Thursday, February 12, 2009

11 Feb 2009: Gutter Twins w/Dave Rosser

11 February 2009
Gutter Twins w/Dave Rosser
The Independent
628 Divisadero St (btwn Hayes & Grove) [Map]

Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs, Twilight Singers) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees) have been playing together as the Gutter Twins since 2003, but they've collaborated on various projects since 2000. I didn't expect it to be sold out but I should have known better. Dulli has a following of very loyal fans. While the audience was predominately guys, and there was quite a bit of bromance afoot, the few ladies sprinkled in the mix loooooove their Dulli too.

Greg Dulli

I don't know their songs well enough to track the set list, but I did recognize a couple Afghan Whigs songs, which sounded awesome. They also closed out the set with song by delta blues artist Bukka White. Some in the overwhelmingly white crowd were so inspired that they tried to clap along, not realizing that when clapping along to delta blues (or any gospel-y kind of music) you don't start the clap on the first beat of the measure.

Acoustic Trio

Something happened backstage between the set and the encore which had Lanegan and Dulli cracking up on stage, but they never shared the joke. They just laughed. A lot.

Mark Lanegan

Meanwhile, Lanegan really looked like he might keel over during the show at any time. He also has amazing star tattoos on his hands.

Dave Rosser

The show was great but I couldn't help but think of the Fleetwood Mac and Eagles Unplugged stuff. Sadly, rock heroes like Dulli get old too.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Musicians using Twitter

When I'm not going to shows and drinking too much, I have an actual day job working at Institute for the Future. Part of my job is to track social media use, and since I'm obsessed with music, I try to leverage that in my work as much as possible.

Today I came across this Google spreadsheet of artists using Twitter. As with many major artist MySpace pages or blogs, the "big" ones are more likely label interns—or impostors with entirely too much time on their hands—than actual artists, but there's a good chance that a bunch of the smaller acts are actually speaking tweeting for themselves.

I've carefully combed the list and here are a few favorites...
Chris Cornell, formerly the lead singer of Soundgarden. Guessing it's fake but if it really is him... wow. Good to know he eats shrimp?

Mike Doughty, formerly of Soul Coughing. Pretty sure Mike is the man behind the tweets.

Sonic Youth. Not sure what's going on here. Thurston, is that really you?

MC Hammer which, since he owns a tech company here in Silicon Valley, may very well be the one and only Hammer. Or maybe his iconic baggy pants are doing the tweeting. Either way, I'm genuinely disappointed that his username isn't Hammer Time.

SFJukebox doesn't have it's own Twitter account but I do. I assure you it's not really that interesting—certainly not as interesting as Hammer—but feel free to follow if you are inclined to do so.