Black Keys help usher in Ovation Hall with Saturday night show at Revel . Interview with Patrick Carney.
Overnight sensation is a cliché that is often way off the mark in the music business. A number of scribes have mistakenly labeled the Black Keys as overnight sensations, but vocalist-guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney are anything but upstarts.
The Ohio tandem started slugging it out in clubs in 2001 and they have finally hit commercial paydirt.
The talented twosome deserve all of the credit and success, but I didn’t see stardom coming the first time I laid eyes on the act in 2003 when the band played the South By Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas.
A long, solid career? Yes. Superstardom? It just didn’t seem their genre was the sort to enable a band to reach the upper echelon.
The Black Keys were touring behind the band’s fiery second album, Thickfreakness. When the act opened Spin’s annual afternoon party, music industry folk had more interest in the free BBQ than the passionate bluesy numbers rendered by the bluesy-rockers.
Music lovers, however, did respond to the Black Keys’ evening performance.
“It was a pretty good start for us,” Carney tells Atlantic City Weekly. “I remember having a great time at South By Southwest the first time out.”
Well, the Black Keys were part of two more South Bys and they continued to build on their base. When they performed in 2010, the band had finally broken through. They were no longer an unknown quantity.
Industry insiders were all over the Black Keys.
“It took some time but we finally received some recognition,” Carney says.
It was well deserved, but who could have guessed that the Black Keys would become the hottest attraction out of Akron (with apologies to LeBron James)? Well, the Black Keys are the most notable recording act out of the overlooked Midwestern city since Chrissie Hynde left for London 35 years ago.
Akron isn’t Detroit and the Black Keys aren’t the White Stripes even though the group is often compared to the defunct color-coded blues-loving tandem. There are common denominators but the Black Keys stand by on their own.
“We never worry about who we’re compared to,” Carney says. “None of that stuff is important.”
What’s important is making consistently visceral, challenging music.
The Black Keys, who will perform Saturday at Revel’s brand new Ovation Hall, finally hit the charts in 2010 with the release of Brothers, which includes the alt-hit “Tighten Up.” The group won three Grammy Awards courtesy of that album.
“That was just something that was so amazing,” Carney says backstage at the Wells Fargo Center during a sold out Philly show in March.
“It was really cool to be recognized.”
It’s a nice nod from the industry, but the most significant thing for the Black Keys is that the act is embraced by a myriad of fans. While supporting its current — and 7th — album El Camino, the Black Keys are on its first arena tour.
Joe Perry: “I would have been fine doing the project [without Tyler]. It would have been quite exciting, but we never got that far and we’re still Aerosmith, which is where I would rather be.”
Revel, the glittering jewel at the north end of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, has had a rough beginning on the gaming side of the ledger since it opened in late spring. However, on the entertainment side, it has delivered positive vibrations and national headlines.
“It’s kind of like Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins,” Alexakis tells Atlantic City Weekly. “There’s a guy in each of those bands who is the leader of the band, who sings and writes the songs and could easily be leading a band, which possesses his name only. It’s the same situation for me. But I think we, in this society, are used to doing things as a collective.”
Music fans will have more options than ever to catch a concert in Atlantic City this Memorial Day weekend, but that's not when the music stops. The entire southern Jersey shore region will popping with music of all kinds this summer — including rockabilly, jazz, classcial, rock, blues, R&B and reggae.
Revel, the big-is-better new kid on the casino block in Atlantic City, decided it didn’t need to wait until Memorial Day Weekend to kick the wow factor into high gear.
“When I look at Atlantic City, maybe I just see something different,” says DeSanctis. “What I see, when you go out on our Sky Garden or you go out on our deck, that’s sort of the Atlantic City that I think about. We have this incredible geographic location. We have 47 million people within a six-hour drive of this place, and when we think about options from a resort perspective in the Northeast, there really aren’t any. "
An entertainment classic never goes out of style — especially with casinos and the people they attract. That seems to be the booking strategy at several Atlantic City casinos as they scramble to complete their spring and summer lineups. What had already been shaping up to be a strong season for shows is now on the verge of becoming the biggest and most diverse collection of attractions the city has seen since the dice began rolling down the Boardwalk 34 years ago.
To usher in the historic first day for Revel, the property has booked the band The Raveonettes to perform a free show at 9pm at The Social, located near Revel's imaginative casino floor.
Just as Atlantic City Weekly columnist David Spatz suggested back in February, Maroon 5 has been booked to perform at Revel’s Ovation Hall on Friday, May 18, 8pm.
Akron, Ohio rockers The Black Keys have been booked for Revel.
In a year that saw the return of widespread protests around the world, the power and potential of grass-roots movements, such as Occupy Wall Street, more and more bad economic news and forecasts, the music industry seemed to bounce back with a bunch of solid releases, including new albums by Kanye West and Jay-Z, Adele, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and others, as 'indie' labels such as Sub Pop, Yep Roc, and ANTI-, emerged as the leaders of a new renaissance in the music biz. Meanwhile, reissues, by specialty labels like Legacy, were among the most exciting "new" music of 2011. Atlantic City Weekly runs an Album of the Week column on the Coasting page each week, and the editors have put together a list of the best 2011 albums of the bunch, as well as several re-issues, and albums we didn't get a chance to write about yet for a total of 50 albums that you may or may not have heard yet. 2011 Albums of the Year (in no particular order. Click on links to see album review; when you get to page, scroll down to the Album of the Week column). Rock on. Gillian Welch - The Harrow & The...
We have pulled out some of the best music we raved about this year in our “Raves & Faves” section, plus, we’ve added a few albums we loved this year, but didn’t have the space or time to rave about. Check the videos at the bottom!
Singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins was born and raised in the Jersey shore town of Neptune City, about 75 miles north of here. So while Atlantic City technically can't claim the talented beauty as a hom...
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