Category Archives: Concerts

The Fox Theater was the star of this evening.

It opened in February of this year and this was my first of, hopefully, many shows here.  It is astonishingly beautiful.  There are several tiers of floor and a seated balcony.  The hardwood floors are fabulous, with little vents poofing cool air.  It’s sort of art deco and kind of Middle Eastern.  Opulent without being gaudy.

It gives me this feeling of hope for Oakland.  Like maybe it won’t be so scuzzy some time soon and that nice places to eat and drink won’t be so surprisingly noteworthy.  The charm of the Fox Theater is sure to improve the tenor of it’s surrounding neighborhood.

So… Ben Folds.  He was cute and geek chic, yes.  But mostly, I yearned for the shows of yore.
The last time I saw him was so great.  He got the audience singing a harmonized round that was super fun.  And he did an over the top cover of Aerosmith’s Dream On that left me a little obsessed with that song.
I loved Rockin’ the Suburbs and admittedly, his new album, Way to Normal, didn’t thrill me quite as much.  So I knew that the show would have a lot of his new songs going in to it.

And maybe something totally great happened at the end of the show.  I left at 10:30, because, you know.  My bed time is at 10.  And while the show was supposed to start at 8, nothing happened until almost 9:30.  Happily, I was enjoying my exploration of the venue during the wait.  To be fair, a group of semi-talented kids from Sacramento did an acapella cover of Annie Waits prior to Ben taking the stage.  So if something really great happened once the actual show started, I missed it.  But in the hour I saw there was a guy playing a fancy glow-in-the-dark tambourine, and Ben put some Altoid tins on the strings of his piano.

If you don’t know Beirut, go do the requisite business on the interwebs to rectify that. All kinds of right now. It is such a neat-o neat-o band.
The main singer is a really young guy from Arizona who plays the trumpet (fantastically) and the ukulele. Then he’s got an ensemble of people playing an accordion, a mandolin, guitar, violin, other horns, or whatever else might suit him. The sound is eclectic and a bit rough… kind of reminds me of the Triplets of Bellville. The rhythms are amazing and weird, like samples from gypsy music of Russia.

The scene at the show was fascinating. Nerdy hipster. There were twirling girls. Lots of hats. Dudes totally rocking out.

Dear Cat,

I can tell that you are very enthused, because you are bent over very meaningfully in a crouch to convey that. It’s true; standing up straight doesn’t say “I’m rocking out” the same way your Cro-Magnon stance does.

But you know what else may have convinced us that you are really in to your music *and* have been a lot more comfortable for you?

Enunciating.

Love,

Maggie

PS Your opener? Appaloosa? Other than reminding me of a childhood horsey story* she was el suck.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_of_Chincoteague

This was one of the best shows I’ve been to in a long time.  Funnily enough, I didn’t even really knew what it was.  For her birthday, Sharon advertised an Ingrid Michaelson show and I was on board.  Granted, I only started out knowing who Ingrid Michaelson was because of that “here take my sweater” song that was on a ubiquitous Old Navy commercial pre-Christmas 2007.  But after she did a show earlier this year, I checked her out and decided she was all kinds of good.

Lo and behold, the Hotel Café tour is not just Ingrid, but a whole mess o’ people:  Cary Brothers (one guy, not some brothers), meiko, William Fitzsimmons, Jim Biano, Jessie Baylin, and one last lady I can’t remember except that her first name is Jessca, not Jessica.

The line-up was mixed, so you’d get two or three songs from each performer, and then one of the earlier performers came on again for two more songs.  I found this a bit confusing, since I didn’t know all of the performers, so I can vaguely remember that there was some breathy chic and then the other lady with the weird puffy hair.

There was a very cool vibe from the performers – it seemed like they’d all gotten along really well on the tour and were just having a lot of fun being together.  On many of the songs, one of the other acts would chime in.  For example, Ingrid had all of the ladies come on stage with her to do around, which was quite beautiful.  She said that there just aren’t enough rounds in pop music, and I agree!  Pip pip!

The best bits were:

the entire ensemble filed out into the middle of the crowd and did an acoustic song

meiko did a cover of No Scrubs

Ingrid Michaelson covered Radiohead’s Creep, all sweet and pretty

the show ended with the whole group singing The Rainbow Connection, which I recognized at the very first plunky-plunky-plunky-plunky-plunk.  Even though it wasn’t banjolicious.  Still.  It tugged on my wee childhood heartstrings.

I went to see Jose Gonzalez at the Fillmore on Thursday with my manfriend.  It was  such a great show.  Jose didn’t talk much, so we didn’t get a strong sense of him, but the music was fantastic.  He played mostly by himself, but it sounded like he was playing two guitars and a drum at the same time.  His voice, too, seemed to have so much richness and depth that it sounded like he was singing two parts at once.  It was beautiful and clear and mellow.

I was also really wowed by the lights.  There was a lot of vibrant color, sometimes shining down on to the stage, sometimes emanating out above the audience.  One song had lights projecting strong silhouettes of Jose on the curtains behind the stage, giving me the impression that he was in a cave around a campfire telling tales.  Another song had this gorgeous green and blue light shining out from the stage, like the glow in an aquarium.  People were taking pictures like crazy, but I couldn’t find a single one on Flickr.  But it was very impressive and really enhanced the simplicity and beauty of the music.

We stayed in a hotel near the office, rather than contending with a late night sojourn to the East Bay, which was pretty awesome.  The two block walk into the work the next day was pretty cool, too.

Very, very good night.

I went to see Chrisette Michele at the Independent last night with my fab friend, Shayne, aka Shiny.

The most important thing to report is that we got dinner first at Memphis Minnie’s. I ate a pound of shredded pork, with North Carolina vinegar sauce, which is truly reminiscent of BBQ from North Carolina. There was also some macaroni and cheese, spicy french fries, corn bread, and wings. Yeah. Oh my. And a pitcher of beer. All of this into a gullet that is obsessively semi-satiated with high fiber, low calorie foods. Or semi-foods. Except that when my Neurotic Obsessive Psychotic must-control-my-food switch is off, it is off and that is spelled B-A-D. But getting over it, moving on, etc.

And then we went to a concert. The scene at this show was a twenty, thirty-something, cool, hip black crowd. Shayne commented that it was very Oakland-esque, which is true. I’m not sure where you’d find this scene in SF. Except we found it. Lots of shiny lip gloss and tautly clad black lady rump. Many asses were remarkable. So I remarked on them.

Some guy named Matthew Santos opened and he was pretty lame. He sounded like John Mayer for about a second, before he’s start to go all shouty. Nothing memorable here.

Chrisette Michele is a new singer/songwriter R & B lady. I had heard two of her songs and liked them: Good Girl and Best of Me, so I was hopeful and excited about this show. But, sigh, it was rather disappointing. It took about 45 minutes for Chrisette to turn up on stage after the opening guy was done, resulting in far too much waiting and standing about (whilst over full of 0 grams of fiber and about 278 grams of protein and fat.)  But when she turned up, she looked like Eva the Diva from America’s Next Top Model, so that was amusing for us for a minute.  But the sound wasn’t great, like her mic was turned on too loud and her words weren’t quite intelligible.  She sang a few too many songs that sounded like the morning commute on a smooth jazz station.  And by a few too many, I think maybe I mean two.  Then she sang Best of Me, which was nice to hear, but like I said, the sound wasn’t great and her voice didn’t seem to be as sultry as I remembered.  She sounded a bit like an Atlantic City lounge singer who’d gone and turned 42 and was still trying to woo the elderly.  Which she did do, actually, in the form of a song made up on the spot for audience member Jondola and then Tito.  I suspect that they were not elderly, though.  This part was rather amusing and cute, but kinda cheez.  And not a triple cream brie kinda cheese.

We left after that, so probably only about half way through the whole show.  Which means that the upshot was that we were back home early enough that I managed to drag my own rump into the gym this morning.

I picked up tickets to see James Blunt off of Craigslist about a month ago, as the show was sold out. My friend, Sharon, came with.

Very strange scene. Older than I would have expected. Over-dieted, bottle blonde 45 year old women wearing sequined and spangly tube tops. One in particular that I deemed to be the love child of She-Ra and Skeletor, directly behind us. In front, two late-thirty-somethings whose style of subtle bee-bopping was oddly dated. Very knees together, symmetrical up-and-down bopping. To the right, a couple with some manner of European type woman and a South American (our best guess) smoothie, about 15 years older than her. His hand explored her ass extensively. I couldn’t look away.

Sara Bareilles was pretty great. She was very cute, wearing a great dress, endearing and engaging. She has a super voice, very powerful, and played along by herself or with the band on the piano the entire time. I was particularly moved by her song, Gravity.

James Blunt, I have to say, was on the lame side. Possibly I was prejudiced by the decidedly un-cool crowd. Or maybe I had just forgotten how many times I’d already heard You’re Beautiful already. But he did come across as arrogant and right pleased with himself. It annoyed me in one song that he trilled his ‘r’ in the word ‘through’ (twice) when he hadn’t been doing any ‘r’ rolling previously. And then he gave this little talk about how sad he gets about things in the news and how some things are more important and profound than whether or not Britney Spears is wearing any underwear. Totally true, of course. It is appalling that celebrity gossip gets way more coverage than the communities in a war ravaged Kosovo, but that Britney joke is about 18 months too old. Given how traumatic and dramatic recent Britney events have been, it was strangely inappropriate and just dated. And then afterwards, Sharon told me that he’d made the joke in an interview she saw with him on TV. My eyes roll even now thinking about it.

In any case, it’s always good to get out to see some music. I would see Sara Bareilles again. And James did do a Supertramp cover of Breakfast in America that was pretty cool. But again, he prefaced the song by saying that it seemed to have gone over well the last time he played in San Francisco. Perhaps it’s time for some new material, eh?