A very aggressive rock mix at the bowl, it sounded head and shoulders better than Arcade Fire a year ago (That mix really annoyed me, and there was nothing above 8kHz above the third section). That being said, it was still a less than stellar experience, and here's why: The Hollywood Bowl is so big that unless you're a massive band used to playing the big rooms (Radiohead, Neil Diamond, [shudder] Dave Matthews), a lot of the energy just dissipates and by the time it gets to the rear of the house, there's so little left that people back there can do nothing but drink their cheap-ish wine and fall asleep. Also, those bigger bands bring something in the realm of production (Video, lights or some combination thereof) which helps fill in those gaps. But for a show like this, where none of the bands are otherwise playing rooms larger than 3000 there is nothing there other than lights and rock power. Admittedly, all of the bands this night had rock power to spare, but it did not carry the day. This was also a problem I had with the otherwise amazing Arcade Fire/LCD soundsystem show there last year, the tour was built for rooms no larger than 8000 people, and in a room twice that size, it just felt small.
Street Scene in San Diego (Beck, Justice, TV On the Radio, New Pornographers, Antibalas, Spoon, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Hot Chip, amongst others)
OK... Mini-Coachella in downtown San Diego! I got a lot of what I expected in awesome music, and fantastic production values. The most interesting, of course was Beck, with a bank of LED's behind him, which functioned as a low-resolution video wall, and like any good rock show had a very 3 act technological structure. Act 1, more simple lights and video (Almost all of this part had no video [if there was video, it was static imaged], and no color in the lighting) Act 2, a bit more complicated (Still no color in lights, but some more interesting looks, more active video), and Act 3 where there was very active video (some of it was i-mag, or taken from old films), and color looks in the lighting. This entire show felt very Talking Heads - Stop Making Sense, in the lighting and video. Overall - not a complete waste of time!
Other than that, Justice was Justice, Spoon was Spoon, and the New Pornographers were the New Pornographers (sans Neko Case and Dan Bejar) - all in all a great evening of the rock!
Burn After Reading
Not the coen's best. I could say more, but I'm currently too tired. Well, it made me squirm, take that for what you will.
Planned viewing for this week -
Brazilian Girls
the First Presidential Debate
perhaps CSS
perhaps Il Trittico
perhaps This Beautiful City
perhaps 9 to 5
till then
mahalo
