Concrete Blonde, August 29 at the Troubadour

At this point Concrete Blonde can pretty much do whatever they please.  They had the big, hit song in the '80s and it gave them the money and fanbase for their own independence, even until today (probably since they didn't get ruined by drugs or record companies).  They never reached the same heights from back then in the time since but they've still been able to put out good records and tour whenever they've felt like it.  The group might have broken up a few times but since it's always just been pretty much Johnette and Jim, they can get back together and do as they like under the band name ​(​though Johnette has done plenty of commendable stuff under her own name or with other collaborators).  Lately they'd been doing informal concert sessions that they would broadcast online and I don't know how a real-world tour connects with that, or why they would even leave their home to tour if they didn't want to but it seemed they wanted to get out on the road for a few shows, including a tiny club date in Hollywood (still).  Of course there have been periods in their history when they've been able to play much bigger places but I'd like to say that playing such a small venue was by their choice rather than a shrunken fanbase.  They still play like it's their heyday and Johnette's voice only gets better with age.  It's completely just the two of them, along with Gabriel, who's been Johnette's drummer for quite a while.  They have no more interest in taking it slow in their advanced ages than they ever did and they still play like they have something to prove, even though by now they don't.  They mixed up their set with a few new tunes along with their old ones, knowing what the crowd wants but indulging themselves with a few things they've done recently.  Just to show that they're under no one's control, they did a Midnight Oil cover, a weird crossover with a contemporary from three decades ago, and it wouldn't have seemed like it worked on paper but they brought it.  They might have even played it more ferociously than the originators of the song.  That it was an evening of a mish-mash of songs, not all originals, it worked.  With a Heads song that Johnette sang on (sadly forgotten by anyone but me) and most of my favorite tunes by them (missing "Little Conversations" but only if if it had been a more sedate show), there's not much I would have changed about their choice of a set-list.  This is one of the bands I know much better than Carla does, and though she was of course familiar with them, she'd never seen them, and she was impressed, both how they've held up and also by Johnette's majesty.  And of course the band played "Joey," early in the set, just to note it and then get on with the rest of what they wanted to do.

Concrete Blonde's set-list:
"Rosalie"
"Beds Are Burning" (Midnight Oil cover)
"I Know The Ghost"
"Joey"
"God Is a Bullet"
"Damage I've Done" (The Heads song)
"Take Me Home"
"Someday"
"Mexican Moon" (with Johnette on lead guitar, Jim on bass)
"Ghost Riders in the Sky" (Stan Jones cover)
"True"
"Everybody Knows" (Leonard Cohen cover)
"Happy Birthday"
"Roxy"
"Les Cœurs Jumeaux" (with Bernadette Colomine sharing lead vocals w/Johnette)
"As Tears Go By" (Marianne Faithfull cover)
"Caroline"
"Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man"
"Heal It Up"
"Scene of a Perfect Crime"
"Run, Run, Run"
"100 Games of Solitaire"
"Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)"

"The Real Thing"
"Still in Hollywood"