There’s a packed week of concerts across New England, with shows in Boston, Worcester, Providence, New Haven and beyond. A little bit of something for everyone too!
As much as I’d love to go to all of them, choices must be made. So as of now, I have just one I’ll be attending (Twisted Sister with Sebastian Bach!!) and I wish I could go to Smashing Pumpkins as well.
| Date | Concert & Venue |
|---|---|
| Mon 9/28 | Sex Pistols feat. Frank Carter (Royale — Boston) |
| Mon 9/28 | Shaboozey (MGM Music Hall — Boston) |
| Tue 9/29 | Taste of Chaos featuring: In This Moment / Hollywood Undead / I See Stars / Vana (Worcester Palladium) |
| Tue 9/29 | Pennywise with Circle Jerks, H2O and Murphy’s Law (Toad’s Place – New Haven, CT) |
| Wed 9/30 | Pennywise with Circle Jerks, H2O and DFL (House of Blues – Boston) |
| Wed 9/30 | Ringo Starr & His All Starr Band (MGM Music Hall — Boston) |
| Thu 10/1 | Rise Against (MGM Music Hall — Boston) |
| Thu 10/1 | Gorillaz (TD Garden — Boston) |
| Thu 10/1 | Switchfoot (The Big E — West Springfield) |
| Fri 10/2 | TWISTED SISTER + Tesla 🤘 (The Big E — West Springfield) |
| Fri 10/2 | Smashing Pumpkins (TD Garden — Boston) |
| Fri 10/2 | Lynch Mob (Off The Rails — Worcester) |
| Fri 10/2 | The Amazing Royal Crowns (Alchemy — Providence) |
| Fri 10/2 | Lonestar (Bally’s Twin River — Lincoln, RI) |
| Sat 10/3 | Kelly Clarkson (Amica Mutual Pavilion — Providence) |
| Sat 10/3 | Ice Nine Kills / Twizted (Worcester Palladium) |
| Sun 10/4 | Foo Fighters (Mohegan Sun Arena — Uncasville, CT) |
| Sun 10/4 | Thrown / Norma Jean / Half Me / BOLTCUTTER (Worcester Palladium) |
Concert-Guy’s Pick of the Week 🤘
Twisted Sister + Tesla — Friday, Oct. 2 at The Big E
I had to make some tough choices this week, but it’s been decided! I’ll be at The Big E Friday night for Twisted Sister and Tesla. This one means a lot to me! I’ll get into the why after the show. Check back on Concert-Guy afterward for photos and a full review.
Heading to a Concert? Protect those Ears!
Having gone to around 400 shows, trust me when I say you should protect those ears! As a younger lad, it wasn’t “cool” to wear ear plugs. So, we suffered! But I’ve grown wiser (and I don’t want the constant ringing to get worse) and know I need to wear ear plugs.
The lame foam ear plugs work and probably reduce noise the most but they muffle everything. Not great for sound quality. I’ve tried the very pricey name brand Eargasm plugs, and they were fine, but honestly nothing special. Decent sound reduction, not muffled, does a great job blocking out 5k screaming teenage girls quite well. But I found generic versions of Eargasm earplugs and they do they exact same thing. I ended up mixing and matching by mistake and cannot tell which is which. Also, you can find 2 pairs of generics for under $10 while Eargasm wants almost $50. Screw that! The Eargasm case also spun open on me once and I lost the whole container except the lid. Luckily the earplugs were in my ears when it happened.
While the Eargasm and generics were fine, I figured there are other options. I’ve been doing some research to find a better, effective set of earplugs and learned about Nose Reduction Ratings (NRR) and what that all means. Essentially, how many decibels do the earplugs reduce the sound by? While the foam ones are close to 30db, like I said previously they just muffle the shit out of the sound. Eargasm claims up to 21db while still offering a high-fidelity sound (But I still say too bassy). So, I decided to try another pair and recently picked these up:
That little gold piece is a switch that lets you adjust the NRR between 18, 22, and 27. The sweet spot for me was 22. At the highest setting of 27, the sound reduction was nice, but again I just felt it made the bass very prominent. At 18, the sound was good, but not enough noise reduction for my old ass. 22 was the sweet spot offering a good noise reduction, while having a nice clean sound. I could hear lyrics for once! And it wasn’t just a bunch of bass. Totally reusable, no batteries, quite comfy without the need to constantly adjust all night, and it came with a ton of extra rubber earpieces of varying sizes – though for me the default size was perfect. I even got the wife her own set of purples ones and she liked them as well.
Check out the full calendar! So many good shows to attend. You know you want to!
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