Tag Archive for ‘Shoreline’

Tag Archive for 'Shoreline'

Rock the Bells at Shoreline Amphitheater, 8/16

published

on August 19, 2008

. 0 Comments Tags: A Tribe Called Quest, Blackalicious, De La Soul, Dead Prez, Ghostface, GZA, hip-hop, Immortal Technique, Method Man, Method Man and Redman, Mos Def, Murs, Nas, Q-Tip, Raekwon, Raekwon and Ghostface, Rakim, Redman, Rock the Bells, San Francisco, SanDisk, Shoreline, The Pharcyde, The Wire, Wu-Tang Clan.

For all the art, click this link.

Saturday, Gavroche and myself got out for SanDisk‘s Rock the Bells tour at Shoreline. If you’re in Denver on 8/23 or Washington on 9/6, don’t miss this show. Rock the Bells continues to set the standard in terms of large scale festivals bringing together a fantastic line-up that often doesn’t happen with hip-hop. Whereas some tours or shows will have one or two big names with a bunch of unheard of artists (not that they’re bad!), Rock the Bells this year features one of the most star-studded hip-hop line-ups I’ve ever seen. Even if you’re not a huge fan of hip-hop, this show features enough classics that it can serve as a tasty introduction to some music you haven’t heard and might enjoy.

Furthermore, one of the major plagues of festival shows, the lengthy and crowd-angering set changes between acts, was completely eradicated by the crew of this show. Utilizing a simple stage set up with a DJ above a large black screen with the name of the act, it took very little to get in and out of sets, and towards the end of the show it was 10-15 minutes between every performer. When you look at the Kanye fiasco (no matter who’s fault that was) at Bonnaroo and some of the problems that always come with numerous acts, the artists and the crew of this show have a lot to be proud of in their speedy set changes.

The event started with SanDisk’s royal treatment in their VIP lounge. They had an open bar and food served all day, as well as scheduling meet and greets with Supernatural, Dead Prez, Murs and De La Soul. The event is sponsored by them along with their new product, the Mobile Ultra Mini SD card, which gives your phone 2 gigs of memory. Seems to me the type of thing anyone with a love of music or movies needs. All I can say is that I hope the fans appreciate what SanDisk did in compiling this artist line-up and sponsoring the show.

The show kicked off around 11 with a short set from Wale, who is gearing up to release an album off Interscope. He was followed by MURS, who, despite being a kick-ass rapper, somehow got stuck with a mostly empty amphitheatre. But he brought energy to the stage in his quest to promote not only the free internet release of Sweet Lord, but also his upcoming Murs for President. With shorts, a concert promoted t-shirt and his signature dreads, MURS carried with him less pretension and more of a laidback aura than you might expect from a rapper of his caliber, but he’s truly about the music and the fans. At the meet and greet after his set, he not only posed for pictures with fans, but I even saw him take a girl’s cell phone and talk to her friend to convince the friend that this girl was actually backstage with him. Seeing him chat it up with some girl’s friend on the cell phone, just to help her verify she was there was one of those fan friendly moments that most artists will never get involved in. Murs seemed happy to.

MURS gives a fan's friend some proof (and continues his Presidential campaign)

Following Murs, it was a surprise to see Blackalicious released so early in the show. Between Chief XCel and Gift of Gab, they’re one of the truly gifted hip-hop groups that can take difficult songs straight off the album and reproduce them flawlessly live. More than that though, Gift of Gab is just plain fast. When you hear a song like “Alphabet Aerobics,” you don’t think there’s any way it could be performed live. It’s just too fast with too many tongue twisters. Gift of Gab makes it sound easy. At one point in the set, he did a fantastic mixmatch, using an old Puff Daddy beat to rap “To Know You” from 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. To close the set, they freestyled at a frenetic pace, just to prove it wasn’t all just a stage show.

M-1 of Dead Prez

After Blackalicious, Dead Prez took the stage and put together a set that got the steadily growing crowd energized. They played about 6 songs, finishing with “Bigger Than Hip-Hop” which pumped life into the stage just as they were leaving it. One of the great things about Dead Prez was that they, like Murs, were extremely accessible to the fans backstage. M-1 set up shop on a couch with a bottle of Patron and stic.man spent most of his time talking to people. They’d pose for anyone that came up with a camera for them. Very friendly.

stic.man of Dead Prez

Immortal Technique followed Dead Prez with a set that I think pleased every Tech fan in the crowd, and shocked everyone else. I’ll start with a thank you to Immortal Technique and his crew over at Public Wizard as they set up the interview with Tech and put us in touch with the press department for this festival. For people who don’t know Immortal Technique’s music or message, hearing him on stage for the first time could have a very jarring effect on someone chilling on the grass drinking and smoking at a hip-hop festival. But as anyone who’s a listener knows, and as he told everyone at the show, he really doesn’t give a fuck what you think.

Immortal Technique

He’s far more politically oriented than any other rapper at the show, and he delivers his lyrics with an uncompromising style that doesn’t care if the audience likes it or not. He played a great set with “Industrial Revolution,” “The 3rd World,” “Harlem Streets,” “Point of No Return,” and “Peruvian Cocaine.” More than any rapper I’ve seen in concert, he never truncates his lyrics or songs, which makes sense for someone with that kind of power in the message. If Tech is in your town, check out the show. He’s intense.

In between Immortal Technique and Raekwon and Ghostface, Supernatural took the stage and ripped one of the longest and most interesting freestyles I’ve ever heard live. With people at the edge of the stage, he freestyled solo for about 5 minutes, rhyming about whatever random objects the people in front of him handed to him. He talked about the San Francisco Giants, Trident gum, a bracelet, anything. It was like watching an extremely gifted improv actor who knew how to rap. I hadn’t seen Supernatural before this concert, and I was blown away by the depth and length of his freestyle.

Following Supernatural came, in my opinion, the weak link of the show. Raekwon and Ghostface took the stage and fell flat. Despite having a large bottle of orange juice and a blunt on stage with them, Raekwon and Ghostface just don’t deliver live like other members of the Wu-Tang Clan that I’ve seen.

Raekwon and his OJ

It’s not that they’re not solid rappers in their own right, major contributors to the Wu-Tang crew, and fantastic studio rappers, but live they just don’t perform like GZA and Method Man. While other artists at the show were able to engage me with songs I hadn’t heard before, I couldn’t get into any part of the set. I also took some issue that these guys forgot where they were, thanking Los Angeles at the end of the set. Some people thought they said, “The Bay,” but I know I heard them say, “L.A.”

Next up was Rakim who unleashed solid song after solid song. The crowd was heavily invested in this one as a rapper so old school that he’s referenced in an old school 2Pac song called “Old School” ripped through an energetic set in which he rapped with enthusiasm, skill and what seemed like an urge to have everyone in the crowd feel what he was feeling when he let it out.

Rakim enjoying the music

I hadn’t heard any Rakim other than his work with Eric B., and I was thoroughly impressed with how natural he sounded even removed from the sound of the ’80s. What’s more is that you can see in his reactions to the music and his delivery how much he loves the genre. This was one part of the show I wasn’t sure about going in and was very pleased with coming out.

When De La Soul took the stage, the passion from the crowd poured out. Posdnuous went off stage and into the crowd and was immediately surrounded by the fans. The entire set was upbeat and very strong for a group who has been dealing with numerous release and record label issues over the past 8 years. Along with Murs and Dead Prez, this group was the most accessible backstage, taking time to joke around and take pictures with Pharcyde.

Dave of De La Soul

De La Soul’s grind was followed by the rowdy duo of Method Man and Redman. From the minute they ran on stage to the time they left it, these two brought the show and the crowd to a new level. While some people not too versed in hip-hop may have thought The Wire‘s Cheese was trying his hand at rapping, there was no question to a listener that Method Man showed up.

Redman opened up a shook can of Coke on stage and then did an interesting dance trying to avoid the spray. But the cameras in the photo pit had no such luck as the box of bottled water on stage quickly became projectiles for Meth and Red to chuck into the crowd. There’s usually a 5-6 foot space between the photo pit and the seats near the stage. Method Man invites the crowd to come up and they quickly fill in the gap, providing him a place to dive off the stage and into them. These two slammed through their set of well rehearsed fan favorites such as “Y.O.U.” and “Mad Crew” with incredible precision despite the crowd surfing and water hurling antics. There were several excellent moments throughout every artist’s set, but for the passion of performance and raw energy, no set rivaled Method Man and Redman.

The Pharcyde took the stage next. The DJ gave them a little flak for the length of time since their last album, and they got the “with special guest” billing from the tour. The set was good, and of course closed with “Passin Me By” and included “Runnin” which had the crowd enthused. For a group who hasn’t been together in years, it didn’t show in their on-stage chemistry. The set was well done and while most know Slimkid3 and Fatlip, there wasn’t any sense of animosity between them or competition for stage time.

Tre of Pharcyde

The always eclectic Mos Def followed, coming on stage in a shirt from a Louisiana coffee/beignet shop, sunglasses, a trucker hat and an 80s windbreaker style jacket.

Mos Def

This changed throughout the set as he lost the jacket and hat, traded them for a bandanna and gradually got more relaxed with the crowd as the set went on. Up to this point in the concert, the sun had been on the other side of the stage, so it fit perfectly as the sun started raining down on the front side of the stage for Mos to perform “Sunshine.” Although it’s still hard for me to separate Mos Def the rapper from Mos Def the Def Jam Poet and Poetry MC, he carries a stage presence and swagger that just works.

Nas was next. While Method Man and Redman put on the performance with the most juice, Nas had the best set of every artist at the show. He started with “Sly Fox” off his new album (we’ll leave it to other outlets to decide whether to call this one Untitled or the N-word Nas originally wanted to slap it with), and then went on an all-out retrospective of his work with varied length pieces of “New York State of Mind,” “The World is Yours,” “Life’s a Bitch,” “Street Dreams,” “If I Ruled the World,” “Nas is Like,” “Got Yourself a Gun” (complete with an interlude featuring Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.”) and then doing a heartfelt rendition of “One Mic.” One problem with all the favorites is that rappers will drop out and let the crowd do some of the work…they paid to see YOU rap it! If they wanted to listen to themselves rap, they’d do it in their car or at home or at a karaoke bar.

Nas

Regardless of this fact, Nas’ set was more complete than any other in that he gave a taste of his new music but threw out all the favorites to remind the audience of his lyrical supremacy, and sometimes more importantly in rap, his longevity and ability to continue evolving while maintaining a quality of lyrics that rarely suffers from repetition even eight albums later.

To close the show, Q-Tip did three songs with Mos Def before he was joined by the rest of A Tribe Called Quest to finish out an excellent afternoon of hip-hop. Q-Tip initially seemed very agitated, angry almost that the crowd volume was not what he expected. He yelled “LOUDER” several times and was obviously frustrated. He of course performed “Vivrant Thing.” As for Tribe’s set, it was a throwback worthy of the concert, playing a host of fan favorites that had everyone dancing and rapping along. But why go through the setlist when I can simply show you?

A Tribe Called Quest Set List

So that was that, 2008’s Rock the Bells. With 2 more shows left, there’s still a chance for people to get out and see it, and if you don’t, don’t forget it when it comes around next year.

Live 105's BFD 2008

published

on June 11, 2008

LJHarb

in concert reviews and music

. 4 Comments Tags: 105.3, bfd, big fucking day, big fucking deal, cake, concert, Cypress Hill, Everlast, festival, flobots, Flogging Molly, handlebars, live 105, lyrics born, mixmatchmusic, music, paramore, Pennywise, Shoreline, subsonic, the action design.

Every year in early June since 1993, Live 105 (a ClearChannel radio station in San Francisco, 105.3 FM) puts out a huge concert called, appropriately, Big Fucking Day (or Big Fucking Deal, depending on who you talk to). It’s held at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA – which happens to be spitting distance from Google‘s main campus. Generally the tickets are $30-50; there’s at least 20-30 bands/DJs/groups on the bill, always a great mix and match; you can select from multiple stages, so if you don’t like who’s playing you don’t have to listen to it. The concessions, like any venue, are retardedly expensive – but that’s the price of needing to eat and drink. It’s always been during the week, but the last 3 years have been on Saturday, which is nice for those of us with real jobs (by “us”, I don’t include myself). This year, the tickets were only $10 – a good way to pull in more people in a time when we need an economic stimulus.

I’ve been to five or six BFD’s in the past ten years – I always have a good time, I always run into a veritable horde of people I know (way out of context), and the cheap ticket price totally makes up for when some of the bands suck sphincter. Last Saturday (June 7th) I went to this year’s BFD (the 15th).

Cypress Hill headlined, preceded by Pennywise, Flogging Molly, Alkaline Trio, Everlast, the Kooks, Anti-Flag, MGMT, Atreyu, Flobots, the Whigs, Airborne Toxic Event, and Middle Class Rut (on the main stage).

The local stage had the Federalists, Apside, Love Like Fire, the Hundred Days, Here Here, the Action Design, Magic Bullets, and the Phenomenauts.

The Subsonic Tent, primarily reserved for techno/trance acts, had Moby headlining, preceded by Mstrkrft, Santogold, DJ AM, Steve Aoki, Lyrics Born, ~~Mike Relm~~, PlayRadioPlay, DJ Omar, Richard Oh, Hottub, and DJ Miles.

I showed up at about 1:30PM, in time to catch the Flobots. I’d only heard their single “Handlebars” on the radio, and it’s a pretty good song – very Cake-ish – but I wasn’t blown away. However, after hearing their live performance of Handlebars, Mayday!!, Combat, and Rise – they’re pretty amazing. It looked basically like a rock band, a violinist (a cute one), and emcees – and I personally am always swept up in quality popular music when it incorporates a talented violinist (think Yellowcard, Fort Minor, etc). Atreyu was good but angry. I’d heard MGMT’s single, Time to Pretend – quite decent, and their live show made me like their sound more.

After climbing the Army’s climbing wall barefoot (a fun and blatant recruiting gimmick), I headed into the Subsonic Tent to check out Mike Relm – sadly he didn’t show, but Lyrics Born came out early and had a great set. He’s been at BFD before, and always gets me and the crowd moving. I thought he was an odd choice for Subsonic, but it fit, and I wasn’t complaining.

The local bands I’d never heard of, although while buying yet another $11 beer, one caught my ear: the Action Design – it had a very Paramoreish sound and I liked it alot.

Everlast played some quality old singles (I didn’t really pay attention to the new stuff) and Alkaline Trio I skipped in favor of the Subsonic Tent. I did catch Flogging Molly and Pennywise, but I napped on a strip of grass for awhile so I missed alot of it.

Cypress Hill was very high energy, and of course there was tons of herb floating through the air (and definitely on stage). At one point they inflated a giant skeleton king. Why, I am not sure. However I did not care. Afterwards we were tired, and headed out rather than stay late for Moby.

All in all, it was a great concert day – my only complaint, and a MAJOR one, was the lack of the lawn stage. This year, unlike prior years I can recall, they closed off the main Shoreline stage and had the main stage in the parking lot, Warped Tour style. This was incredibly weak – chilling on the grass, with a great view because of the slope, for a cheaper ticket price – is always a highlight of a Shoreline concert.

Music Builds Bridges

published

on October 29, 2007

ACtual

in concert reviews, genres, and music

. 1 Comment Tags: Bridge School, Bridge School Benefit, Chamber Rock, collaboration, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kronos Quartet, Metallica, Neil Young, Shoreline, Tegan and Sara, Tom Waits.

Over here, we like it when things are thrown together and stirred around for a new outcome. And nothing says “mix and match” like the annual Bridge School Benefit held every year at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. Started by Neil Young as a fundraiser for the Bridge School, a school focusing on the education of children with very specific needs, the benefit is always one of the highlights of the concert season. Because of several of the basic principles of the Bridge School and the benefit, the event always turns into a sharing and communal concert celebrating life, happiness and the pursuit of education.

As for the mixing and matching…take multiple well-known and wealthy musical artists. Sprinkle in some lesser known artists that deserve some spotlight. The resulting line-up always covers an incredible spectrum of genres, and as a result, brings in one of the most diverse and eclectic concert going crowds you might ever see. Then, you make all of the artists, even those known for rocking hard, switch to acoustic for the event. Finally, you have all of these musicians and music fans coming together to support and donate to children that, for the most part, they could never imagine being in the shoes of.

So just how diverse are the musicians? This year’s show featured Regina Spektor, Tegan and Sara, My Morning Jacket, John Mayer, Tom Waits with the Kronos Quartet, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis and Metallica. Yes, Metallica, at an acoustic show.

I missed Regina Spektor’s set.

But we’re there in time for Tegan and Sara, which was one of the groups I was interested in seeing. Virtual nobodies before and now starting to bud on the national music scene, Tegan and Sara is one of those groups that got sprinkled into the Bridge School Benefit of 2000, which is where I first heard of them. Scared little children on a stage, they still put on a duo acoustic set that prompted me to download their music and get into them. Now, 7 years later, here we both were at completely different parts in our lives. I’m in the middle of telling some people, “I saw them for the first time when they played Bridge School,” when they tell the crowd, “the first time we came here, it was for Bridge School and we were 19.” It was nice to see them make their Bridge School return, now quite a bit more mature, with a band backing them, and a second cd to draw music from. They bicker on stage a bit, but I believe they do this to entertain the audience, although, sometimes it’s a bit embarrassing as you end up feeling that you’ve walked into a private family meeting. The highlights of their set are “I was 19,” “Like O, Like H,” and “Back In Your Head.”

Eddie Vedder and Flea were supposed to play after Tegan and Sara, but due to personal problems of Vedder’s, they had to cancel and were replaced by My Morning Jacket. I have never heard of this group before, and if the set they put together yesterday was any indication, I never want to again.

John Mayer, at least in my personal opinion, falls into that annoying category of singer/songwriters that succeed due to mass marketing, cheesy songs, romantic expectations and a sound simple enough that the general public goes, “oooh, this is really good!” Someone tried to compare Mayer with Dave Matthews at one point, and I almost threw that someone off a balcony. The lyrical depth isn’t even close. The guy that sings the “Had a Bad Day” song, John Mayer and Jack Johnson should get together to form a pop sensation super band in which all 102 songs of their catalogue sound vaguely similar and they go quadruple platinum because of how easily digestible their music is to the public. But hey…that’s just my opinion, right?

For the set, it’s Mayer and two other guitarists. Mayer comes out trying to act very relaxed and nonchalant, sits down on a stool, gives a raspy “How you doing out there?” to his female admirers, and proceeds with a set that sounds like a frat boy playing guitar in the middle of campus hoping to get noticed, if not laid. He pulls out the same raspy voice on the majority of his vocals, I can’t tell the difference between the songs other than slight tempo changes, and while they try to disguise it with tricky camera work, every guitar solo of even remote musical complexity is done not by Mayer, but by one of the other two guys on the stage with him. I’m about to give up the set as a complete washout when he closes it by covering “Free Fallin.” It’s a nice touch, but he comes dangerously close to screwing this hallowed classic up by failing to sing the chorus with anything remotely resembling Petty’s range and energy. If you ever want to listen to John Mayer, I suggest going down to your local campus and looking for a guy playing guitar…he may not be as well known, but hey, he could be the next John Mayer, and if not, he’s certainly more affordable to see in concert.

Following Mayer we have Neil Young. First off, you can’t say anything negative about his set because he puts on the event, his songs are as old as the Amphitheater itself, and he’s always Neil. You can’t say much positive though because bands have a tendency to lose their effect after multiple shows. Neil plays at every Bridge School, so I think I’ve probably seen him 8 or 9 times now. He’s solid, and you have to give him one thing…he’s extremely consistent. The only thing he didn’t break out last night was the big stand-up organ I’ve seen him use from time to time, but this is probably due to the fact that he usually closes the show and this time went in the middle of the sets. I don’t recognize any of the songs, but at the end he tells the crowd that it’s mostly new material and he doesn’t expect anyone to have recognized any of it.

Next up is one of the primary reasons I bought tickets for this Bridge School, and the performance of Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet delivers. For those of you who don’t know the Kronos Quartet, they’re the group that performed Clint Mansell’s arrangements for Darren Arronofsky’s movie Requiem for a Dream based on Hubert Selby’s book. But when you mix a legendary, eccentric and out there rocker like Tom Waits with an incredibly proficient and polished string quartet like Kronos, the outcome is something spectacular. I’d almost want to dub this Chamber Rock. They come out and open with the theme song from HBO’s The Wire, which is stellar. He also plays some old time blues songs with the Quartet behind him straying into some dark and menacing arrangements. He plays a variety of songs with completely different sounds. One sounds like a Gotan tango song laced with arsenic, and one takes on the style of a macabre show tune. There aren’t a whole lot of succinct words to describe this performance, but it was one of the more interesting musical collaborations I’ve seen and ranked right up there with last year’s Trent Reznor/string quartet performance (although Trent didn’t use Kronos, so he loses some points there). After Waits leaves, I feel like the energy in the place is knocked up a few notches, and I’m wondering if they can bring him out for another set.

Jerry Lee Lewis is one of the other main reasons I bought tickets for this show. He’s one of the few truly incredible icons and musical prodigies that I had yet to see in concert. He comes out with a slower walk, a pair of glasses, long hair slicked back off his forehead and sits down at the piano. Now, he’s older, so you can tell his fingers can’t take the speed and ferocity he used to be known for, but he’s still a master musician. He comes out playing old hits and most everyone in the audience is moving with him. He at points lapses into a deep Southern twang, and almost consistently refers to himself in songs as “Jerry Lee.” He can’t dance at the piano like he used to, but the voice in his songs and the way he attacks the piano give you a clear idea of who he used to be as a performer, and just how much, even this late in life, is still there for him. His set is remarkable, and in conjunction with Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet, the price of the ticket is well justified. The highlights of his set include “Roll Over Beethoven,” “You Win Again” (Hank Williams cover), “Your Cheating Heart,” “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.”

After Lewis finishes up, Metallica comes out to close the show. They, like Tegan and Sara, have made two Bridge School appearances, and I’ve been lucky enough to be at both. They came out and played 5 covers and 3 originals. Thanks to KFer (not KFed!) for the info…They started with “I Just Want to Celebrate” (ironically used in the final episode of 6 Feet Under, making this an evening where two tracks from HBO series were played) then played Nazareth’s “Please Don’t Judas Me.” Personally, I found it excellent and amazing when they covered Garbage’s “I’m Only Happy When It Rains,” right before Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms.” Following this, they went into “Disposable Heroes,” “All Within My Hands,” and Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” before closing their set and the show with “Nothing Else Matters.”

All in all, it wasn’t the most impressive Bridge line-up I’ve ever seen…My Morning Jacket and John Mayer could have definitely been left off the guest list. But seeing Metallica acoustically, Jerry Lee Lewis for the first time and the unreal performance of Tom Waits and the Kronos Quartet made this a very successful, diverse and memorable Bridge School Benefit. See y’all next year.

.Evolving Music.