top 5 of beat shows i've ever seen
by JohnSGraveside on 9/25/17Port City Music Hall - PortlandRating: 5 out of 5i was 14 when i attended my first show (the beach boys!) i am now 50, and have been to literally hundreds of shows over the years. at one point i was going to 4-7 shows a week.
i've seen X before, but the show i attended last week has now moved into my top 5 shows of all time. it was amazing. the played cuts that previously were not playable live due to extraneous instrumentation, but they have a 5th person onstage for some songs. he played acoustic guitar while regular guitarist billy zoom played sax on "come back to me", and also played drums on a few songs to let founding drummer dj bonebrake play xylophone. these additions to the set made it extra special and worthy of their 40th anniversary.
they played all their "hits" as well, and i believe all from their first 4 albums, the ones produced by ray manzerak of the doors. john doe's voice is in fine shape, you would't think he was 64 years old. exene did her typical live thing of wailing without melody in her solo parts but harmonized fairly well with john doe. by the end of the set they were firing on all cylinders, tempos be damned! the audience was totally blown away, and i might add that X packed the place on a tuesday night in portland maine. to be quite frank i didn't know there were enough X fans in maine to even go to the show on a weekend, let alone a tuesday.
interestingly, billy zoom sat on a bar stool for almost the entire set. he walked on and off stage fine, stepped forward to play sax fine, but otherwise sat, still with that creepy teen idol smile on his face. i looked him up and he's going to be 70 years old in february, so i can only assume he can't stand for long periods of time. (i know i can't!) but he sat there right in front of his very loud amp and played phenominally. in fact, the whole show was loud, but billy was the loudest.
all in all a great night that i will bot forget.