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My review isn’t as well thought out as ZS’s; perhaps I let too much time pass in writing it up. First off I’ll say that I hate festivals, I hate opening bands, I hate seeing any band I’m not incredibly familiar with and way “into”. In general, I don’t at all like the “live” experience. I don’t like crowds of people, I don’t like being at the mercy of a bad mix at the incompetent hands of a soundboard technician who just wants to crank the drums, and I don’t like loud earsplitting noises (unless I’M playing my Sonic Youth records). So yes, I have no business going to a concert. But I enjoy spending a day at a festival if I’m with someone who has similar taste in music, an understanding of art, a cynical sound sense of sarcasm, and whose personality is mellow like my own. Of course I wouldn’t go at all if there weren’t at least a few bands I wanted to see, and the genre was generally tolerable. So as my concert buddy had to work, I invited Zombie Slayer.
There were 25 bands, three stages. The main stage, the “festival” stage, and the “local” stage. I wasn’t familiar with the local bands, but those we heard sounded better than most on the “festival” stage, or mainstage, for that matter. Except for the last one, I think Audrye Sessions – sounded too much like U2. I love Silversun Pickups, one of the best newer bands around by far, reminding me heavily of Sonic Youth and pixies. I’m one of the few Bay-Area-ites that haven’t already seen them live, and I was impressed. I like the freaky drummer head banging thing. At least two thrown shoes squarely caught his drum kit, one hitting him, the other landing on the snare. Mmm, such precision from an inebriated audience…
At 6 PM the mainstage opened – I was looking forward to seeing Interpol and Social Distortion. Unfortunately I had to sit through sets from the Kaiser Chiefs who sucked raw ass and Queers of the Stone Age who were likewise unenthralling. Interpol were okay; the mix was bad, the bass drum excruciatingly obnoxious, the vocals non-existent. Social D. was better; we could clearly see Mike Ness’s tats from our 9th row center perch.
On the fashion front, the women weren’t as cool or as hot as I expected. Too many wore the apparently in vogue fashion monstrosity that is some half-dress thing, which no self-respecting gay clothing designer could have penned. It covers the back-end extremity without the added benefit of actually being a dress, providing the advantage of easy access for a quick screw behind, or inside, the portapotty.
Overall, it was a fun day in the sun with short sets from a few great bands, and the bad bands weren’t on long enough to force an early evacuation from the venue.
Recently:
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- Brunettes/Black hair ++
- Sonic Youth last night at The Fox
- “Cruelty to art”, or “Food for Thought”
- Stem or Bowl?
- The Evils of Technology
- A.D.D. movie review - A Pair of John Lennon Shootings
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- Movie review Razzle Dazzle: A Journey Into Dance 2007
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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 7:58 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Kaiser Chiefs are on the cover of some big music rag. I showed my wife who they were. Man, I hated that band. I wonder how they got people to cheer. They were like a bad Oasis, and Oasis is bad to begin with.
As for Queens, maybe they wouldn’t have been so bad if their sound engineer wasn’t a complete useless piece of shit who needs to get devoured by zombies. Well, I take that back, their songs are monotonous and they would still suck.
But yes, Social D and Silversun Pickups were wonderful. They were worth the price of admission. If only we could have fast forwarded some of the other bands.
Too many wore the apparently in vogue fashion monstrosity that is some half-dress thing, which no self-respecting gay clothing designer could have penned.
There’s no way a gay man designed those clothes we saw. If he designed something like that, his butch lover would beat him to death out of general principle. It would be the most gross violation to the gay community since the death of Harvey Milk, may he rest in peace.