners' (or strangers) shoulders and let ‘em all hang out for four minutes. The music wasn’t bad either.

112 - Gogol Bordello

Two shows, one night. No, it wasn’t a doubleheader of Gogol Bordello, but it was my second time seeing the gypsy punk band. I was lucky enough to make this concert at 10:30 p.m. after seeing a show at 20 Monroe (Two Door Cinema Club) which thankfully started at 9 p.m. Seekers and Finders just came out and it was really good. In fact, I enjoyed their newer songs more than the reliable hits like Start Wearing Purple and Pala Tute. My first time seeing them was one of of my favorites. This show lacked the insane group energy of the first. Maybe having 7,000 fewer fans will do that.

111 - Brothers Osborne

Of the songs where you blame alcohol for your troubles, It Ain’t My Fault was the best I’ve ever heard. It’s a classic toe tapper, knee slapper, show-stopping, high-fiving, hand clapper of a good tune. Arguably the band’s biggest hit, the song capped off a pretty long first set despite only having two albums to work with. It wasn’t my favorite country show, but it’s up there.