(audience FLAC)
Bowery Ballroom
New York, NY
May 23, 2012
CA-11/Battery Box/R-09HR/Audacity(for track splitting)/WAV/XACT/FLAC
01 intro
02 Crime Scene Pt. 1
03 I'm Her Slave
04 Uptown Again
05 What Jail Is Like
06 Going To Town
07 When We Two Parted/Over My Dead Body (Drake)
08 Gentlemen
09 66
10 Conjure Me
11 Crazy
12 My Enemy
13 Debonair
14 Bulletproof
15 Summer's Kiss
16 Faded (w/Purple Rain outro)
17 break
18 See And Don't See (Marie Lyons)
19 Love Crimes (Frank Ocean)
20 Fountain & Fairfax
21 Somethin' Hot
22 break
23 Miles Iz Ded
Notes by the taper
Well, this was pretty wonderful. For their first proper show in thirteen years the Afghan Whigs played a long and sweaty and brass-knuckled set last night at the Bowery Ballroom, and though there were a few minor technical hiccups here and there, the band sounds as good as ever, and they played everything you wanted to hear. (Well, no "Turn On The Water" or "Retarded," but everything else…) Greg Dulli told laughing stories about his cocaine days on the "1965" tour, John Curley beamed as he ran nimbly through bass lines he should never have stopped playing, and Rick McCollum seemed almost shy as he bent gorgeously-understated notes underneath Frank Ocean and Drake and Marie "Queenie" Lyons covers. Dulli even threatened a fan with physical violence, at some length, smiling shit-eatingly the entire time -- some things, I guess, never change. The band is big now, beefed up with Dave Rosser on guitar as well as Cully Symington on drums, and a string section even showed up for the encore, though I expect you'll have as much trouble hearing them here as I did in person. In fact, if there's any quibble to be made about the show in general, it's that the sound mix still needs some fine-tuning -- McCollum in particular was a little lost in all the magnificent clatter. This isn't a complaint -- it may have been where I was standing, or the fact that I hadn't heard one of my favorite guitarists in a long time and was actively trying to pick out his parts, but they weren't easy to discern, and one of the few ways you can unquestionably improve on rock and roll perfection is to add a little more Rick McCollum.
Hopefully there'll be a better recording of this eventually -- video, at least, was being shot everywhere you looked, to an almost obnoxious degree -- but I thought folks might enjoy giving this a listen for now. It's a half-decent tape, a little bassy but definitely listenable -- I should probably have staked out a spot on the balcony rail for better sound, but I couldn't resist being as close to the action as possible, so you're getting the low end as it rolled right off the stage. Give the sample a whirl -- I suspect if you're interested in hearing this show, you won't mind hearing it this way.
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