Download Festival 2006

Saturday I went to Shoreline with Carl and David to see The Download Festival 2006. I went mostly to see Muse, although Beck and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a significant draw also. TV On the Radio turned out to be an interesting surprise. I don't think I could possibly categorize their music. The Shins were pretty cool too. Nice harmonies. Muse was phenomenal as always. Matt Bellamy is one of the most interesting musicians around, IMO. Fantastic set. I went off to the restroom between Muse and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and afterwards I was getting a polish sausage when a small concert broke out behind where I was standing. I turned around and there were these dudes doing fire dancing and a crazy drum laden sound was going on onstage. The fire dancers were followed by a belly dancer, followed by two chicks in drag doing a strip tease/burlesque sort of thing, followed by more fire dancers, etc. I counted and there were seven or eight percussionists on stage, plus a bass player, one guy doing double duty at the keyboards, and eventually some horn players. It turned out that the entertaining set I was watching was a group called The Mutaytor ("Because Evolution Takes Too Long"). You can see some of their performance in this video clip. Very cool stuff. They are supposedly playing The Fillmore on Nov. 11, but I can't find anyplace that acknowledges that statement. Anyway, I made my way back and caught the last half of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' set, which was kind of ho hum. Beck closed out the show. His set was made most entertaining by virtue of the fact that he had a puppet stage on stage and all the puppets were of the band and whatever the band was doing, the puppets were doing. Carl pointed out that the puppet stage had a puppet puppet stage on it. During the encore they played a short film called "Snake On A Bus" which featured a largish rubber snake invading the puppet tour bus and humorously killing the puppet band members. I was especially impressed by the puppet refrigerator they showed one of the puppets getting attacked at, because it had puppet sized cans of diet Pepsi and Fuze energy drink. All in all, the show was well worth attending.