The plan was to do a bit of pre-show mingling on the balcony of my friend's condo at the Icon building across the street from SS before any of the bands we wanted to see came on, but when we got there we realized just how good a vantage point the balcony was and so ended up missing MGMT and Foals and getting in just in time to catch the New Pornographers. Their records are pretty good but not spectacular and when we saw them at Coachella I thought they were kind of a weak show. Seeing them this time it was basically AC Newman and his backing band rather than the "indie super-group" they usually are. No Dan Bejar or Neko Case and after watching a couple songs we split. Maybe my palate has changed but the New Pornographers music sounds watered-down to me with the exception of Bejar's fake-Bowie contributions. Maybe it's something in the Molsen up North.
From there we headed to the beer garden and TV on the Radio, who put on a really good show. Seeing them at Coachella left me with a bad taste in my mouth but maybe the couple years practice have actually galvanized them into a band because the show sounded amazing. "Wolf Like Me" killed and so did "Staring at the Sun", which they bombed at Coachella but were now riding and humping, sounding incredible. Our friend had given us two double-something-with-vodka-fruit-juice-and-random-energy-syrup-nonsense which was the best bang for the buck drink-wise but a challenge to actually get down the gullet in time for the GZA. So we totally missed the GZA. But we did get to watch Spoon on the monitors who were putting on a great show. I'm all for the all-ages shows, but damn it there's nothing more annoying than being wrangled into a beer-pen instead of being able to watch the show I paid good money for. What chaos and mayhem would ensue if the all-ages crowd was subjected to seeing people walk around with beer, enjoying bands? So we caught a bit of Justice while we ate and then headed over to Vampire Weekend, who I haven't really listened to a lot of but the 3 or so songs I caught sounded really good. Maybe it was the stage being set in between two buildings giving it good acoustics, but they were one of the best sounding bands of the night.
I couldn't stay long though as I wanted to be in the front for Beck so we walked along the right-hand side of the crowd and ended up with a pretty sweet view for Beck, save the honkifarian in front of me flailing his goddamn dirty dreadlocks all over the place. Beck's band came out and all grabbed instruments and got down to business without any nonsense. Beck himself had an eerie Kurt Cobain thing going with a flannel tied around his waist, some kind of black jacket, t-shirt with jeans and bleached out hair. He started the set with "Loser" which caught me off guard. I felt like I was watching Beck 15 years from now at the Fairgrounds. I'll have kids and they'll just want to go hang out with their friends and smoke cigarettes behind the Gravitron and I'll be forcing them to the grandstand so we can watch Beck and trying to impart what an important musician he was. He'll come out with "Loser" and the crowd of 800 fat 40 and 50-somethings will all cheer wildly. So it seemed weird. He shot a "Hello San Diego, it's great to be here" and then jumped into "Nausea" and followed with a choppy version of "Nicotine and Gravy" as well as "Devil's Haircut", "Gamma Ray", "Timebomb" and "Modern Guilt". I ended up leaving about 3/4 of the way through the show, mainly because I was pooed but also because there's something really unsatisfying about seeing Beck live. Hear me out on this one because Beck is one of my all time favorites, but he just doesn't translate live. Beck makes amazing record after amazing record, but they're heavily reliant on samples and production, which just inherently can't translate to a live setting without some kind of DJ. I never thought I'd actually want a band to bring a DJ to their live show but Beck needs it. With a live band he's dropped down a few pegs. Still good, but not the experience one would expect.
DAY TWO
Fun. The first night had been a good time and all but Saturday after recouping and gathering strength we made it back to the condo in time for a couple quick Heineken listening to the end of Spiritualized and then it was down to the show to catch the Hives. I dismissed the Hives these past few years as being part of the post-Strokes "Let's sign a bunch of 'The *****s' bands" craze along with The Vines, etc. but they do have that Scandinavian ear for melody and in the past few weeks I've been starting to give them a lot more credit after listening to their quirky brand of rock n' roll. I figured they'd be a fun show and so we all headed straight for them when we got in, dodging the quicksand of the beer garden. We made a smart move because this was quite possibly the show of the night. The lead singer pranced around like Jagger in his prime, talked about how he loved San Diego and himself, leaped, strutted, flailed, postured and they played like giants crushing the crowd with their gigantic footprint. This was rock and roll as I remember it. No one was moping, no one taking themselves seriously, no one whining about how their parents never loved them but just a couple talented guys making catchy Euro-rock and having as much fun as possible with it. The audience responded and everyone I was with gave it the show of the night award.
From there we headed to the Casbah stage to catch the Night Marchers and get a drink. It was great seeing John Reis again and the Night Marchers are no Rocket but a solid continuation of the RFTC legacy. The live show didn't communicate all the strange quirks of the record which are what separate this band from being the second coming of RFTC, but it was still a great show none the less and the crowd was into them. We staked out our spot for the Eagles of Death Metal, who I've been a super-fan of since before their record came out and though I've seen them a number of times, each show satisfies. Here was more fun-loving rock n' roll done the right way and with mustaches. Strutting, vamping rock and roll with Jesse Hughes the lead singer proclaiming his love and adoration for the ladies of the audience and thanking everyone for coming to the show. EODM deliver the goods in a way that would make Little Richard and John Holmes proud, which is all they ever wanted.
The show had already been made for me by this point and I ended up drinking heavily with a professor of literature at SDSU and talking about books for a good long time until it was time to find our friends who were by the Sound Tribe Sector 9 stage. I have never heard STS9 and I have a natural aversion to anything expressly hippie-esque and especially techno-funk-hippie-hop and within the first two songs the smug hipster in me was calling bullshit and we got out of there to make it to DEVO. No disrespect to my friends who like STS9 but it didn't float my proverbial boat. DEVO was one I had been looking forward too and they killed it, propped it's dead body up and killed it again. They stomped around full of nerd-intent and put on an amazing show. Not watered down, not a fairground-shell of their once glory but the mighty DEVO running around and belting out every song with dorked-out abandon. They worked it like pros and I saw many rockers from other bands dancing around in front of where we were standing. Some interpersonal drama and weirdness transpired with some of the people we came with and so we ended up walking out about 10 min before their show ended, just long enough to stop at Man Man for a couple minutes before leaving and Man Man where putting down a pretty good set themselves. There were two separate groups of about 4 girls each absolutely getting down with themselves dancing and so I couldn't deny the success of what I was seeing. Hipsters were dancing? What was this? Good job Man Man. We left the show, got burritos and called it a good night.
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