Clutch!

So Clutch was awesome as all get out. I had a blast, and they played a good set. I’m going to go ahead and try to remember it, for anyone that cares. This will likely be out of order and incomplete, but this is what I can recall:

Mercury
Profits of Doom
The Mob Goes Wild
Child of the City (I might be making some of these up)
Texan Book of the Dead
The Swollen Goat (did I just dream that?)
Burning Beard
Dragonfly
8 x Over Miss October
The Devil and Me (this one too…memory fuzzy)
Wishbone
Mice and Gods
Big Fat Pig
Instrumental*
Slow Hole To China
Electric Worry
One-eyed Dollar

Encore:
Instrumental
Cypress Grove

*new song w/ Neil on Guitar

So yeah, that’s probably not accurate.

I love Clutch. My friends love Clutch. But my wife absolutely ADORES Clutch. They’re her favorite band, hands down. As such, it’s awesome to see her rocking out. She had a blast. The show went really late (12:30 is really late for me these days) but there was no way that she was leaving one nanosecond early.

I managed to see and hang out with everybody that I knew was going to the show: Ryan, Corey, Chad, Travis, and Nate were all easy to find. Also, for the first time in the history of anything ever, I was actually able to see the entire stage for the entire show at First Ave. Usually when I go to a show there, it’s like “Behemoths drink free night” or something, because everyone there is a freakish 7-foot yeti firmly planted directly in front of me. I propose a new rule for flat concert venues: If you’re 7 feet tall and you’re not somehow completely clear, get the f*** to the back of the room. OK thanks.

Anyway, it was a great show. The band was as tight as I’ve ever seen them, and the openers that I caught were good. Let’s talk about the openers for a bit. We missed the first one, but Corey said that they weren’t anything special. The second band to hit the stage was called Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, and I dug them. Their singer looked like a skinny Jesus, their bassist looked like a lumberjack dungeon master, and their guitarists looked like they came from opposite ends of the solar system. One was playing a hot-pink Jackson and the other a wood-colored Telecaster. To equate guitar style with genre, that’s like Hair Metal vs. Country. They played heavy rock and had a good sound to go with their weird look.

The next band was called Murder By Death. I probably would have liked them a lot more if they were opening for someone that wasn’t Clutch. Maybe Reverend Horton heat or something. (They have actually opened up for them in the past.) People were digging the music, though, and they were moshing, which is a) just stupid all the time and b) even stupider when the music sounds like Johnny Cash. The music actually sounded more like Johnny Cash being sung by Kermit the frog. My male friends were all gaga over the band’s nymphette cellist, but my wife (a violinist) spent most of her time trashing the girl. It was funny.

They were just a weird band to have in the lineup. It reminded me of a couple other weird lineups of days gone by:

1. Everclear
with Soul Coughing (hmm, ok…)
and Redman (ok WTF?)

2. Blink 182 (hey, stop making fun of me)
with Fenix TX (yep, that’s perfect)
and Silverchair (ok WTF?)
…at this show the guy from Silverchair actually got pelted in the head with a milkshake. I felt bad for him. He stormed off the stage in a huff. He was like 17 at the time, I suppose. I don’t know who is responsible for lineups like that, but yeah…nice going.