The Darkness pictures with tag: live shows

Nine Inch Nails Bring Darkness and Light to Seattle for Tour Opener

After a headling slot at Pemberton on Friday night, Nine Inch Nails kicked off their North American tour with a 21st-century marriage of old-school showmanship and bleeding-edge technology on Saturday. With a crack four-piece band in tow — including NIN stage vets Robin Finck on guitar and Josh Freese on drums — an adrenalized, finely-coifed Trent Reznor tore through a two-hour set that leaned heavily on new material and included several choice classics. • Photos: Nine Inch Nails’ “Lights In the Sky” Tour Launches in Seattle As noted in the tour preview, at least half the show featured the band sandwiched between mesh LED curtains alternating evocative visuals, from falling rain to grainy static to an apocalyptic cityscape. The more obscured the band was by special effects, the more a detached, post-YouTube voyeurism haunted the performance. About an hour in, a solid backdrop descended at the front of the stage and the band — now a four-piece, minus keyboardist Alessandro Cortini — stepped in front of it. Standing at the lip of the stage, with Reznor on vibraphone and Justin Meldal-Johnsen on upright bass, they played a 20-minute, mostly acoustic interlude of songs from NIN’s recent Ghosts I-IV. It was a bold move, settling into a subdued, broken-down cabaret swing that was all atmosphere. Reznor swung the microphone like a weapon and ran the stage like an athlete. Twice during the set he pointed out the fact that this was the “first official night of the tour” — a tour, he said, that’s been ongoing for the last 15 years. He didn’t want it to stop, either: After closing with “Head Like a Hole,” the band returned for a half-hour encore. “Hurt” had the entire crowd singing and a few weeping; “In This Twilight,” from last year’s Year Zero ended the set in a downtrodden — but quintessential NIN — manner. Set List “999,999″ “1,000,000″ “Letting You” “Discipline” “March of the Pigs” “Head Down” “The Frail” “Closer” “Gave Up” “The Warning” “The Great Destroyer” “Ghosts

Published: 2008-07-28 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows, More News

My Chemical Romance Shine Some Darkness in Tempe for Tour Opener

For a complete gallery of photos from this show, click here. Normally a preppy college town baked in desert heat, Tempe, Arizona was bathed in darkness Friday night thanks to the black-clad denizens who descended upon Tempe Beach Park for My Chemical Romance’s tour kickoff. The band eschewed their black-and-white Black Parade uniforms for casual street clothing and tore through a ninety-minute set that focused primarily on 2006’s The Black Parade. However, the New Jersey-based band, playing as part of the two-day Circle K Tempe Music Festival, went back to their 2004 breathrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge for its opening and closing numbers: impassioned versions of breakout hits “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena,” respectively. Frontman Gerard Way gains a little more confidence with each passing tour, and for this show he channeled the spirit of Mick Jagger: shimmying across the stage, stopping to wiggle his hips on a catwalk that projected into the mosh pit. During “This Is How I Disappear,” his bassist brother Mikey Way (wearing a fantastic T-shirt that announced, “Mikey Fuckin Way”) violently shook his head as Gerard encouraged the audience to raise their right hands. “Thanks for coming out to the fucking rock show,” Gerard said while introducing “Dead!” “Are you all ready to die?” Luckily, nobody bit the dust before the band closed the show in mid-tour form. The group that began in garages in New Jersey has graduated to one of the top arena acts in the country, and its members wear it awfully well. The kids, as they say, are all right. [Photo: Mark Peterman for RollingStone.com]

Published: 2008-03-31 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows

Bruce Springsteen Thrills Fans, Performs Two Full LPs at Rare Theater Show

It’s unclear exactly what motivated Bruce Springsteen to perform his Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born to Run albums in sequence last night at New Jersey’s Count Basie Theater. Maybe it was the fact that fans bid a minimum of $1,000 for tickets (the proceeds of which went towards refurbishing the theater) and he wanted to give them something special. Maybe it was because the last time he played a theater with the E Street Band in 1980 these songs were all relatively new. Maybe the recent death of founding E Street Band organist Danny Federici has made him reflect on the group’s early days. Maybe after a strenuous eight-month arena tour he was ready for something different. Regardless, the nearly three-hour marathon concert — entirely composed of songs from the 1970s — was the most powerful Springsteen show I’ve ever seen. With the exception of the Darkness track “Factory,” all the songs on those two seminal albums are in regular rotation on his set list — but you’d have to attend about 15 concerts to hear all of them. The two albums have been at the core of nearly every E Street Band concert ever since they were released, particularly since the group reformed nine years ago. Hearing them in sequence for the first time ever on a stage made them even more moving. The despair of “Racing in the Streets” was perfectly followed by the hope of “The Promised Land.” Born to Run was even more carefully sequenced at the time to give the feel of twenty-four hours in a swampy Jersey day. The title track always feels victorious when played at the end of a long arena show, with the house lights on and fans holding their beers high. When played in a small, dark theater right after “Backstreets,” the desperation and restlessness seeped through every word. Patti Scialfa — who helped organize the fundraiser — gave a speech before the show about the importance of saving h

Published: 2008-05-08 Provider: Rolling Stone Keywords: Rock News, Live Shows