The Raconteurs at the Riv

I had the pleasure of seeing The Raconteurs perform live on new year's eve at The Riviera theater in Chicago.

First off, I want to complement the Riv, a venue I hadn't been to before, for the excellent sound. The place was LOUD, but it sounded great. I could hear the vocals and the drums sounded amazing all night long.

As for the show, they played for a couple hours and busted out the songs I expected... which was most of Broken Boy Soldiers along with a couple covers, "Bang Bang" and what I believe was "Headin' For the Texas Border" by The Flaming Groovies. I had seen the band play at Lollapalooza in August '06, and I could tell that they'd been working on the live versions of the songs... figuring out where to expand them and where to cut them off. I really loved 'Broken Boy Soldiers' (the drums are awesome) and am a big fan of 'Blue Veins', which they closed with. It's the one song that makes me think of the reckless blues lightning Jack unleashes (unleashed??) with the White Stripes.


The Raconteurs - Blue Veins (Lollapalooza 2006, Chicago)



On a side note, opening band The Features put on a strong performance, or at least benefited from the Beam and Cokes TBone and I had been slamming prior to our arrival. Gonna check them out again, and I'll let you know if they hold up. They have a 5 song cd coming out, and they were pretty solid. (http://www.thefeatures.com/)