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Dec. 6th, 2002 02:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
like_a_clownI just saw Beck.
(Warning: this may be boring, rambling nonsense. It's a lot of me trying to collect memories, so I can write about it later and remember it all.)
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adgy, I wish I could tell you it sucked. I wish I could tell you it wouldn't have been worth the drive after all. I wish I were grumpy about the two hours out of which I felt cheated.
But wait -- no I don't. Sorry.
Confetti is still fluttering onto my shoulders from my hair, and tomorrow I shall have a plethora of photos, and it was so fucking great I'm still smiling despite all the shit that's going on.
We got there at 7:15, picked our tickets and a photo pass up from Will Call - it feels so good to not have to hide the camera, I tell you what -- and got a burrito. We brought the food back, sat on the fountain outside, and ate and watched the hip-looking people as the emcee announced the Flaming Lips, and we finished up as the band was playing Race For The Prize. We rushed into the Arlington auditorium and found our seats: in the orchestra section, but a couple dozen rows back. We kept walking, thinking we'd get some photos and move on.
We didn't see the seats the rest of the night; instead, we leaned on the stage (well, Gabe did, he being the one with the good camera and the photo sticker -- I stood behind a short girl who leaned on the stage) not eight feet from Beck's mic stand. I could've pulled on his belly hair a couple times, we were so close.
The Lips, save Wayne Coyne, were all dressed up in animal suits: a zebra, a tiger, and a fuzzy thing that I assume was a bunny, none of which had the proper animal heads. Wayne was in an off-white suit. He sang into the mic and looked into the mic cam, which blew his face up to 20' high on the backdrop. They played Yoshimi, She Don't Use Jelly, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know. It was one "big noisy birthday party," with the confetti everywhere and the three-foot pink ballons bouncing around the crowd and onstage (I don't know how that drummer kept playing). In fact, Wayne led a round of Happy Birthday for some audience members. He busted out a nun puppet during the end of Yoshimi (I think). It was glorious, as evidenced by Wayne's huge smile and childlike openness to emotion, especially joy: I've never seen a band that made me so happy to feel like a five-year-old. The couple dozen hangers-on that flankedthe band were dressed as animals as well, but the only ones with heads were a panda and a wierd lizard thing; near the end of the set, everyone came offstage and weaved thru the audience, giving everyone hugs. I got hugged from behind by some girl, and I reached behind me to hug her back but I think I patted her on the butt. Sorry.
And then Beck tok the stage, in jeans, leather jacket and floppy hat, all apparently thrift-store finds.
He played an acoustic set to open the show, including much of his new album -- a medley of songs, mostly new, I think, closed the solo part. It was striking how ... in control he was, even though he mumbled the words so muddily I was hard-pressed to identify them as English half the time. It wa just him, a guitar, a harmonica, and the audience; it was spellbinding. To use a hackneyed phrase.
Then the lights came up behind the scrim, and the Flaming Lips chugged to life as Beck's backing band. Over the course of the evening, they played many of the big hits: Loser, Pay No Mind (well, it's a big hit in my mind, even if Beck did mumble the whole thing so bad I didn't hear about the flying dildo), New Pollution; and Devil's Haircut and Where It's At in the encores.
Beck is a slick dancer, let me tell you. He had moves such as the "pull out the mirror and comb the hair," the disco point, the shuffle-and spin, the rock-star kick, and stuff. He played a black Silvertone with a Rush sticker and an "I Love Country Music" sticker on it; he used te slide on it for Loser. For Devils Haircut, he came out in a white jumpsuit with, I think, white glow ropes strung all over it; for Where It's At, he made the rounds of all the instruments, taking a turn at the Rhodes piano, the P-bass, the Jaguar (playing around its owner, the Lips guitarist, by means of encircling him in a hug), and the automotive drop light Wayne was whirling around above his head; then he went after the drums. He can't play drums much better than I can; this gives me hope.
That's Beck's appeal, theorizexd Gabe: he's everyman. Everyone in the place is more attractive than he, and his songs are deceptively simple enough that people think "Hey, that could be ME" -- but no matter how tantalizing, he's just so fucking good. Said Gabe, he kind of half-asses many of the styles he dabbles in, whether that be hip-hop, funk, or what. (Not the roots acoustic stuff, though, say I: that's where his true seriousness shines. It was amazing what the complete lack of production does to a song like he has -- that said, all the new "for sleep" material that I've heard on Sea Change does sound much the same). But half-assing aside, he's just really fucking talented at songwriting, lyrics, arrangements, etc.: he just makes it work like not many people can, no matter how simple it may seem like some of his songs are.
And at the end, he played "Nobody's Fault But My Own," accompanying himself with a harmonium. It was a good end.
I met the girl who got Beck's set list, and she said she'd scan and send it.
We got drinks from Vons with Pam and a couple of her friends. We laughed about all the people we could think of whom it'd be funny to call "cunt." Then Gabe and I went to his house, and he made us tea, and I got allergic to bunnies, and I met his roommates but had to leave.
So. In short, a happy,happy evening.
(Warning: this may be boring, rambling nonsense. It's a lot of me trying to collect memories, so I can write about it later and remember it all.)
adgy, I wish I could tell you it sucked. I wish I could tell you it wouldn't have been worth the drive after all. I wish I were grumpy about the two hours out of which I felt cheated.But wait -- no I don't. Sorry.
Confetti is still fluttering onto my shoulders from my hair, and tomorrow I shall have a plethora of photos, and it was so fucking great I'm still smiling despite all the shit that's going on.
We got there at 7:15, picked our tickets and a photo pass up from Will Call - it feels so good to not have to hide the camera, I tell you what -- and got a burrito. We brought the food back, sat on the fountain outside, and ate and watched the hip-looking people as the emcee announced the Flaming Lips, and we finished up as the band was playing Race For The Prize. We rushed into the Arlington auditorium and found our seats: in the orchestra section, but a couple dozen rows back. We kept walking, thinking we'd get some photos and move on.
We didn't see the seats the rest of the night; instead, we leaned on the stage (well, Gabe did, he being the one with the good camera and the photo sticker -- I stood behind a short girl who leaned on the stage) not eight feet from Beck's mic stand. I could've pulled on his belly hair a couple times, we were so close.
The Lips, save Wayne Coyne, were all dressed up in animal suits: a zebra, a tiger, and a fuzzy thing that I assume was a bunny, none of which had the proper animal heads. Wayne was in an off-white suit. He sang into the mic and looked into the mic cam, which blew his face up to 20' high on the backdrop. They played Yoshimi, She Don't Use Jelly, and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know. It was one "big noisy birthday party," with the confetti everywhere and the three-foot pink ballons bouncing around the crowd and onstage (I don't know how that drummer kept playing). In fact, Wayne led a round of Happy Birthday for some audience members. He busted out a nun puppet during the end of Yoshimi (I think). It was glorious, as evidenced by Wayne's huge smile and childlike openness to emotion, especially joy: I've never seen a band that made me so happy to feel like a five-year-old. The couple dozen hangers-on that flankedthe band were dressed as animals as well, but the only ones with heads were a panda and a wierd lizard thing; near the end of the set, everyone came offstage and weaved thru the audience, giving everyone hugs. I got hugged from behind by some girl, and I reached behind me to hug her back but I think I patted her on the butt. Sorry.
And then Beck tok the stage, in jeans, leather jacket and floppy hat, all apparently thrift-store finds.
He played an acoustic set to open the show, including much of his new album -- a medley of songs, mostly new, I think, closed the solo part. It was striking how ... in control he was, even though he mumbled the words so muddily I was hard-pressed to identify them as English half the time. It wa just him, a guitar, a harmonica, and the audience; it was spellbinding. To use a hackneyed phrase.
Then the lights came up behind the scrim, and the Flaming Lips chugged to life as Beck's backing band. Over the course of the evening, they played many of the big hits: Loser, Pay No Mind (well, it's a big hit in my mind, even if Beck did mumble the whole thing so bad I didn't hear about the flying dildo), New Pollution; and Devil's Haircut and Where It's At in the encores.
Beck is a slick dancer, let me tell you. He had moves such as the "pull out the mirror and comb the hair," the disco point, the shuffle-and spin, the rock-star kick, and stuff. He played a black Silvertone with a Rush sticker and an "I Love Country Music" sticker on it; he used te slide on it for Loser. For Devils Haircut, he came out in a white jumpsuit with, I think, white glow ropes strung all over it; for Where It's At, he made the rounds of all the instruments, taking a turn at the Rhodes piano, the P-bass, the Jaguar (playing around its owner, the Lips guitarist, by means of encircling him in a hug), and the automotive drop light Wayne was whirling around above his head; then he went after the drums. He can't play drums much better than I can; this gives me hope.
That's Beck's appeal, theorizexd Gabe: he's everyman. Everyone in the place is more attractive than he, and his songs are deceptively simple enough that people think "Hey, that could be ME" -- but no matter how tantalizing, he's just so fucking good. Said Gabe, he kind of half-asses many of the styles he dabbles in, whether that be hip-hop, funk, or what. (Not the roots acoustic stuff, though, say I: that's where his true seriousness shines. It was amazing what the complete lack of production does to a song like he has -- that said, all the new "for sleep" material that I've heard on Sea Change does sound much the same). But half-assing aside, he's just really fucking talented at songwriting, lyrics, arrangements, etc.: he just makes it work like not many people can, no matter how simple it may seem like some of his songs are.
And at the end, he played "Nobody's Fault But My Own," accompanying himself with a harmonium. It was a good end.
I met the girl who got Beck's set list, and she said she'd scan and send it.
We got drinks from Vons with Pam and a couple of her friends. We laughed about all the people we could think of whom it'd be funny to call "cunt." Then Gabe and I went to his house, and he made us tea, and I got allergic to bunnies, and I met his roommates but had to leave.
So. In short, a happy,happy evening.
