Bourbon, a Comfy Armchair and a Sinfully Good Book

I keep wanting to make a post about all the amazing live music I've seen recently and then feeling like I don't have anything intelligent enough to say, but I have reached the point of whatever, I'm going to post anyway. So:

--My Chemical Romance, Sept 7 with wife A - magnificent as ever but even more magnificent with The Black Parade as a theater concept piece. I wish this was a movie so I could pick it apart. I loved the way they used humor: the constant presence of the dictator stroking the velvet arm of his chair, the deliberate silly mix-up that makes the audience complicit in an execution by firing squad. In parts of the show I wept. In parts I screamed my voice raw. One of those transcendent musical experiences.

--Mint Green (+ various), Sept 14 with friends D & A - love a good tiny rock show in a bar basement. Most of the audience was probably under 25 and there were some adorable baby queers trying to mosh but not having the critical mass of people for it. I've seen this band before (with same friends, who introduced me to them) and hot damn, still good.

--Wardruna, Sept 24, just me. I probably could have gotten someone to go with me but this is a band I kind of like to marinate in so I didn't want the distraction of wondering what my companion was thinking. The staging was very simple and almost entirely done with light and shadow against the bodies of the band and the different instruments, which is especially effective with the historical war horns. The one exception to the light/shadow was a dynamic lightning-strike projected onto the back curtain at the climax of one song that made the whole audience gasp. Stunning.

--The Psychedelic Furs with Gary Numan, Oct 17 with wife A - we've seen the Psychedelic Furs before but it was in a much smaller venue and we were right down in the crowd. I think that would have improved our experience immensely this time around - they were good but the energy up in the seats of the MGM was not high. Also, much more exciting to me was Gary Numan, who I knew pretty much from the song Cars and who did perform that but in the middle of a set of intense horny synth metal that I absolutely adored. Must listen to more of his stuff.

--Belly, Oct 23, with friends D & A - I knew precisely one Belly song going in (Feed the Tree) which was a radio hit when I was at the age of beginning to form my own musical taste as opposed to just listening to what my mother listened to. Still, I like that song a lot and I generally go to shows with friend A regardless of whether I know the band or not (he has yet to steer me wrong, although a Rolling Stones cover band might be a step too far) so I figured I'd enjoy myself and I was right. Damn, they're good. Must listen to more of them as well.

This seems like a lot of concerts to have gone to in a short span of time but live music has been emotionally load-bearing in the last couple of very stressful months. And I don't actually have anything else scheduled until December.