Looking for a tour from your favorite indie rock band? When you want to hear some great music, this is it! You can find Death Cab for Cutie concert tickets on this site. Death Cab for Cutie plays music that’s “emotional without emotion.” It’s like rock music that’s not in-your-face. So many other bands say “This is how I feel!!” It’s kind of hard to understand the words and the words themselves are a bit crass. Death Cab has the same kind of themes and musical interests. But they do it in a subtle, quiet way. It’s just mellow. Their album last year, “Narrow Stairs”, was their first to make it up to #1 on the Billboard charts. It’s becoming a real movement and people really like their shows! Check it out!

They Might Be Giants have been nominated for the Grammys again. It’s always good to see them do well, because they write such tight songs and it’s always quite fun to see them get it done right! In the last 9 years or so, they have been mainly writing songs for younger people, children and so on. I think this isn’t a big stretch for them, because John Linnell has a kid. I don’t know if the other John, John Flansburgh has children, but as of the last time that I looked it up, he didn’t. But that’s what they’ve been working on predominantly over the last several years. The band tours some each year, though not as much as they used to. You can usualy expect them to be touring on the east coast and in major cities in other parts of the country as well. Take a look at their website to find out.

It was cold in Washington on Tuesday, when the inauguration took place. If you were watching or listening, you heard a quartet of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and a couple other performers playing a song called “Air and Simple Gifts”. It was written for the occasion by John Williams, of Star Wars fame. This much is true. You did hear the quartet playing. But you didn’t hear them live, unless you were on the dais. Instead, a recording from two days before had been piped through. The reason? The instruments went flat, and the piano strings could have broken, in the cold weather. So they had the recording ready and the performers could hear it in their earbuds and they played along. They were playing, but that’s not what most people heard. This has caused a little scandal, but that’s the way it is sometimes.

I just wanted to take a quick look at the Philip Glass performance calendar to see what was up. Sadly, there isn’t all that much running on our homeland at the moment. You can see there’s quite a bit playing in Canada and Europe and some other places. There are a couple of performances of his music this month in the US, but pretty much only on the coasts, which is unfortunate. There are lots of films and pieces that we could hear performed that were written by him, but it’s sad that we can’t hear them, but for our large boombox with subwoofers and special mp3 burners. We’ll have to wait it out, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make music ourselves.

With both the AFC and NFC championships scheduled for this Sunday, it’s only a short time away before Bruce Springsteen and his East Street Band take the biggest stage in the world: Super Bowl Halftime. Given the privilege months ago, the Boss has been crafting his set list in an attempt to bring the nation exactly what it wants: pure, untainted Boss. Here’s the projected set list…

Have you seen any good concerts lately? What were they? I heard that there are some fun ones going on recently. There aren’t quite so many this time of year, though, because it’s winter. You only have indoor venues at this point, whereas in a few months you can actually go see outdoor concerts in most of the country. So my question to you all is whether there are any ones you could particularly recommend?  Fall Out Boy? AC/DC? Any others?

Boom! You want it, you got it America. I shoulda figgah’d you couldn’t get enough of me. Hell, I’m Tony Bennett. The Tony Bennett. I can’t even get enough of me. One look in the mirror and I’m stuck admirin’ for half an hour, minimum. So yeah, why not add a few more months to my tour schedule. That should give a chance for every one o’ you cute little dames to see me in concert. Hell, you skirts are all invited to my after show parties as well. Just don’t get all uppity with me when Mrs. Bennett’s around. Undastand? She don’t like that much, even though it’s completely understandable; I’m Tony Bennett.

There is a list on LiveWire of the best 10 concerts of 2008 (mainly in Chicago and Milwaukee), which are exciting. They also aren’t the ones that you’d expect, possibly even ones that you’ve never heard of. I’ll just tell you something about the top 3. Alejandro Escovedo ranks at #3, with his comeback album and concerts. He nearly died a few years ago from Hepatitis C and now he seems to be back on his game. At #2, the band TV on the Radio have their newest concert in Chicago. The site says that it is a perfect blend of art and music, without all the pretension that you sometimes get with artsy-rock music. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds came in at #1, having played 2 sold out shows at the Riviera recently. Cave has held onto his style of music and strength of playing for a long time and seems to be continuing to get better.

Li’l Wayne is simply burning up at this point. As one of the hottest rappers around, he is only just beginning. Although this will be his tenth year as a signed artist, Wayne is not content to sit back on his haunches and release the same sound after same sound. Ever since he released Tha Carter 1, he has been further honing his style and finding his “true” sound. His latest, “Tha Carter 3,” is also considered by many to be his best.