I went to a show last night. My friends' band played their first show -- all of three songs without lyrics -- at The Eagle. They were actually quite good. Made me forget all about the jerk I met in the alley earlier in the evening.
Anyway, I brought my camera.
Despite being a bit out of practice, I managed to grab a couple of decent shots. Photos here.
Yay for friends in bands!!
The show sold out in 8 minutes. I didn't even know the tickets had gone on sale. I desperately searched Craigslist for a month, hoping to find one decent soul not scalping their extras for five times face value. I posted a tickets wanted ad telling a story of how I always part with my tickets at face or even for free to those dying to see a show, and asking for a little mercy. No responses. Then, one hour before the doors opened, I made one more last ditch effort to find tickets on Craigslist and, as though put there just for me, I found two tickets for face value.
David, a South Bay resident, was on his way up to the City. A couple of his friends had bailed out and I was the lucky girl, calling within 8 minutes of his posting, to take advantage of his lame friends' bad decision. In absolute glee, I jumped around my office and frantically called around to find a date. My cousin Doug took me up on the offer and was at my house within an hour. Once inside the venue, we bought David & his friend Byron a drink, thanked them profusely, then worked our way forward in the crowd.
The show was incredible. To be honest, it started a little slow, but then just hit hard! HARD! It's the first time I've seen them play an encore too -- both songs from the Pikul EP, neither of which I had seen them play live before (despite this being my 5th SSPU show). Doug put it right when he said that their show makes him feel like he's 16 again -- when nothing else mattered but music.
I love nights like this. Thank you David! You rock.
photo: crappy camera phone pic as dolled up in photoshop.
Last night Jess, Sonia, Peaches & I went to see the Silversun Pickups, Ok Go & Snow Patrol. Of course, the band we were most excited to see -- Silversun Pickups -- played first and, to our dismay, went on way earlier than the tickets said so we missed the first few songs. I've seen them a few times before, so I wasn't super bummed for me, but I wish the other three could have seen the whole show.
Whatever the case, Silversun Pickups put on a great show as usual-- after which Peaches and I got to meet Nikki Monniger (bass) in the hallway just outside the auditorium. I pulled the star struck dork approach, gushing over how she has inspired me to learn bass... blah blah. Peaches was a cutie and calmly shook her hand. It was a nice moment.
Ok Go was decent too, the best part being the video feed playing in time to the music and the hot pink sky-dancer tubes thrusting like jazz hands into the air during the last song. I usually hate those things, but they somehow worked for this.
Snow Patrol's set entertained as well. They had three floor to ceiling, *LED nets behind them, glowing with patterns that you had to either severely blur your eyes (I just took off my glasses), or be standing far enough back to properly see what was going on, but it was a nice visual element. At one point the lead singer, Gary Lightbody, started rambling about people having things that glow in their pockets and if they did to hold them up during the second verse of the following song... you know "pretend like this is San Francisco." I'm not sure exactly what he meant by that. It felt a bit like an insult. He's a foreign (Irish) rock star though, so I suppose it's forgivable, no? Below is a crappy camera phone photo of what the sea of glowing cell phones, cameras & a few token lighters looked like:
Geez, that is a crappy photo. It was way more impressive and moderately disturbing in person. Oh well. I'm just happy I figured out how to get this photo off my phone! Yay bluetooth. So, after all was said and done, it was a good night.
Back to work for me now.
* LED nets are hard to explain, but imagine if each pixel on your computer monitor was about 1"x1" and spaced 6" apart, with nothing but darkness in between. Did that help?
