Oakland Fox Theater

(click to see more)

Noelle and I went to the Fox Theater in Oakland for the first time a few months back right after it had opened after being vacant for many years. I was really impressed with how beautiful it was on the inside. I was even more impressed that they apparently let people take pictures in there if the artists don't explicitly forbid it. So on the next trip there, to see Video Games Live, I took my 40D and a few lenses. Hopefully I captured the feeling.

NIN

A bunch of us went up to Oakland to see Nine Inch Nails Friday night. Noelle scored us some fantastic seats: incredibly close to the stage. One of the things I love about NIN shows is that they always seem to have so much variety. I think I've seen about half a dozen shows in the past couple of years and they've always been different. This show, like the last time I saw Trent and the boys at Oakland had a really outstanding set of visuals. I like this venue because it's large enough to have cool special effects, but not so large that you're really ever far away from the stage. The sound was also exemplary, perhaps the best of any NIN show I've seen. I thought Trent would do a few songs from The Slip, which he did, but I was surprised that that they also played several songs from the Ghosts albums (which are all instrumentals). The fans seemed surprisingly tolerant. Of course they played pretty much all of the classic NIN songs, although the arrangements for some of them were unusual. Anyway, it was a great night out, definitely one of the better concerts we've been to this year.

STP

Noelle and Coallee and Sean and I caught Stone Temple Pilots in San Diego Sunday night after Comic-Con wound down. The opening acts were BRMC and Wolfmother. Wolfmother! Hooray! I've been wanting to see them again for ages, so this was quite a pleasant surprise. STP came out and did a bunch of songs from Purple that I haven't heard in a while, so that was worth the price of admission alone, to me. (Well, Wolfmother probably was worth it too.) Overall, the band seemed kind of mixed to me, especially Scott Weiland's vocals. Sometimes they were hard to listen to, other times they were fantastic. Definitely worth doing, but I felt a little nostalgic for the turn of the decade shows I saw when they were an incredibly tight band. Hopefully they'll get things better together after being on the road for a while.

KT Tunstall

Noelle and I caught KT Tunstall at the Warfield tonight. Pretty cool show. I especially liked how she appeared to use a looper to create backup singers from samples of her singing. It was a mostly acoustic set with a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and drummer in her backup band.

Velvet Relvolver

David, Nancy, and I went to see VR last night at the Warfield last night. It was a pretty good show, although kind of short. They had no opening act and were about 45 minutes late getting onstage, which worked out fine for us. We were sitting on the front row of the balcony, so we had a great view of the band. They played mostly their VR songs, with a few STP ("Interstate Love Song", "Vasoline") songs and at least one GnR ("Mr Brownstone") song. Maybe it's because I've never seen him up close before, but Scott Weiland did not look good (i.e. healthy) last night. I was surprised how energetic he was on stage given his physical appearance. Perhaps that's why the show was so short (about 75 minutes). Anyway, the music was generally pretty good (I was disappointed by Vasoline) and I'd probably go again.

Tool

A bunch of us went to see Tool play at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium last night. It was another outstanding show, although a little more low key (i.e. they played more of their quieter songs) than the other shows I've seen. The version of Rosetta Stoned was outstanding! In other news, I got to see Maynard for the first time in about the six times I've seen him. He was sporting a mohawk and shades. As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I love Tool, but I hate Tool fans. A bunch of vicious brutes, shoving people out of their way to get closer to the stage really wanted me to do physical violence. The folks at the rear of the hall were much mellower and nicer. And we could see better there anyway, so I think I know where to stand next time.

Electric Six

So Noelle and I finally got to see the Electric Six Tuesday night. They've been around a few times, but we always seem to be out of town when they come around. I was a little worried that the trip would be a boondoggle since we were both a bit tired and the show was at the Independent, which is in a largely residential neighborhood, which has 0.0% public parking in the vicinity. I shouldn't have worried, as it was a really fun show and we got a parking place in under half an hour.

The opening act Gore Gore Girls was an interesting all girl, mostly vinyl clad rockabilly type act. They were fairly entertaining.

The Six themselves were in fine form. I'd never seen them before and was surprised to see that the lead singer looked vaguely like the singer from Simply Red (if you're old enough to remember them). The band was tight and we got to hear Improper Dancing, Dance Commander, Gay Bar, and of course Danger! High Voltage! (among others).

The Cure

Noelle, Jenn, Rachel, and I went to the Download Festival at Shoreline on Saturday. We skipped most of the acts, but got there in time to see AFI *yawn* and The Cure. The Cure were surprisingly good for a band that's been playing for 30+ years. I guess Robert Smith is the only one who's really been at it that long, but still. Anyway, they rocked out surprisingly hard. They did a set that lasted almost three hours, with two encores. I got to hear live a bunch of songs I never thought I would from the old days. No "Lovecats" or "Burn", alas. Maybe some other time if Robert keeps at it.

Hey Boy, Hey Girl

The Chemical Brothers played a gig at the SF Concourse last Friday. I was a bit unsure if it would be worth going to, but it seemed like a halfway decent idea at the time. Well it turned out great for a couple reasons. Number one, the Chemical Bros put on a much better show than I was expecting. Great lightshow and visuals. The other great thing was that Ladytron opened for them, much to my pleasant surprise. I was also a little surprised because the previous times I was there the place was packed, but this time we got right in next to the sound board and there was initially no one around us. I was pretty tired from the previous night out, but it was pretty enjoyable nonetheless.

Treasure Island Festival

On Saturday, Noelle and I went up to Treasure Island to see a festival concert. They had a ferris wheel:


And a nice view of the city:









They had a number of art installations, including solar sunflowers that lit up at night, these sound generating tubes, and a giant flowery thing. There was even a classic arcade game tent so I could get in some Tempest. They had a lot of people hawking various kinds of art, including some people selling their concert posters. I bought... a few.

A lot of people came:





There were of course, a lot of bands playing. We saw the end of MIA, who had that Karangarangarang song. Flosstradamus was a cool DJ duo. I really liked what I heard of Gotan Project while I was waiting in line. They were a sort of dancy Cirque du Soleil sounding group. I also liked Kinky, a Mexican rock band that, well, rocked. Finally, at long last we got to get our groove on with Thievery Corporation.




Before heading out:

Rock the Bells

Noelle, Wendy, Dan and I went to Rock the Bells this weekend was at the parking lot for Giants stadium in SF. We took the train up from Millbrae because we were ominously warned about the limited traffic. The concert headliners were Rage Against the Machine and about 20 hip hop acts on two stages. We got there just in time to see Public Enemy (Flavor Flav!) leaving the main stage. I was a little sad not to see more of them. We were about sixteen miles from the stage. There was a giant stage like object only a mile in front of us, but that was just the massive projection screens they had. The next act on the main was Cypress Hill. They were pretty entertaining, probably the second best part of the show. After that was Wu Tang Clan, which I thought was ok, but the crowd really seemed to dig. Finally, after it had gotten dark, Rage came on. They were in great form. Tom Morello was excellent as usual. That man does crazy, crazy things on guitar. I got to hear Calm Like A Bomb and Wake Up live, which was really cool. Actually, i think they played every song I would have liked to have heard, except possible The Ghost of Tom Joad. After their set ended, we moseyed over to the Caltrain station where we were packed like sardines into the train with other concertgoers.

Rush, Check

See Rush perform "Tom Sawyer" live.

Check. Pretty good show. They did well for a bunch of old guys. Played over two hours.

Chris Cornell

I went to the Warfield with Nancy and Jon last night to see Chris Cornell. I had expected that he would stick to his solo material, but I was pleasantly surprised to see him do a ton of Audioslave and Soundgarden material as well. His voice is so awesome and he sings so effortlessly. It really makes me jealous. He mostly just sang, although he played a few acoustic guitar numbers (including an impressive cover of "Billie Jean"). The band he had with him was pretty talented too, although neither of the guitarists is a Kim Thayill or a Tom Morello. Highlights included Rusty Cage, Spoonman, Burden In My Hand, Cochise, Show Me How To Live, and a sonic tsunami I've never heard before called Jesus Christ Pose (old Soundgarden song). All in all a phenomenal show. Even the sound was good (we were sitting right behind the sound board), which is unusual at the Warfield. The only downside was Noelle couldn't come because she hurt her back last weekend. :-(

Quick Update

I haven't blogged in a while, a lot of stuff has been going on. Went to St. Maarten at the end of April. Beautiful beaches. The island was pretty nice. Diving was fantastic (very warm water, lots to see). I got certified again while I was there. They have some great restaurants on the French side. Traffic sucked. About halfway through the trip we got a call from home that Noelle's apartment had had a fire. A lot of her things were destroyed, but the worst thing is that her three kitties died. Needless to say that put a damper on the whole trip. I was very upset and Noelle was inconsolable. Our friends were great though, they did a lot of cleaning before we got back and helped with the moving afterwards to make that experience relatively painless. We had planned to move Noelle in by the end of May anyway, this just accelerated plans. What stuff that survived the fire has been moved to my place and Noelle and I are now cohabitating. There's still a fair amount of things to do to finish with the unpacking, but most of the rooms in the house look decent.

Noelle and I took a weekend trip to Monterey/Carmel and that was pretty fun. We stayed in an Alice In Wonderland themed B&B. Went down to San Simeon for a day trip to see Hearst Castle. Went to a couple of concerts, most notably The Police last week. Very strong showing by the boys.

Anyway, I'll probably get back to blogging now that things seem a little less crazy.