IT’S NEVER easy to pick the live show of the year. Except this year.
I doubt that anyone who saw Stooges guitarist James Williamson come out of retirement at the Blank Club on Sept. 5 to rip through not only the legendary Raw Power album, for which he wrote all the music back in 1973, but the entire Stooges catalog, would disagree.
Williamson, who walked away from the music business to work for Sony and hadn’t been onstage in 20 years, drafted the boys in local roots band the Careless Hearts to fill in the other parts. It was their dream gig, and they knocked it out of the park. Derek See was a stunning musical double for the late Ron Asheton on guitar. At one point, See called for a moment of silence in Asheton’s honor, and it took that momentary hush to provide some perspective for the monster wall of noise that the band was rolling like a tsunami off the Blank Club stage.
The interplay between See and Williamson was the kind of voodoo the real Stooges used to blow people’s minds with. And vocalist Paul Kimball? Wow. I don’t think anyone outside of this group that called themselves the Careless Stooges for the occasion really believed this sincere country crooner could pull off Iggy Pop’s vocals. But he made true believers out of everybody. He had everything down, from the scratchy yell to the vocal sustain to the puffed-out chest, even if he did refuse to take his shirt off. As for Williamson, well, Kimball said it best, right before the band ripped into “I Wanna Be Your Dog”: “I don’t know about you guys, but I think this Stooge is fully out of retirement.”
The phenomenal Stooges show wasn’t the Blank’s only coup this year—far from it. With the help of Channel 92.3, the club bagged some of the hottest alternative bands around. Passion Pit played there the week before its Treasure Island gig, with a great deal more intensity and power—of course, it could have been the setting of 200 people in a small club vs. thousands at an outdoor festival that made it seem like that. The Blank also packed the house for the Bravery, Cage the Elephant, Shonen Knife and Hockey.
Just a few blocks down, the VooDoo Lounge really made a move this year in terms of big name “gets” as well. The diversity was remarkable: from the legendary Texas outlaw David Allen Coe to Mos Def, from psychobilly’s Rev. Horton Heat to the satanic death metal of Deicide to indie it band Airborne Toxic Event.
The HP Pavilion drew massive acts this year, of course. Pink had put together a trapeze act for her show. Green Day gave a little girl from the crowd her punk-rock break, winning over the crowd so completely during her lead vocal that Billie Joe knelt down in front of her and did the “We are not worthy” move, before launching her back into the crowd for a victory stage dive.
Leonard Cohen performed for more than three hours to about a dozen standing ovations. Over at Shoreline, another all-star roster, led by No Doubt, Jimmy Buffet, Adam Sandler and Monsters of Folk, lined up for the Bridge School Benefit.
At Montalvo, blues fans got the chance of a lifetime to see Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin—the man who played every groundbreaking lick on the Rocking Chair album—perform the Wolf songs he has been playing for almost 50 years.
The San Jose Civic returned with an ongoing $13 million renovation, bringing in Steely Dan to art-rock it up with its Aja album and greatest hits, and recently presenting Willie Nelson’s nonstop-greatest-hits show.
Other notables this year included homegrown indie sensations the Thermals at the Blank, Brazilian percussion genius Cyro Baptista performing for Stanford Lively Arts and Kathy Griffin riffing on Steve Wozniak at Mountain Winery.
There were also a lot of reunions this year, most recently a whole lineup’s worth of reformed South Bay bands at the VooDoo that included Preachers That Lie (1986–95), the Curbs (1987–2001), Ill Blooded (1997–2004) and the Hairy Italians (1991–96).
