The Fortnight in Music

2008-09-19 Fri : Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra @ Herbst Theatre, SF, CA

Had never been to the San Francisco War Memorial Building or any of the other fancy cultural buildings lining Van Ness street west of the Capitol, err– I mean City Hall. A friend happened to have a pair of free tickets, which is good because the price on the stub was $60! I’m not sure what it is about rich people that makes them want to get dressed up all the time, but I can’t relate. Especially when these joints always inexplicably crank the heat, necessitating stripping down to your t-shirt.

The program “Myth and the Muse” featured a “masque” by 18th century English composer Thomas Arne, and French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Pygmalion”. A masque is apparently a combination opera, theater, and musical concert, mostly heard as light party music for rich folks’ young’uns back in the day. As such it was pleasant enough, but not the sort of the thing that gets my juices flowing very much.

2008-09-24 Wed : Frederic Rzewski @ Mills College, Oakland, CA

With the concert hall still under renovation, this was held at Lisser Hall. Frederic Rzewski played solo piano. It was pleasant, a bit more atonal than I was expecting. He’s better known for some of his more politically inspired works, like “Coming Together” and “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”.

2008-09-25 Thu : Juliana Hatfield, The Welcome Matt @ Cafe du Nord, SF, CA

I’m a big Juliana Hatfield fan; I have all her records, and always try to see her shows when she makes it out here. There’s some good stuff on her most recent album How to Walk Away, but there’s also some stuff that’s a bit light-rock for my tastes. She has a bit of a split personality, into both heavy Neil Young & Crazy Horse style rocking as well as pretty pop sweetness, sometimes within the same song. It’s a combination I’ve always loved. This show, while totally enjoyable, was a bit too far to the light side of things. It looked like she had a distortion pedal or two up there, but it seemed like they weren’t used to full effect. She has a book out now (!) which I haven’t yet read, but whose subject matter is (surprise) autobiographical. [The mp3 stream is the first song of the encore, "I Picked You Up", with JH singing and playing electric guitar sans band.]

2008-09-30 Tue : My Bloody Valentine, Spectrum, Suzanne Thorpe @ Concourse Exhibition Center, SF, CA

There were a number of factors against my going to this show. It was $47.50! You could only obtain tickets through TicketBastard ™, raising the price another $15-20 or so. The venue rarely has concerts because it’s not designed to be a concert hall, it has shitty sound and shitty sight lines. But this is My Bloody Valentine we’re talking about here. Probably my favorite band of all time. Which I’ve never had the chance to see before. So basically I had to go. I scored a ticket for $40, which eased the price pain somewhat.

I caught the tail end of Suzanne Thorpe, formerly of Mercury Rev. She was playing flute through her laptop, laying down a heavy drone sound. I wasn’t sure what to do about placing myself. The place was huge, but there was already a solid block of people standing in the half of the hall in front of the sound board. I was afraid if I crammed myself in there the whole time, I would probably collapse before MBV even took the stage. They had raised areas along either side of the hall, where they were selling beverages. You know you’re in a shitty venue when you can’t get water for free, and such was the case with this place.

I walked up toward the front of this area, to the right of the stage, where I could glimpse the stage. There was a folding chair by the wall that was recently vacated, so I sat down. Turns out it was where one of the crew had been sitting. Dude let me sit there for a while before we switched and I sat on the floor. His job was to shoo people away from the area in front of stairs that apparently went down to a photo taking area near the stage. They had neon green tape on the floor where you couldn’t stand, but apparently you also weren’t supposed to stand in front of this taped off area either. Why they didn’t put down some more neon green tape, or cones, or something, I do not know. But it was a constant job for him to get up and shoo away people. When he wasn’t doing that he kept talking to me. His first sentence was something like, “wow there’s a lot of pot smoke in the air; wish I could find some pot here”. He also talked about how great it was to see the show for free, while we all had to pay lots of money, and in fact he was even making money. I don’t think he had any idea who the bands were, though. He kept shooing away people and talking about what a great view we had from here. Eventually he started talking about how thirsty he was. This is after he had asked me if I was planning on buying anything. Ah, so this is a beer for views thing, huh. There were a couple of rather large crew members blocking the top of the stairs, so the view wasn’t actually very good most of the time anyway. Other people began to sit against the wall too, making my view progressively crappier, so I wandered off to where I could occasionally see Sonic’s head through everyone else’s heads. Spectrum played a number of Spacemen 3 tunes, which was nice. It wasn’t lethargic exactly, but neither was it particularly energetic, though.

I went down to the floor and ran into some friends to the right of the sound board, just inside the green line. I’m not sure if MBV fans area just extra tall, or if the floor of the venue actually curves up to the stage, but our view kinda sucked. I had other friends somewhere closer to the stage, but finding them in the giant block of people seemed unlikely. After MBV started, I regretted not having camped out closer to the stage from the start (although again, the likelihood of my staying upright throughout is somewhat questionable), cuz what glimpses I did see were great. Still, in some ways, just being in the hall being pummeled by the sound was enough. Also, the light show used a ridiculous amount of blinding strobe lights, so perhaps it was just as well.

The volume level didn’t seem that high at first, but we were halfway back, and it did seem to get louder and louder and louder as the concert progressed. They apparently had the sampled feedback tone used for many of the high melodies play back in a canned fashion rather than, for instance, employ their biggest fan in Oakland to play keyboards, but that aspect wasn’t as irritating as I was anticipating. There was a certain crispness to the guitar sound coming through the speakers. I wasn’t sure if it was their particular idiosyncratic tone, or whether it was simply a byproduct of playing things that loud, but it was unlike any other guitar sound I’ve heard while wearing earplugs. Just really crisp, present and beautiful. When the bass guitar played certain notes, it did sorta sound like they’d blown one or more of the speakers, though.

They changed up some of the songs, making them a bit hard to recognize at first. I don’t remember too many setlist details, but certain songs like “Come In Alone” were just unbelievably powerful live. It sorta blew my mind, actually. If I was physically able to feel human emotions like joy, I think I would have at that point, but my algorithms are not that advanced. “Soon” was great, but was maybe a bit too sequenced in feel, though they did extend the outro to ecstatic proportions. The ticket had said “no cameras”, but I managed to easily sneak mine in. So easily that I regretted not having brought my audio recorder. Would have been great to have a recording of the concert, although I fear that the volume might’ve overdriven my recorder even at its lowest gain setting. I really hope MBV videotaped the show, although I didn’t see any evidence of that, because the light show was often really beautiful. MBV’s music implies super saturated visuals, ala the cover of Loveless, so it was nice to see the sky melting to accompany the liquidizing of our internal organs.

And of course they closed with “You Made Me Realise”, whose middle section consists of a 20 minute noise show that would’ve fit right in at any local noise scene show. The volume seemed to be at its maximum level throughout. The texture kept changing, as if climbing up to yet another level of distortion. It was really interesting, actually, not the endurance test I had heard about. You just had to grin, it was fun. Unfortunately the clock was quickly approaching the midnight hour, and I had parked in a spot where I could get a street cleaning ticket at that time. I was conflicted, but eventually decided to make my way to the back, in order to avoid making the night $50 more expensive than necessary. Probably everyone was thinking “what a wuss” as I walked by. Fortunately, by the time I got to the back, they launched back into the end of the song, so I avoided an ignominious defeat at their noise hands. Outside I heard people say, “it sounds just as good out here”. I ran to my car to find it still unscathed by the slings and arrows of outrageous parking enforcement. Not sure if it was the run or the show’s amplitudinousness, but my body seemed to be vibrating in an alien manner. Surprisingly, most of my cilia seemed to have survived the onslaught, and my ears felt clean. [Movie is a snippet of MBV playing "Nothing Much to Lose".]

2008-10-03 Fri : Various Artists @ Illuminated Corridor, Oakland, CA

Illuminated Corridor is a fun event that’s been held in various alleys in Oakland a few times now. Generally it’s a bunch of Bay Area underground audio and/or visual types set up separately up and down an alleyway, but close enough that it can create a big mess of cacophony. Attendance was fairly low by the time I made it there, perhaps because of the season’s first bit of rain.

2008-10-03 Fri : Thrones, Silentist, Burmese, Ettrick @ Huffin House, Oakland, CA

Noise shows and house shows are two great tastes that taste great together. Was nice to see the Huff crew and some other folks I hadn’t seen in quite some time. [The movie is of Burmese.]

2008-10-04 Sat : Deerhoof, Okay @ Great American Music Hall, SF, CA

I missed the first band, The Happy Hollows. Okay seemed to split the crowd between those who found them hypnotically repetitive and those who found them repetitively boring. I usually side with the former faction. Annoyingly, there seemed to be a few douchebags in the audience who thought it cool to shout derogatory bullshit at them between songs. I suppose the incidence of audience douchebaggery generally rises with increased popularity, but historically Deerhoof audiences have tended to buck this trend.

Deerhoof were playing songs off their excellent new album Offend Maggie, along with some older classics. I’ve never seen them put on a bad show, and tonight was no exception. They’re always inspiring to see. The sound mix though seemed a bit off at first, with soft guitars and boomy bass, but it got better as the show progressed. Sadly, my view of Greg’s drumming was blocked most of the time. He’s one of the few drummers around that non-drummers actually actively want to watch. Incidentally, Deerhoof have just embarked on a tour, and it’s likely they’re going somewhere near where you live, so you should do yourself the favor of going to see them. Heck, bring the kids! A six year old named Isabel was there enjoying her first concert. [The movie is a snippet of Okay; the mp3 stream is of Deerhoof playing one of their new songs, "Fresh Born".]