When I heard the Lemonheads were doing a 20 year celebration
concert for Its A Shame About Ray, I was super excited. Surely this album was a standout amongst the
many that defined my adolescence. When
we arrived at Stage AE we thought that based on the amount of cars it would be
empty, however this club was the most packed show I have seen there. After waiting an unnecessary long time after
the opener, Evan Dando finally came out.
He played a handful of songs solo and acoustic and I did not recognize
any of them. I was fearing the old bait
and switch, where was the promised album performance that undoubtedly all had
come to see? The crowd of mostly 30-40
somethings did not seem to enthralled either.
Thankfully, soon the band appeared and they launched into 'Rockin
Stroll' and the crowd perked up. Yep this
is what we all anticipated seeing.
Dando, who was a bit withdrawn in the beginning, began to ease up and
seemed pretty happy to be playing. My
personal favorite was 'My Drug Buddy', I always loved that tune. I have to admit that it definitely missed the
added layer of Juliana Hatfields voice to complete the song. She was missed throughout, however the end
result of the performance was still satisfying to me.
I loved this show..... I knew every song he played and was enthusiastic from beginning to end. But that's probably because The Lemonheads are my favorite band. I was really glad that he mixed it up and didn't go straight into Ray. He never did play Mrs. Robinson because he hates playing that song. It was tacked on to later issues of Ray by the record company to try and build hype for the re-release of The Graduate, which came out around that time. It was great to hear the album live from beginning to end, but also pretty great to hear stuff from other Lemonheads albums too. He played practically almost every track from Come On Feel, and a bunch from 2006's self-titled. He even played stuff from Lovey and earlier stuff too. I have seen the Lemonheads, and Evan solo, for a combined 13 or so times over the past 20 years. It's true, he can be moody. But on this evening in Pittsburgh, he was in a pretty jovial mood. A treat for all in attendance! I'll be seeing them again later on in the tour in March. We'll see if he's still enjoying it then. Either way, I look forward to it.
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