A quick recap of a weeks worth of amazing shows. It all started off with Blonde Redhead last Wednesday at The Glasshouse. Just as I had expected, it was the worst concert I’ve ever seen them play. A lot of the songs off “23” are all backing tracks, so it ends up more like Blonde Redhead karaoke than an actual live show, but at the same time I was really excited to hear them play 7 songs off the new record.
Next up was The Jesus And Mary Chain also at The Glasshouse. I had been looking forward to this show even before it was actually announced. For months it just said “Secret Show” on The Glasshouse website, but all the speculation pointed toward a JAMC warm-up for Coachella. I knew I had to be there for their first show in 8 years. The sound at The Glasshouse started out horrible but got better toward the end. William’s guitar playing was pretty awful for the first half of the show, as my friend pointed out “He sounds like I sound when I play guitar.” Not pretty. But overall, the song selection was top notch and I was glad I went.
The next day was Coachella and all good intentions of leaving early and getting to Indio on time were lost after getting home from the bar late the night before. So, my streak of missing Tokyo Police Club has continued and is now up to 5. The day started off with a little Of Montreal and Amy Winehouse, both of who were pretty forgettable. I wandered over to watch Silversun Pickups which was interesting since the last time I saw them they were playing to a crowd of about 30 at the Silverlake Lounge. Then I met up with friends and waited for Arctic Monkeys to finish from across the polo field. After they were done, we grabbed our spot for The Jesus And Mary Chain and waited. I was pretty excited even though I had been a little disappointed with their show the night before. But they came on and put on a great show, worlds better than the Glasshouse show. It was the same set, same band, same everything, but the sound was way better and the performance was top notch. After they played, I suffered through Jarvis Cocker spending nearly half his set talking about how they were running late instead of actually playing songs. He finished up and Sonic Youth took the stage about 30 min. late. I had resolved that Bjork was the priority show of the evening, so I had to ditch out on Sonic Youth after only 3 songs which I wasn’t too happy about. I have never seen Sonic Youth live before, and I never really liked them until “Rather Ripped” came out, so I was really looking forward to their performance. Out of the 3 songs I saw, two were from “Rather Ripped” so I was content. I then moved over to the big stage to get my place for Bjork. I saw her the last time she played Coachella in 2002 and then again later at The Hollywood Bowl. Her first Coachella show was great, but I didn’t really care for the Hollywood Bowl show, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from this performance. When I was standing there, they were testing the cameras on the video screens and I saw a shot of the “Reactable” which is a crazy instrument developed by the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona Spain. I had seen clips of it in action on YouTube, but when I saw that on the screen, I knew I was in for a treat. Bjork came out, put on a great show, but really kicked it in gear for the last half of her set. It ended up being the best performance of the evening. There’s a million clips of the show on YouTube. We weighed our options and decided to ditch out on Saturday and Sunday’s concerts.
The final concert of the week happened last night. The Cornelius Group played their own show at The El Rey and put on one of the best shows I’ve seen in a loooooong time. Easily on par with Pizzicato Five or GusGus. They are currently on tour, so if you have the opportunity to see them on this tour, do yourself a favor and go. Even if you’re not a big fan of the music, the show will still be worth the price of admission.
Mp3/video posts will be back tomorrow.
