Top concerts 2010

As 2010 winds down, we’ve still got a bunch of potentially terrific shows to look forward to, including Ludacris at the Allstate Arena (Sunday), Elvis Costello at the Chicago Theatre (Monday) and the Hold Steady at Lincoln Hall (Dec. 30), plus a gaggle of New Year’s Eve shows that we’ll preview in future columns.

But it’s also time to take stock and look back on a year of heavy-duty concert-going. Out of more than 100 shows I attended, here are my favorites from 2010:

1. Gorillaz, Oct. 16 at UIC Pavilion: The cartoon band invented by Blur’s Damon Albarn and Jamie “Tank Girl” Hewlett more than a decade ago has morphed into a real band, with more than 30 musicians and singers, including a core group built on former Clash members Mick Jones and Paul Simonon. Albarn orchestrates it all, blending hip-hop, dub reggae, Eastern music, punk, soul and myriad other genres into a soundtrack for a dying planet that doesn’t sound like a eulogy at all. Instead, it becomes one the year’s biggest dance parties. 

Concert review: Sleep at Logan Square Auditorium

Sleep burned their own path in the ‘90s, a San Jose, Calif., trio that worshipped at the altars of Black Sabbath, cannabis and volume. Their sound was singular in its ambition, as slow, ominous and inexorable as a molton-lava flow. It demanded deliberation – the slower the better -- and was spacious enough for meditation and head-banging.

The band defined a fringe segment of metal known as “stoner rock,” then fragmented in 1998 after an ambitious, album-length metal suite, “Dopesmoker” (later retitled “Jerusalem”), was rejected by its record label. Since then, Sleep’s reputation has grown exponentially, and the trio’s first visit to Chicago in more than a decade Thursday was greeted by a capacity audience at the Logan Square Auditorium.

While some fans complained to the sound engineer that the volume wasn’t sufficiently ear-splitting, the mix presented a clear picture of the band’s interaction: Matt Pike’s long, reverberating guitar chords, Al Cisneros’ nimble bass, and Jason Roeder’s free-form drumming. The traditional rock hierarchy of lead instruments didn’t apply; each instrumentalist assumed the lead role at times, and Pike frequently laid out lingering chords to give Cisneros’ bass room to roam or Roeder's drums to surge through.

Sleep returns in a cloud of heavy smoke

    Guitarist Matt Pike can laugh about it now. In the ‘90s, his band Sleep made “Dopesmoker,” an album so radical that it got the trio kicked off their record label, led to their break-up, and yet ended up becoming one of the most acclaimed metal releases of the last two decades.
   
    “We made a record that people didn’t get to hear until years later, after we broke up,” says Pike, who has spent the last decade fronting the power trio High on Fire. “We had a bigger following than ever, and no band! It’s like, where was everybody when we were actually touring?”

    That situation is being rectified with a reunion of Pike and original Sleep bassist-singer-lyricist Al Cisneros, plus Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder, to perform a handful of shows devoted to the California trio’s influential ‘90s albums, particularly the 1993 “Holy Mountain,” the career-ending “Dopesmoker,” and its shorter but equally daunting companion piece, “Jerusalem.”