In This Moment and Halestorm at the Deltaplex in Grand Rapids

Stitched Up Heart, New Year's Day, In This Moment, and Halestorm...four female-fronted rock/metal bands on the same night at a venue close to home. Not an opportunity I was going to pass up.

The Deltaplex here in the Grand Rapids area is basically a gymnasium with some warehouse-like open space next to it. It generally hosts basketball games for the Grand Rapids Drive and merchandise shows, so it's not exactly built as a concert venue. I was pleasantly surprised that the acoustics weren't terrible, though it still wasn't nearly as good as a place like 20 Monroe Live that's built for concerts.

Probably just as well that they booked the Deltaplex, though, because they had a good-sized crowd. It wasn't completely sold out, but still, it would have been a tight fit in a smaller venue. And there were a lot of women in attendance. Most rock/metal shows are slanted toward men by 2:1 or more, but in this case it was even, or possibly tilted a bit the other way. It was great to see that many women out in support of this all-female-fronted lineup.

I was a little late getting out to the show, plus there was some confusion over the process for getting my ticket redeemed (had to go to the box office since I bought it through Groupon), so I ended up missing all but about half of the last song from Stitched Up Heart. But I heard the complete sets for the other three acts. Logistically, the only real complaint I had was the same I have at almost every show with multiple openers...it takes forever to switch sets. Ended up with more than an hour and a half wait time by the end of the night.

Both New Year's Day and Halestorm were great, though neither are on my usual playlists so I only knew a few songs during their sets. Since New Year's Day was on early, they had a bit less crowd energy to work with, but I thought they did a fine job with stage presence and I enjoyed their set. And Halestorm really knows their way around a stage, which makes sense after 20 years. Particularly the Hale siblings (front-woman Lzzy and drummer Arejay), both of whom took some solo time as well as playing with the band.

For me, though, In This Moment was the highlight of the show. Which was initially because I knew their work best going in, but the stage show certainly cemented that feeling for me. Several big video screens were right behind the band, and lead singer Maria Brink was dancing as much as singing, usually with one or two other dancers alongside (including New Year's Day lead singer Ash Costello on one song). This was a kind of interpretive dance that went along with the music, not the over-sexualized twerking that passes for dancing in much of today's popular music. They didn't stint on props either - several costume changes, some kind of glowing ball thing, a sort of pulpit on one song, and they even launched a bunch of balloons in the audience near the end of the set. Good set list, too - I liked Big Bad Wolf in particular, but they hit most of their most popular songs.

I'd love to see more tours like this one, focused on bands with female members. Judging from the turnout for this one, there's certainly a market for it. Count me in for the next one!

Nightwish Decades Tour at the Kalamazoo State Theatre

Two years ago, I had to travel a couple of hours east to Royal Oak to see Nightwish in concert. This year they made a stop in Kalamazoo, just about an hour south.

The Kalamazoo State Theatre is an interesting venue, but I wasn't terribly impressed with it as a concert hall. It has an old-time theatre feel inside, and it appeared that all the seats have a good view. There's a small open area in front of the stage, but most of the place is filled with standard seating. I was up in the second level, where I could see the stage just fine, but felt very cramped. The acoustics weren't great at all, in my opinion, particularly on the first couple of songs. Perhaps I got used to it as the concert went on, or maybe they made some adjustments, since things sounded much better later on. I think I'd enjoy seeing plays at this theatre, but it's definitely not my top choice for concerts.

Fortunately, the band is great and overcame the drawbacks of the venue. Nightwish has great stage presence and got the crowd into the show quickly, which is especially impressive when there's no opening act to warm things up. The stage backdrop was a screen playing various song-specific images, which I thought really added to the experience. They played for almost exactly two hours and I enjoyed every minute of it.

The set list was pulled from all across the Nightwish catalog, all 20+ years of it (thus the "Decades" tour name). I recognized all but one song pretty much right away, but then I've been listening to the band for more than 10 years myself. (That one was Slaying the Dreamer...looked it up later and found it was on Century Child, the one album I haven't listened to very often.) I particularly enjoyed the tracks from Once, including Ghost Love Score and Wish I Had An Angel.

Everyone who attended got a Decades CD to take home, which feels a bit 1990s. Probably that was the point. I may never open mine, since I do all my listening to music digitally these days. Nice to have a souvenir, though.

Amazon Music Unlimited

I've been trying out Amazon Music Unlimited for my music streaming needs. After a couple of months, I've decided that it's decent but has a way to go to catch up with Spotify.

Like just about every streaming service, Amazon Music has multiple tiers of service. There's Prime Music, which is included with an Amazon Prime subscription. Then there's Amazon Music Unlimited, another $7.99 per month on top of that, or $9.99 if you're not a Prime member. (And there are always promotions, like three months for $0.99 that was offered when I decided to try out Unlimited.) That's cheaper than just about anything else comparable in the market if you've already got Prime, which is exactly what you'd expect since that's how Amazon seems to be marketing just about everything these days.

The Prime Music version is extremely limited in terms of what music is available, not really worth considering in comparison to other offerings out there. Unlimited is better, but I still found myself coming up empty on searches quite often. Partially that's due to the fact that I tend to look for some pretty obscure stuff, weird metal and the like. But there were also some strange holes where parts of an artist's catalog is missing. The same happens on Spotify, too, but it seems to me that there are fewer gaps there.

Basic music streaming features are all present and accounted for. Playlists, saving your favorite artists and albums, apps on just about every platform, offline downloads in the mobile apps, and so on. I didn't have any trouble with any of the basics.

Where Amazon Music Unlimited differs most from Spotify is in the details, the little things that go beyond simply playing your favorite playlist. Examples:

• When you close the Amazon Music app (on PC or mobile) and then re-open it, it remembers what playlist/album you were on, but not which song. So it always restarts from the beginning. Spotify remembers the song position.
• There's no feature to suggest songs to add to playlists (or at least it's not obvious).
• Similarly, there's no "Playlist radio" feature with suggestions based on a playlist.
• Searching for a specific band or song name sometimes won't bring it up. Try "Bride" for instance...there's lots of stuff with Bride in the name, but the actual band "Bride" isn't listed in the results. You have to search for something like "Bride Troubled Times" (that's one of their signature songs) to find it.
• When using the phone app in the car with Android Auto, there are very limited options. If I want to find a playlist that I haven't listened to recently, I have to leave the auto app.
• Daily or weekly suggestion lists are a great feature that I can easily find in Spotify but not here.
• Song volume isn't normalized. Often songs in the same playlist will be significantly softer or louder than the others.
• You can share playlists with non-Unlimited members via web links, but they won't be able to listen to most of the songs without subscribing to Unlimited. By comparison, Spotify does let people listen even if they're not subscribers to Spotify Premium (but with ads).

Amazon is making a good effort to match up with Spotify in the streaming music arena, and it mostly does the job. But it's definitely not as mature yet, and in my opinion has quite a bit of work left to do. Even with the slightly higher price point (assuming you have Prime), I think Spotify is still the better choice for now.

Long Strange Trip - The Grateful Dead

I'm not a Deadhead, though I've known a few, and never attended a Grateful Dead show. Heard plenty of stories, though. Watching Long Strange Trip was a window into some of that folk rock and counter-culture history.

The documentary follows the Grateful Dead from their formation in the 1960s all the way through to the 1990s and the death of Jerry Garcia. There's a good amount of background in the early going: hippie culture in California, the musical roots of the band members, and of course a bit of the history of LSD. I learned quite a bit - I had no idea Jerry was a banjo player with several bluegrass bands in the early '60s, for instance. The history is nice for those of us who are too young to remember the '60s and didn't know much about the band members before their famous days.

The documentary doesn't pull punches on the subject of drugs. Acid parties are credited as building a sense of camaraderie, and limiting the clash of egos that is such a struggle for many musicians. There was experimentation with laughing gas in the studio, video crews who learned quickly not to drink anything the band gave them, and even a rivalry between coke-heads and acid-heads on tour. That sort of casual mind-adjustment has never been my taste, but it's interesting to see how the Dead used it to maintain the lifestyle and relationships that they wanted. All of this worked well early on, but eventually people started dying (such as Ron "Pigpen" McKernan from alcoholism, and Brent Mydland from overdose) as the lifestyle took its toll.

Unsurprisingly, none of the band members were particularly business-minded. Their first studio album went way over budget, and one of the interviews talked about how they rarely had any money left after tours since it was spent as quickly as it was made. They talk about the "wall of sound" speaker setup that cost a ridiculous amount to buy and maintain, the chaotic leadership (such as there was any), the lack of planning. It's pretty incredible to me, someone who likes plans and organization, that the whole thing held together...but somehow they made it work through those lean days. And of course, later on the commercial success came almost despite whatever the band did.

That lack of business acumen worked in their favor sometimes, too. Allowing fans to tape the live shows was seen as a terrible business move - who would buy albums if they could get a copy of a live recording? It worked to the band's advantage, though, by expanding the audience who wanted to go to live shows for more of what they'd heard on the tapes. A good number of self-identified Deadheads got their first exposure to the band from those live recordings.

To me, the whole story revolved largely around one theme: the band (especially Jerry) was interested primarily in everyone having fun. Whether that meant using drugs to get in the right mindset, or spending too much money to give fans the best concert experience possible, or having semi-controlled chaos instead of a single leader, or ignoring rules and regulations, or being the face of the Grateful Dead for legions of fans. It seems to me that in the end, Jerry had put others having fun ahead of his own well-being for too long.

Long Strange Trip was a very interesting watch. I'm sure there's plenty more depth to the story of the Grateful Dead, but this sure covered a lot. I'm glad to have had the chance to learn a little more about the band through this documentary.

Red Hot Chili Peppers at Van Andel Arena 2017

I'm not a big fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (RHCP), but I like their music well enough. I wasn't planning to see them in concert, but when a friend said she could get tickets if we split the cost, I figured why not?

The concert was in Van Andel Arena in downtown Grand Rapids. It holds about 12,000 people, and it looked full to me. Not a surprise - not a lot of big names come through western Michigan, so when it happens people come out. Our seats were in the last row in one of the upper sections, but that wasn't as bad as it sounds. The arena isn't really big enough for even the furthest seats to be too far away.

We caught the tail end of one of the opening acts, Deerhoof, which wasn't particularly impressive in my opinion. Not really a surprise since I'd never heard of them before. It's harder to get involved with unfamiliar opening acts in these bigger shows, as compared to smaller venues where you can get up close and (sometimes) get better sound quality.

No such problems with RHCP. They've been around more than 30 years now, but it doesn't look like they've lost a step. Plenty of energy on stage, and considering the iffy acoustics that you get in an arena, they sounded great. I recognized about half the songs they played, which means they played plenty of older stuff, since I haven't paid much attention to anything they've done recently. They worked in a couple of covers, too - I particularly liked their rendition of Jimmy Hendrix's Fire.

The stage setup was interesting. There was the usual screen behind the band, as has become standard in the last decade or two. Largely it showed various wild color patterns, but they did sometimes have live shots of the band members. Often put through some kind of filter, so you'd see black-and-white or jerky stop-motion versions of the musicians. But the most notable component was a big field of LED lights hung over the stage and the front portion of the crowd. Those lights moved up and down and flashed on and off in some neat patterns as the band played.

There were a couple of fairly emotional moments. Flea asked for a moment of silence for Hillel Slovak, a founding member who died nearly 30 years ago. Later on, Anthony Kiedis talked for a minute about his father, who is in the late stages of life. It wasn't a sad moment, but rather a celebration of a full life. That moment in particular really resonated with me - everyone eventually is in that situation where a loved one has passed on (or will shortly). Having that mindset of celebrating the time we had with them, rather than focusing on the loss, strikes me as a healthy attitude.

Overall it was an enjoyable show. Not my usual style, but I'm glad I was talked into going. RHCP is still worth seeing after all these years.

The Killthrax Tour in Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids' new 20 Monroe Live concert venue picked a good one for their first metal show: the Killthrax tour featuring Anthrax and Killswitch Engage. Both of those headliners played a full 90 minute set.

When I first saw the announcement for this come through my inbox, I was pretty surprised that Anthrax was still around. I listened to those guys 25 years ago in high school, but had pretty much lost track of them since college. Turns out they've been busy, even releasing a new album last year. All but one of the members were with the band back when I first encountered them (though some have left and come back a few times). They're not quite in Rolling Stones territory yet, but there's definitely some impressive longevity there.

20 Monroe Live has only been open for a few months, right downtown next to the BOB in Grand Rapids. This was my first visit, and I'd say they did a pretty good job with the place. Nice wide stage, elevated enough so that it's fairly easy to see from most anywhere on the floor. The acoustics seemed fine (though with thrash metal it's kinda hard to tell sometimes). A second level has reserved seats with a great view of the stage. My only complaint is that they put the restrooms on the second floor with only one main staircase for getting up and down, so it's terribly congested during breaks in the show.

I showed up a little late on purpose, since I knew the opening bands (Jasta and The Devil Wears Prada) would play for a while. I'm sure they're both fine, but after listening to their albums a bit on Spotify, I decided I didn't really care if I saw their entire sets. I caught the last few songs of The Devil Wears Prada, which seemed fine but aren't really my favorite style. (Side note - during the set change before Anthrax came on, I ran into a guy who actually recognized my Drain STH shirt. Since they haven't existed for nearly 20 years, it's a rare day when someone actually knows who they were! It goes without saying that both he and I were above the median crowd age.)

Anthrax was amazing, in my humble opinion. They looked like a group with 30 years of experience, comfortable on the stage and having fun. I'd been listening to them quite a bit for the last few weeks so I recognized a good number of the songs they played. Quite a few were older, including a couple from the Among the Living album and what may be the most recognizable Anthrax song, Antisocial. Those guys may be getting up there in age, but they haven't lost a step.

Killswitch Engage was a lot of fun as well. They've been around for nearly 20 years, which surprised me a bit when I looked it up. A way to go yet to catch the Anthrax guys, but that's a good long time, and they have plenty of material to show for it. At several different points they played three or four songs in a row in a kind of medley, which I thought was a cool way to give the set lineup some variety. Popular songs like My Last Serenade got played in full, though, which the crowd certainly seemed to appreciate.

Both headliners gave a fine performance, but personally I preferred Anthrax over Killswitch Engage. The old guy in me, I suppose. In any event, it was a great show that I'm glad came through my town.

Amaranthe Live in Ft Wayne

I recently drove down to Ft Wayne, Indiana to see Amaranthe in concert. It's about a 2.5 hour trip each way, but the concert was a lot of fun - well worth the drive.

The concert was held at the The Hub Entertainment Center. It's a smallish venue, and the crowd wasn't that large - maybe a few hundred people. Good thing, too, because there was only one person dealing with tickets and two doing security checks at the door, so it took forever to get everyone in. If they ever get a really big crowd there, they'll have some trouble! Inside there's a open floor area by the stage with tables for people to sit beyond. It's clearly meant more for stage shows than rock concerts, but it served the purpose.

There were four opening acts, which in my opinion was at least two too many. I got pretty restless waiting for Amaranthe, especially since all the set changes added up to more than an hour. Probably didn't help that the last two weren't my favorite music style.

Smash Into Pieces was pretty good, though since they were the first act the crowd wasn't too involved. Hard rock sound, and they certainly worked at getting the crowd warmed up. The most memorable part of their act was a sort of veil the drummer was wearing with LED lights on it that kept flashing and changing colors.

Cypher 16 started out poorly, but got a lot better toward the end of the set. Not sure if they had some technical issues or what in the first couple songs, but by the end they'd gone through some really good heavy sequences. The bass player was fun to watch, jumping around the stage like a crazy man.

Citizen Zero has too much of a generic modern rock sound for my taste, but they do a good live performance. Everyone seemed to love their cover of Stranglehold. I thought their drummer in particular did a really good job.

Failure Anthem is unfortunately well named. Another generic modern rock sound, and in this case the live performance didn't add much. Part of that was probably because they were touring with a substitute lead vocalist. I also thought the bass was cranked up way too much during their set, and as a former bass player it takes a lot for me to say that. Not impressed.

Around three hours into the show, Amaranthe finally took the stage, and the wait was worth it. The band is unique (in my experience) in that they have three different vocalists. That "three-headed monster" approach, plus guitar and bass, meant the stage was pretty crowded. It helped that they'd put up a sort of catwalk area behind the drums, where a band member or two would often retreat to open up some space. Sometimes vocalists who aren't actively singing don't add much to the show, but Amaranthe doesn't have that problem. Elize Ryd is easy on the eyes no matter what she's doing, but she didn't rely on that and was engaged pretty much constantly. Occasionally one or two of the guys would leave the stage, but mostly all three were out there: moving around, headbanging, working the crowd, etc.

Amaranthe has been described as melodic dance metal, and that's a good description of the live show. Driving drum/bass lines, heavy guitar riffs, and the growling third of the vocals for "metal"; the other two-thirds of the vocals and some slower songs for the "melodic"; and some very upbeat choruses for the "dance." I thought the most impressive single song they performed was On The Rocks, which combines all three nicely.

I was happy to hear a mix of songs from all four Amaranthe albums in the set list. Of particular note: Automatic, my favorite track; Drop Dead Cynical, which the crowd was calling for and was the last song played; The Nexus, their most popular track according to Spotify; and Amaranthine, a love ballad that was clearly a big hit with the crowd. I was mildly surprised that they didn't do Supersonic, which is from the latest album and seems like it was made for live performance, but I suppose they can't fit everything in. Also of note was a drum solo by Morten Løwe Sørensen that was very impressive, the best I've experienced live since I last saw Rush.

The Amaranthe set lasted almost exactly 90 minutes, including a short intermission of 5-10 minutes when they let the crowd chant for a bit, then bass player Johan Andreassen came out and worked the crowd for a few minutes before the band started up again. The main difference after the break was that Elize had changed clothes, so maybe that was the point. The show ended almost exactly at midnight and the road crew immediately started breaking the set down, so I guess they had a hard stop at that point. Too bad since I'd have loved another half hour or so.

I'll definitely see Amaranthe again if the opportunity arises. Maybe next time their tour schedule will bring them a little closer.

Nordic Symphonic Metal

This has been a good year for music discovery, mostly through my Spotify subscription.

My tastes have run mostly to melodic and symphonic metal this year. Back in February, I went to a Nightwish concert. That led me to track down the work of Delain, who had been one of the opening acts. With input like that, Spotify's discovery lists found several other similar artists. My favorites to this point are Amaranthe, We Are the Catalyst, and The Murder of My Sweet.

It's pretty easy to see why all of these bands ended up on the same playlists, when you consider the similarities. All have female vocalists, and most have lots of songs with alternating male/female vocal parts. Lots of classical influences in the music, implemented with metal's heavy guitar lines and driving beats.

All those bands also happen to all be from Nordic countries. Something in the water up there produces symphonic metal, I guess. At first I thought that would mean opportunities for live music would be pretty rare, but there are actually quite a few tour dates in the US. Judging from the show lists that I've glanced over on their websites, most seem to spend about a third of their tour time here. I've got my eye on a few dates next year, mainly in the Chicago area.

I'm pretty sure I've barely scratched the surface of the genre. So far I really haven't looked beyond whatever recommendations Spotify tosses at me. Even so, I've got an awful lot of music that's new to me to listen to.

Dream Theater Live - The Astonishing

Dream Theater came to Grand Rapids recently, on tour for their album The Astonishing.

I've listened to a good amount of Dream Theater's work over the years, though I wouldn't put them in the top tier of my favorite artists. I first came across their music in the 1990s when some fellow listeners of Rush recommended Dream Theater as another good progressive rock group. I haven't kept up with every album they've released over the years, and that includes this latest one, but I still occasionally break out some of their older stuff.

This particular concert was entirely about The Astonishing. It's a concept album, more than 2 hours long with 34 tracks, and they performed the entire thing. I found myself wishing that I'd spent some time listening to it before, since as with most rock concerts, the vocals were hard to follow when you don't know the songs. I certainly enjoyed the music, but it would have been nice to understand the words so I could follow the "concept" part of concept album.

The venue was DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids, which is built for stage plays. The approximately 2400 seats are fixed, with no open floor area, and broken up into several tiers. That means the view is pretty good in all areas, but also makes it not particularly well-suited to rock concerts where people want to move around. I thought the acoustics were fine, so the sound wasn't an issue, but there certainly wasn't much crowd energy. The place was only about three-quarters full, so that might have been true even if the venue was more open.

I sat way in the back up in the balcony section, about as far from the stage as you can get. But since it's such a small venue, that was actually a pretty good spot. No one was blocking my view, and I had no complaints about sound quality. I suspect I'd have actually seen less if I was any closer, just due to other people in front. Which is why I didn't move up - the place was empty enough that I could have, but it didn't seem like an improvement.

The band didn't play anything more than The Astonishing. That was a little disappointing, since everything of theirs that I actually know is older. Lots of other people felt the same way, based on what I overheard in the halls during a break and on the way out. Maybe with a bigger or more energetic crowd, there might have been some encores, but not in this particular case.

I'm glad I went to the concert - it would have been silly to miss an opportunity to see any band that I enjoy, this close to home - even if it wasn't quite what I'd hoped. I'm definitely going to make sure I'm more familiar with the latest album for similar situations in the future, though.

Happy Birthday, Neal Peart!

The great drummer for Rush is 64! (I'm a day late on this, as his birthday was actually yesterday, September 12th.)

Neil Peart is the greatest rock drummer of all time, in my opinion. Not just mine, either - look back at the Modern Drummer Reader's Poll archive. Peart is listed in one or more categories almost every year back to 1980. He's been in their Hall of Fame since 1983. But don't take my word for it - listen to some of his drum solos.

I'm too young to have caught Peart in his earliest days. I didn't discover Rush until the early 1990s, but it didn't take me long to obtain the back catalog. All three members have amazing skills, and I enjoy listening to just about everything they've done. Peart's drumming is especially impressive, particularly the solos that appear on every live album. I've seen Rush in concert twice, and the drum solos were certainly a highlight of each.

Incredible drum play isn't the limit of Peart's musical talents, though. He also writes the vast majority of the lyrics for Rush. He's written about everything: science fiction and fantasy worlds, youthful angst, love, justice, fate, etc, etc. Whether you agree with the words or not, you have to respect the craft that he's put into each song.

I'm glad I saw Rush on their tour last year, as I'm not sure how much longer they'll keep working before retiring. But as long as they keep playing, I'll keep listening to Peart and his bandmates.

Metallica's Through the Never

A few years ago, Metallica created a movie, Through the Never. I heard about it at the time, but didn't pay a whole lot of attention. The opportunity to watch it came up recently, so I took a couple of hours to check it out.

I had basically no pre-conceptions going in, since all I knew about Through the Never was that Metallica was involved. I wasn't sure if it was a documentary, or live concert, or what. Turns out, it's pretty much a 90-minute music video, with a large amount of concert footage included.

There's a storyline, kind of, where a roadie goes out to find a missing truck while the concert is going on. All sort of surreal stuff happens, from riots in the streets to the guy setting himself on fire. There's almost no dialog or explanation, which is one reason the movie feels like a music video. Seems to me that weirdness-on-screen while the music plays is a music video staple. The story bits weren't bad, but I didn't feel like they really added much to the experience.

The majority of the screen time isn't the roadie story, though, but rather concert footage. This was really well done, with lots of good close-ups of each band member and a goodly amount of wide-view shots around the stage and crowd. Some concert footage is pretty much static, showing the same few angles over and over, but Through the Never doesn't have that problem.

I've been to a good number of Metallica shows over the years, so I recognized several of the stage tricks. Either from my own experience, or videos I've seen. The giant coffins suspended around the stage from Death Magnetic, for instance. The giant blind justice statue from ...and Justice For All, and the cemetery crosses from Master of Puppets. And most notably, the "stage collapse accident" with the burning roadie running across the stage. I saw that one in person on an earlier tour - right after Load came out, if I remember right.

As a concert video, Through the Never is pretty good. I was a little disappointed that they didn't use Seek and Destroy, but otherwise the music selection was good. It was worth spending a couple of hours on the couch. I think I'd have been disappointed if I'd gone out of my way to see it in a theater, though. If you're going to make the effort to go out and see a band, better to go to a real concert, not just a movie about one.

1980s/90s Christian Rock and Metal

Poking around the Spotify catalog has been interesting on several fronts. Discovering new music via recommendations and playlists is the main draw, but it's also been a trip down memory lane.

As a teenager in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I listened to a whole lot of rock and metal. Mostly Christian bands, though there was a good amount of Metallica and Rush in there as well. And I mean a lot, to the point where I wore out cassette tapes and broke tape players. Yeah, cassettes, although I did mostly switch to CDs toward the mid-90s. That all seems so ancient now, but I still have some of that stuff lying around. Though I don't think I have any cassette-playing equipment any more.

Spotify has a whole bunch of the bands that I remember in its catalog, and I've been revisiting them lately. The "similar artists" feature means that once you've found one, it's easy to get lost in clicking around to a bunch of stuff from the same time period. I built a playlist out of some of the favorites that I ran across. A few of them, in no particular order:

• Petra - These guys were seriously long-lived, from the 1970s to the 2000s. I best remember the On Fire album, which I'm pretty sure I bought at least three times since I broke one cassette, bought another cassette, and later the CD. But their best work in my opinion was Beyond Belief, both the song (probably my favorite single Petra cut) and the whole album. Saw them several times in concert, too - 3.5 that I can remember. (That 0.5 is a show where just the lead singer, John Schlitt, did a concert with pre-recorded band tracks.)
• Die Happy - I listened to a lot of very heavy stuff by a band called Vengeance Rising, who aren't on the playlist only because my tastes don't run to screaming-all-the-time vocals any more. Die Happy was formed when most of that band split from the leader, and they had a very different sound. Blues Metal, as I remember my friends and I called it. It's too bad they only ended up doing two studio albums.
• Deliverance - I was in a garage band in high school (of course) and we'd have been deliriously happy to sound like Deliverance. Their first two albums were pretty much pure metal, but later on I'd classify their sound more as hard rock. My favorite album is Stay of Execution, which I'd put somewhere in the middle.
• Bride - Southern rock, heavy style. These guys absolutely loved their wah-wah pedals. Judging from the Spotify most-popular list, people seem to like the Snakes in the Playground album. Nothing wrong with that one, but for me, Kinetic Faith was better. Particularly the songs Hired Gun and Everybody Knows My Name.
• Whitecross - I best remember Whitecross for two things: listening to their In the Kingdom and High Gear albums while delivering newspapers, and getting to meet their bass player after a show sometime during my high school days. It was one of those 10-second autograph conversations, but it still stuck with me.
• White Heart - When I came across this Spotify page, I was unsurprised to see that the most popular song by far is Desert Rose. I remember that ballad as their biggest hit, though I liked the rest of the Powerhouse album quite a bit as well. Saw these guys a couple of times in concert.
• Tourniquet - Probably the heaviest band on this list. I listened to some even faster and harder stuff back in the day, but my tastes have mostly left those behind. But even before I started this little trip down musical memory lane, I still had Tourniquet in my MP3 collection. Pathogenic Ocular Dissonance, Psychosurgery, and Vanishing Lessons are all great albums.
• Saviour Machine - It's hard to classify Saviour Machine musically. Some of it is metal, but there are also operatic and classical themes. Thematic classification is pretty easy, though - dark and apocalyptic. Lots of focus on the end times and the book of Revelation. I saw them live twice, easily two of the better concerts I've ever seen from anyone, Christian or secular. Too bad that's unlikely to happen again, as lead singer Eric Clayton had retired from music, at least partially due to illness.

Spotify

I own a lot of music that I've accumulated over the years via cassette, CD, and digital download. When Spotify first launched in the US, I wasn't very interested since I wasn't looking for more music. But recently I was looking into some new (to me) artists, and decided to give the streaming service a try.

This started after I went to the Nightwish concert a few weeks ago, and wanted to hear more from Delain (one of the opening acts). I bought a couple of their albums from Google Play Music, liked what I heard, and was considering getting more when I thought of Spotify. Pretty much all of Delain's stuff is available there, so I decided to give it a try.

To begin, I just downloaded the Windows Spotify client without subscribing. You get advertisements after every few songs, but otherwise there's not much difference between the free and subscription version when listening on your PC. I could still access any song that I found, and play other people's playlists.

I also tried out the Android app for my phone, and Fire TV app for my media center. The Fire TV app is pretty bad, honestly, if you try to use it directly. Poor user interface and very limited features. However, you can link it to your phone (or PC) to control what is playing on the Fire TV, which is much easier to use. For the phone, there's the ability to download songs for play while offline, but only if you're a subscriber.

The selection of music is pretty massive on Spotify. Not everything is available - I've run across both missing artists and albums - but there's plenty out there. You can use the "radio" function to get a selection of music similar to a song/artist (similar to something like Pandora), but also play specific songs or entire albums (unlike Pandora). And people can build playlists to share, which is one of my favorite features. I've found several that were built by people with similar musical tastes.

Thanks in large part to those playlists, I've already found a good number of interesting artists that I'd never run across before. I've also found some that I haven't listened to in years (like Die Happy and Devlierance). Used to have all their stuff on cassettes, but never re-acquired it in the digital world. Nice to have it easily accessible again.

Between the offline music feature and the lack of ads, I think the $10/month is worthwhile for a Spotify subscription. For a while, at least. It's nice to have an easy way to discover and enjoy different music, and once you've found it, be able to listen to it on demand.

Nightwish Live in Royal Oak

Nightwish played at the Royal Oak Music Theatre on Friday night, with Delain and Sonata Artica. and I was there. Not the greatest venue for a concert, but it was a solid show.

This was the first time I'd been to the Royal Oak Music Theatre. It's almost 100 years old, and started life as an "art-deco movie palace." The fact that it wasn't designed as a music venue shows. The stage is pretty low, making it tough to see if you're not especially tall. There are tiers to the floor space, but only a few. If you're not in the first couple of rows from the front of the tier, good luck seeing past all the people in front of you. There's a balcony, which I'll keep in mind if I ever go there again...might be worth a bit more to get seats up there.

The doors were supposed to open at 6:30, but I decided not to show up that early, figuring that nothing much would happen for a while. Glad I did, because when I arrived around 7:30, there was still a huge line outside. (In the cold...it's February in Michigan!) It was 7:45 before the line cleared out. Which worked out all right because I needed to find parking anyway. Downtown Royal Oak on a Friday night stretches the limited nearby parking pretty far.

By the time I got inside, Delain was already playing. I've probably heard a song or two of theirs on Pandora or something, but nothing I recalled clearly. It's always tough for the first warm-up act at any concert, of course, but the crowd was fairly lively. The music sounded good, but I couldn't really tell what they were doing on stage. I was maybe 50 feet back, on the second floor tier. There were many 6-foot-plus people in front of me, though, and the stage wasn't high enough for me to see above them. Even holding my phone up at arm's length, I still had people's heads blocking the view. All the pictures I took suffered somewhat from that, as well as from my phone's weak camera and my poor photography skills, but they did get better later on.

Delain

After that, I moved back and up a floor tier. There were still people in front of me, but I was only a couple of rows back from the edge of the tier, so I could mostly see through the gaps between people. So I saw a bit more of Sonaca Artica, but unfortunately the sound was terrible. Someone didn't do a great sound check, because the drums were up so loud that they drowned out almost everything else. The music I did hear seemed decent, but that was maybe 20% of what they actually played, when the drums were comparatively quiet. The rest of the time, all I heard was bass and snare drums. I'd blame it on my hearing or the acoustics of the hall, if it wasn't for the fact that neither of the other bands had the same problem. It was just some poor sound engineering.

Sonaca Artica

Fortunately, by the time Nightwish took the stage,  the problems were mostly ironed out. I had a spot where I could (mostly) see, and their sound engineer knew what he was doing. It was about 9:45 when the main show started, and they played for almost exactly 2 hours.

Nightwish

A large portion of the set list came from the latest album, of course. The show began with the first song from Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and ended with the last, with plenty more in between. I was mildly disappointed that they left out my favorite track (Alpenglow), but you can't fit everything into two hours. The last track, The Greatest Show On Earth, has a bit of a reprise of Alpenglow's "we were here" chorus anyway, and that made a great ending to the show.

Older songs were plentiful, too. I particularly liked Storytime (from Imaginaerum) and Seven Days to the Wolves (from Dark Passion Play). Floor Jansen, who took over as lead singer back in 2013, did a pretty amazing job singing the earlier stuff, considering that those songs were written for singers with higher ranges. I noticed a couple of spots where she had to drop out of the high notes, but overall she handled it very well. I just hope her voice holds out, doing that stuff every night on tour!

The one major omission that I noticed was the lack of Wish I Had An Angel (from Once). Considering that it was probably their biggest US hit, I was surprised not to hear it in the set list. Maybe it was intended as an encore that never happened, or maybe they're just tired of playing it. Not a big deal, anyway, with so many other good songs to choose from.

It was good to see Troy Donockley on stage, too. He's played various non-traditional (for a metal band) instruments as a guest on the last few albums, and joined the band officially for the latest one. You don't often see a flute or the Uilleann pipes played on stage at a metal concert! I actually had to look that last one up, didn't recognize the instrument on sight, but fortunately it's pictured on Troy's Wikipedia page.

All things considered, I had a great time. The night started out a bit rocky with the logistical issues of parking and waiting in line, and the venue had some issues. But live music has a way of helping you to forget those little annoyances. Nightwish puts on a wonderful live show, and I hope to see them again someday.

Nightwish

I don't exactly remember when I first heard a Nightwish song...likely on Pandora, somewhere around six years ago. I do remember that I liked the band enough to buy their then-latest release, Dark Passion Play, and most of the rest of their albums. I've been listening to them quite a bit recently because I plan to see them in concert later this month.

Nightwish is described on Wikipedia as a "symphonic metal" band, which seems as good a description as any. The hard rock/metal musical style, combined with vocals that are mostly sung (as opposed to screamed or growled, which is OK in moderation but often over-used), is one of my favorites. Several of their albums have a theme that runs through all the lyrics, which I also appreciate. I wouldn't want every release to be a concept album, but they're fun to listen to occasionally.

The band formed back in 1996 in Kitee, Finland, and have gone through a few iterations since. They've had three lead singers (all female), and switched bass players once, but the rest of the lineup has been pretty constant.

As I said, I was very impressed with Dark Passion Play (2007). I also really like Once (2004). The four earlier albums weren't as good, in my opinion, so I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't discover the band until the mid-2000s. Since then, there have been two more releases, Imaginaerum (2011) and Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2015), both of which are excellent.

Since they're from Finland, Nightwish tours are an uncommon occurrence here in the United States. I consider myself fortunate to have caught wind of this one, with a concert location fairly close over in the Detroit area. Looking forward to the live show!