Live performances (recommendations/warnings)

[mac5155]

Louis CK just announced his tour. Tickets exclusively through his website (http://louisck.net ) with re-sale above face value prohibited.

Would be great if all performers did this. Sucks that Ticketmaster is getting rich off them.

[Tomas]

Louis CK: Saw him yesterday. Completely sold-out early show (3,430 capacity auditorium; his late show was sold out as well. Assuming that he very likely sold-out his 1 Thursday show, and given that all tickets on his tour are uniformly priced at $45, he just made over $450,000 in 2 days!). Very, very, very good (and I think he will get even better as the tour progresses - Minneapolis was his 2nd stop after Cleveland).

Warm-up comedian was Todd Glass (~25 minutes), not my cup of tea. But Louis had completely new material, No name dropping, no mentioning of his fame (all huge pluses for me). And went for ~90 minutes including 1 ~15 minute encore, which had some of his funniest stuff

Spoiler:

He did this routine: "OF COURSE!...(but maybe)" Topics covered: kids with peanuts allergies deserve our full care/attention; "Make a wish foundation" is great ,... and then he went for topics that were 10 times less PC and 10 times funnier (just one example "slavery was bad")

Despite selling the tickets exclusively through his website, the organization was super-smooth. Definitely worth recommending (though at this point you probably won't get any tickets, anyway ). In terms of my "young Titus" scale - this one was in high nineties.

[Tomas]

Henry Phillips (http://www.henryphillips.com/) - pretty f&*^% funny. Basically, a "singing stand-up" (though more jokes, less songs than, say, Stephen Lynch). Slight negative - some old material going to as early as 2007. Nevertheless, overall quite solid. If Stephen Lynch is A, this guy is a good B+.

[If you live in Twin Cities, here is the birthday tip No. 1:
Acme Comedy Club will give you and your 5 guests free tickets during your birthday month:
http://acmecomedycompany.com/the-club/p ... day-blast/
And birthday tip No. 2:
Pazzaluna Restaurant in St. Paul will give you a free bottle of wine priced at your age (the only good thing if you are 40+ I guess ) during your birthday week:
https://www.pazzaluna.com/events__offers/birthday/ ]

Edit: And I forgot birthday tip No. 3:
Reserve the dinner at Fogo de Chao (http://www.fogodechao.com/index.php?id=161), mention "birthday dinner" (over the phone or Open Table comment) - and they give you a cake with a candle for free.

[PensHckyFan79]

(Oldest->Most Recent)
Comedians: Bill Engvall, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, Gary Gulman, Gabriel Iglesias
Funniest out of that group was Gabriel - we saw him on tour after his first 2 specials. All new material and then he went back and did some old jokes he spent almost 2 hours on stage. Gary Gulman was good, saw him in a small club and his crowd interaction was great. Saw some other small names at the same comedy club as Gary Gulman but can't remember there names if your ever in Towson (just north of Baltimore) check out Magoobies Joke House decent price to get in and I never saw a bad show there.
Concerts: Hinder, Seether, 3 Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin
Hinder was a UPJ concert right after there first single decent show (when they played at the winter classic it was a joke). Seether 3 Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin was a combined tour I saw at Bryce Jordan Center. Seether was good, 3DG was awesome, Breaking Benjamin blew they were the last to perform and everyone knew there was something wrong with the audio. The lead singer walked off stage for like 15-20 minutes to try and get it fixed, but they couldn't.

I love seeing comedians I dont know what I'm going to do now that I'm in Central PA and the closest venues are usually in Pittsburgh 2 hr or State College 1 hr away.

[Tomas]

Chad Daniels (yesterday - University Theater , Fayetteville, AR): very, very funny. Performed for ~1:15. The only reason I can't say I got my money's worth is because the show was for free (paid for by the University).
As I side note - yesterday made me realize how lucky I am NOT to be a stand-up comedian. I think Daniels would qualify for a "national" performer, but he mentioned that we were the last stop on his 7-day long trip. He drove(!) from Northern Minnesota, and went to middle-of-nowhere places like Arkadelphia, AR (a very Southern Baptist place, so his style of humor must have gone great there. )

[PghSkins]

Took my wife to see Black Keys and Flaming Lips last night at CEC. I don't know why I have not been more into Black Keys- they have pretty much everything I like, stripped down, minimalist 50s and 60s rockabilly and blues influenced rock and roll. Probably I just spend too much time listening to 80s music to pay much attention to anything good that comes out now. It was a great show. A good quarter of it was just the two guys, guitar and drums. Theatrics very minimal, just some video and a disco ball for the encore.

Flaming Lips- meh. Never been much into art/space rock and didn't know anything about this band. Show was the total opposite of Black Keys. Lights and lasers all over, lots of flash, presentation was pretty impressive. Didn't care for the music, just not my bag. They covered "Heroes" which was appropriate because it had occurred to me that they were kind of Space Oddity era Bowie on steroids.

Acoustics at CEC were excellent IMO.