d and I got to see BB King play up at the Marin Center on Friday. It was my second time seeing him play and each time is a joy. He's five years older than when I last saw him, which means a bit more storytelling than singing -- and a lot more viagra jokes -- but his voice and Lucille still are still masters of the blues. I always regretted not hearing John Lee Hooker; at 82-years-old BB's voice still roars and I still marvel at how he can squeeze the strings. Gold doesn't rust. This quote from his San Quentin performance summarizes the night well:

Blues to me is something like whatever ails you. You make something out of whatever it is. If you want to make it bluesy, it can be fun and still be bluesy, just a type of music we call blues. Now I want you to, you know, do something, whatever you feel like doing. That's alright. You know, if you got something you want to shake, go ahead and shake it, clap your hands, stomp your feet, yell at me, anything you feel like doing.

We were there to celebrate him along with his music. The two-hour performance was more personal than I remember before: he talked about his old age; he talked about his younger days growing up in the boondocks of the segregationist south and filling his belly full of white-only water; and he shared plenty of his philandering side ("I never wanted to sleep with all the women in the world... just as many as I can").

He'll be coming to Monterey in June and I'm hoping I can get tickets.

This year's Bridge School was a bit more low key than others. Eddie Vedder, Flea, and Jack Irons canceled late and were replaced with My Morning Jacket, which tipped the mellowness balance a little too much. The Saturday show was without the special moments that usually define a Bridge School concert, like Billy Idol and Neil Young performing together, or Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney. The local papers were begging for Bruce Springsteen to make a visit, but that was a pipe dream.

The highlights for me were the Tom Waits and Jerry Lee Lewis sets. Tom Waits performed with the Kronos Quartet, which was theatrical and beautiful, in a noir sort of way. The director gave Waits a Halloween-appropriate lighting scheme -- I'm hoping that the video I took came out decently well. Jerry Lee Lewis was also a joy to watch, especially the combination of innuendo and age. At one point his lyrics were, "twirl for me", which he accompanied with a comically slow gyration of his arms. He may be 72 years old, but he can still rock.

The Metallica was the headliner, but their set ended up being a bit odd. They opened with four straight covers, including Only Happy When It Rains by Garbage and I Just Want to Celebrate by Rare Earth. They then moved on to "covers of Metallica songs", which included Turn the Page, an official Metallica cover song. In other words, it was Metallica covering a bunch of songs, which didn't get the audience too engaged until they ended the set with Nothing Else Matters. You can already buy the songs from the Metallica Web site, which shows that Metallica has come a long way from its Napster days.

Photo from nin.com

This year's Bridge School was filled with many fun performances: older folks groovin' to Brian Wilson (probably the fan favorite of the night), Dave Matthews Band and Neil Young performing a 13-minute jam of "Cortez the Killer", an all-hands performance of "Rockin' in the Free World". But I think the show was stolen by Trent Reznor. Instead of muzak-ing up his music (e.g. the Foo Fighters performance), he got Martin St Pierre to arrange several of his songs for a string quartet and piano. I don't know if St Pierre had previously performed the arrangements, as all I can see from St Pierre's biography is that he's done a lot of Cirque du Soleil arrangements, but It absolutely blows Still (NIN's previous acoustic effort) out of the water. I can't believe they did this just for Bridge School -- if they don't make an album out of that it would be a shame.There was the goose-bump raising "The Fragile", a jazzy "Piggy", a haunting, slightly eastern, "Something I Can Never Have", and beautiful versions of "Right Where It Belongs" and the unreleased "Non Entity". NOTE: I didn't actually know the names of most of these tracks, but I was able to look it up using the video I shot video of every song. I would upload the low-quality video, except I have no desire to lose my Youtube or GV accounts.

As for the rest of the concert: * Gillian Welch did a great song together with Neil Young did a great song together that I don't know the name of; David Rawlings did some nice guitar solos but d says he was "off" * Death Cab for Cutie was rather boring acoustic. I've seen better from them * Foo Fighters was overly muzak-y even if Grohl went through the effort of having songs rearranged for violin, accordian, etc... * Pearl Jam gave a good performance but nothing amazing (cover of Tom Wait's "Picture in a Frame", a brief "I Used to Work in Chicago" ditty, an organ-accompanied "Betterman", "Crazy Mary" with piano solo) * Brian Wilson had even the security guards dancing. It was amusing to see old and young alike breaking out their best beach dance mooves. Wilson had the crowd esctatic even if he seemed like an unhappy puppet forced to perform his past hits -- he walked off stage even before the last song finished. * Dave Matthews Band was good even if Dave Matthews was a bit hoarse and I don't like their music. "Cortez the Killer" with Neil Young was awesome and I'm grumbling at my camera for running out of battery with 30 seconds left to record (still have 12 awesome minutes of it). It was as good as his 2001 All Along the Watchtower jam with Neil. * Neil Young was good but isn't the best closer. It is his concert, so it's only fair that he can close out the 20th anniversary concert however he wants.

The goods news is that Bridge School is finally releasing more of their back catalog on iTunes (November 14th). I've long wanted to buy many of the unique Bridge School performances (Billy Idol + Neil Young, Paul McCartney + Tony Bennett), but their previous release of 15 tracks doesn't do justice to Bridge School's 20 years of concerts. I'm hoping that will all the hyping they did for the iTunes release that it will be an extensive catalog of songs (and videos) to spend all my disposable income on.

I always wondered what the large blue and yellow tent was near SBC/Pac Bell Park, and now I know. We spent our New Year's Eve inside that tent watching Cirque du Soleil's Corteo, which is a "a festive parade imagined by a clown." Unlike everyone else I went with, I don't have prior Cirque shows to compare against. I did go to Teatro Zinzanni this month for a company holiday party, which was a fun acrobatic dinner theater experience, but the scale and type of entertainment was entirely different. Zinzanni is a fun way to watch some impressive individual juggling and acrobatics up close, while also seeing your bosses used as embarrassing props. Corteo is a barrage of acrobatic performance, with people spinning up into the air on chandeliers, combined trapeze and trampoline, and humans turned into spinning discs inside of cyr rings.

It was impressive and had thumbs up from everyone I went with. It didn't get a #1 Cirque show rating -- d preferred La Nouba at Disney World and Jed preferred Varekai. The common complaint was that the acts each started with a bang but ended comparatively weakly -- they didn't save the best for last.

The remaining San Francisco shows are probably sold out, but you should be able to see it in San Jose if you're interested (Corteo tickets).

The White Stripes rocked the end of Not So Silent Night in SF. They came on stage like the Ramones: song after song, no breaks, furious, and rocking. It seemed that it wasn't until every female had been rescued from the frantic/violent pit in front of the stage that Jack White pulled out the acoustic to calm things back down. I'm convinced that some of the White Stripes songs only make sense live. It simply isn't possible to play the record loud enough on your stereo to hear it at the volume it was meant to be listened to: freaking loud.

We also saw Death Cab for Cutie and Hot Hot Heat. I was strangely entertained by how uncomfortable Ben Gibbard of Death Cab was with his guitar cable. About every two measures he would fling his guitar cable off his leg. Occassionally he would step back from the microphone and give the cable a good kick/fling. Some of his efforts resulted in bottles of water and gatorade being knocked over and stage crew running out to pick things up. Perhaps I was amused that someone with so many bands under his belt can't handle such a basic piece of musical equipment. Gibbard ended his set by kicking over his mics and his amps, then scrambling to set them back up again so that he could walk off stage to a good feedback hum.

The only disappointment from the night was that the audience didn't bring the White Stripes back on for an encore. It seemed that an encore was in conflict with people catching the last BART out, so the set was a short 45 minutes or so.

We saw Wicked last night at the Orpheum in SF last night. As pqbon noted, it shares very little in common with Wicked, the Gregory Maguire book. This is a good thing, as I didn't like the book very much. The characters are similar, but the stories are different in that the play has a story and the book does not. Instead of just biographically following Elphaba, Wicked Witch of the West, the play elevates the character of Glinda, Good Witch of the North. Elphaba and Glinda play against each other throughout -- green vs. blonde, talent vs. hack, 'good' vs. 'wicked' -- creating plenty of opportunities for dueling musical numbers throughout.

I am biased: I own the movie and haven't read the original books, so I imagine Oz to be a technicolor world where it's normal to break out into song and dance in perfect synchrony with random strangers. Like the movie, the play is a rich extravaganza full of music, special effects, and expensive set pieces. A large mechanical dragon clock hovers over the stage, monkeys with wings climb up the back of the stage, and rigs drop in from above the stage.

The music is pop and some is perhaps too cheesy, but it's all done in a spirit of fun and humor. The conclusion to the first act of the play is the bombastic high point of the play; with my limited experience attending plays I can easily state that I have not seen nearly as elaborate in a play before. The second act wasn't as impressive to me, but I enjoyed watching the improved story through to the end to see what final twists and inversions it spun on the Oz universe.

Without intending to we stumbled upon a Tokihiro Sato "Photo Respiration" exhibit, which was in the gallery next door to the Robert Koch Gallery. Sato's photos use interesting technique: he sets the photo for very long exposure (~1 hour) and walks around the photo with a flash light, pen light, or mirror, which he shines back into the camera for varying effect. The long exposure also means that photos like the one below of Shibuya Crossing are nearly empty of people and cars -- only faint ghosts remain.

Sato also has an interesting presentation: the photos are mounted in front of a bed of lights that shines through the semi-transparent print, which emphasizes the points of light (similar to viewing the photos on a computer screen). Some of the photos remind me of japanime scenes were the little light spirits in the woods start gathering (missing a specific reference here, but possibly Princess Mononoke). My favorite image in particular is one where the dots of light are huddled around a massive tree -- unfortunately I can't find an image of it online.

I also couldn't find the exhibit page, but this page has a fairly good collection of Sato photos (some in the exhibit, some not). There is also a book available under the same title as the exhibition.

d and I went to go see the Michael Wolf "Architecture of Density" exhibit over at the Robert Koch gallery in downtown SF (at the intersection of Geary and Market). The online gallery had more photos than the actual exhibition, but there was a lot to be gained from seeing the photos in person. So many of the building details are not evident in the small images on Wolf's Web site: workers hanging precariuosly from the scaffolding, plumbing fixtures climbing up the stories, the lack of people in the photographs (altering the voyeuristic quality of the photos somewhat). Also hard to replicate is the sense of light-headedness I got from seeing the photos blown up to gigantic proportions -- somewhat like the feeling one gets looking down from the top of a tall building. d noted that the photos were grainy and clearly digital, which might make it difficult to stomach the $4-6K price tag, though the light-headed feeling would be enough to keep the photos off of my wall.

There are more photos in the online gallery, but these are some of the ones (IIRC) that are in the actual exhibit:

Update: d points out the work of Andreas Gursky as well: * Singapore Stock Exchange * Gallery with some of his building facade photos * MOMA exhibit * Google Images search has even more works

I went with my Aunt and Uncle to see the "Renoir to Matisse: The Eye of Duncan Phillips" exhibit at LACMA over my Thanksgiving weekend. While I enjoyed the exhibit, I think I would have enjoyed it more if the title wasn't such a misnomer; it should have been titled "A Renoir to A Matisse, with stuff inbetween," as the exhibit only featured one painting each of its headline artists. If they used a more accurate title they might have also charged less and it would have been less crowded.

The Renoir was quite good, but the Matisse was not one of my favorites (I'm much more fond of the Red Fish from the Pushkin exhibit that LACMA held). There were several Van Gogh paintings that I liked (all three from the last two years of his life), including one of a grass field that I appreciated for the way it changed under different distances of viewing. There were two Klees that I liked as well (and two I didn't like), which is unusual given that, in general, I've never liked his stuff. Also in the collection was a Degas dancers painting that I liked much more than the ones at the Norton Simon.

After we finished the exhibit we wandered into the permanent collection, where they had displayed some Gaugins, Renoirs, and Cezannes that I had missed in my previous visit. In some ways, these were more interesting than the ones in the Duncan Philips exhibit, as some of them were outside their typical style (at least in my experience); there were also more of them than in the Phillips exhibit. I also took another look at the de La Tour Magdalen with the Smoking Flame painting to get some closer shots.

I've posted a photo gallery of the entire experience (only the first twelve are from the Duncan Philips exhibit, the rest are from the permanent collection). With some of the paintings I was diligent enough to snap a photo of the placard, but within the actual Renoir-Matisse exhibit photos "weren't allowed," so the need to be discrete overrode documentation.

(photos over on flickr)
This is just a draft to get some stuff down before I forget. Assuming I have time, this will become a full entry later.

This was another fun Bridge School. Paul McCartney brought down the house at the very end, and in the three years that I've been there, I think only Billy Idol has come close to rockin' the place in the same way. McCartney does have the advantage with the entire Beatles catalog at his disposal, and he used it perfectly. There's something great about ending a long, all-day concert with a Beatles song. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that 20,000 people all know the words, so you get this tremendous chorus that gives you this buzz at the end of the concert. At the Bridge School Concert a month after 9/11, it ended with everyone singing a tearful "Imagine" (technically not a Beatles song, I know). This year the concert ended with everyone singing the na-na-na-na portion of "Hey Jude."

Tony Bennett was also awesome, and Red Hot Chili Peppers played a great set. I didn't care much for hearing Sonic Youth go acoustic, and Eddie Vedder's solo is a little boring, but hey, it was great to see all of them in one concert.

We went to go see Mike Doughty perform last night. I would describe it as listening to all the slow (non-jazzy) songs on the Soul Coughing albums (e.g. True Dreams of Wichita) for an hour. That's not to say it was slow, but it definitely had an acoustic performance feel even if Doughty was playing his strat. Perhaps I'm biased from having seen Doughty onstage with in the Soul Coughing days with flashing lights, film reels of smoking cartoon monkeys, and samples blaring through the air. Doughty played with another drummer with an unspellable name and a keyboardist, though for several songs he played solo.

Several Soul Coughing songs were performed:

St. Louise is Listening
Super Bon Bon
True Dream of Wichita
Circles

I was hoping for a little Screenwriter's Blues, but that was a little too much to hope for given their arrangement.

Overall, a good show to be at, but the Soul Coughing comparisons were inevitable for me and I couldn't help thinking, wouldn't Sebastian Steinberg (of Soul Coughing) playing upright bass make this show awesome?

I would lump Mixmaster Mike and DJ Jazzy Jeff in a similar category, which is convenient for me, seeing as I've seen them both. Both are good DJs that got their celebrity by backing someone more famous, and they draw much of their fame from the late 80s and the 90s. The combination of these elements meant that both shows had a nostalgic view, and each featured climaxes of spinning skillz demonstrations. I remember being a little more impressed at DJ Jazzy Jeff's abilities, but perhaps time is playing tricks on my mind.

I'm not good at identifying pure electronic tracks, and there's this one hip-hop song that I keep hearing at so many shows and still don't know the name of, but what I think I remember was Mixmaster Mike having a good transition into Rage Against the Machine's "Know Your Enemy (?)", followed by a transition into Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." There was also the obligatory Beastie Boys with "No Sleep Til Brooklyn (?)" and "Intergalatic Planetary," the latter of which he transitioned into Steve Miller's "Rock 'N Me."

meta reminds me that in addition to the hip-hop, white boy rap, classic rock, alternative rock, and electronica, there was also a bit of bangra thrown in.

(?) Indicates songs that I recognized at the time, but I'm now unsure about because I listened to my iPod on random the next morning and it messed with my memory.

Update: meta informs me that the song was probably "Scenario" off of Low End Theory by Tribe Called Quest, which has Busta Rhymes on it, which would explain why I've heard it before in concert (Busta Rhymes concert at MIT).

To be honest, I still don't know who Matt Nathanson is. When we first got to the show we tried to peg the demographic, but all we could come up with was "20-30 something non-hipster San Franciscans that are of above-average height."

meta got tickets after her friend Joe recommended the show to her, so we went over to Slim's last night to watch him perform. He provides amusing commentary between songs that keeps the audience laughing and throws in some funny covers here and there (Prince, Neil Diamond, James, etc...). He's also a local boy and is pretty talented, but, alas, he's not my type of music. Joe has a quote on his blog that says, "Matt Nathanson-Beneath These Fireworks: This CD will go head to head with John Mayer and Howie Day!." Well, I don't listen to John Mayer or Howie Day aren't my type either, but I imagine if you like those two then you'll like Nathanson as well.

Joe also recommends Victor Wooten, who is playing tonight at Yoshi's (it's actually a Mike Stern show, with Wooten and Dave Weckl). Unlike Nathanson, I have heard Wooten before, and he appeals to my "amazing (bass) guitarist" interest. If you were lucky enough to have tickets to the Wooten show, I hate you, but you should post a description of the show because I'm still wondering how in the world Wooten plays some of his amazing riffs without growing an extra set of arms.

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meta, honeyfields, and I saw Liz Phair last night. meta already beat me to the post, but here's goes my thoughts.

First off, I'm not a huge Liz Phair fan, but spend enough times in meta's car on trips up to Tahoe and you'll have heard all of her old stuff multiple times over and it will start to grow on you. This also means I haven't heard any of her new stuff, with the exception of the lame video on MTV. So judge what I say accordingly.

The Good

My favorite performance of the night: 'Supernova.' This goes against the grain of everything else I will say in this review, because this song was cranked-up, full-ensemble-blasting rock performance. It ended the first set beautifully, and I think her guitarist may have even played the riff better than she does on the album.

In general, Liz Phair's best performances were with her older lo-fi material ("Flower," "6'1"", "Supernova", "Chopsticks," and even throw in "Polyester Bride"). I say this with an extreme bias, but her older material mostly shared the quality that the rest of the band didn't play as much. She was strong and charismatic enough to carry the song on her own, and her voice goes much better with her barely amped telecaster.

meta broke out the biggest grin when she figured out what Liz Phair meant when she said, "We like to bookend our sets. Sauce at the beginning with 'Flower' and sauce at the end," leading into the final song. I'll leave it to your amusement to figure out which song, but I will hint that you don't need to know the lyrics to guess the song (not 'Flower' obviously).

honeyfields also broke out an occassional grin or look of surprise when she understood the lyrics :)

The Bad

She mentioned during the concert that she had played at the Warfield before with just her and her guitar -- I wish I could have gone to that concert instead. This is the only time I've seen her perform, but I imagine that concert must have been better.

Like meta's review pointed out, Liz Phair and her backing band don't mesh. While meta approached this from a chemistry standpoint, I think the idea of having Liz Phair stand onstage with a guitarist, keyboardist, bassist and drummer just doesn't work, and the dynamics were terrible. Liz Phair, while a good performer, does not belt out the type of vocals that can soar over blasting distortion and bass. For some reason, who ever engineered her sound interpreted this conflict as an excuse for pushing Liz Phair's vocals through this boosted reverb that turned her vocals into a mix of clipping and echo whenever she sang the chorus. During the verses there was the opposite problem that the band members didn't know how to use volume pedals or strum more lightly, so her voice dodged in and out.

I was wiser this year and didn't go at the very start, though I probably should have delayed even a bit longer. I didn't really pay attention to Incubus or the Indigo Girls (we missed the bands before them), as I was really just waiting for the final three acts (Pearl Jam, Willie Nelson, CSNY).

Willie Nelson covered a couple of Hank Williams' songs, played a couple with Neil Young, and did his typical fare (at least from the last time I saw him). He was good, though I wish he did some more high-energy songs. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, given their varied collaborations, did some CSNY (Teach Your Children, Our House), Buffalo Springfield (For What It's Worth), and Stills-Young (Long May You Run).

Pearl Jam did a much better set than I saw them do two years ago. They stuck with older material and covers (Dylan, Beatles, Victoria Williams). Eddie Vedder's voice was sounding a bit restrained, but the performances were tight. They had an organ player playing for the first half the set that was actually quite good and made the performances a bit more distinct.

I got to see the White Stripes perform in Berkeley. It was one of their first shows back after Jack White broke his finger, and it was fun, good, and rocking, though as a note to self, the show probably feels more energetic if you probably aren't sitting down on a hard concrete slab - the pit is where it's at. As a tribute to the late Man in Black, Jack read the lyrics to "I Got Stripes" between songs (I've posted the lyrics in the complete entry).

We were also treated to an opening act by Ima Robot, which seems to be a revival of nearly every 80s act that we could think of (Cure, Cars, Duran Duran), combined with a bit of Johnny Rotten. I didn't listen to music in the 80s, so I don't have much else to say about this.

I took Amanda to a Willie Nelson concert as a present. I'm personally not much of a fan, but, man, that dude is four times my age, ten times a better guitar player, and is in two times better shape than I am. I was getting tired just standing there for the length of the set, while he was standing there playing guitar and pumping his arms. After the set was over he took the time to shake the hands of everyone who could make it to the front and signed anything that was handed to him (boots, tickets, bras). I managed to be the last person to get something signed before he launched into a two song encore, with Amanda and I in the front row. We were close enough that we were looking at the "Willie" embroidered into his New Balance shoes. We could also read the signatures on his guitar (I only remember "Annie" and Paul English).

On another note, the Fillmore is a great concert venue.

Just saw BB King at Shoreline Amphitheater and it was awesome. The man can still play it with the masters. Instead of selling CDs they should sell DVDs - the amount of emotion BB puts into every lick and bend is awesome.

I also got to see George Thorogood - he may still play the same stuff as always but I still dig it.

My first Bridge School concert. Worth every penny/hundred dollar bill. Bring pants next time. Pearl Jam was a big disappointment, seeing as I came mostly to see them. They hadn't played together in awhile, and it showed. They were also playing some new songs that I didn't think were particularly good, and they were also in a rush to get up to Seattle with REM for another concert.

Billy Idol was definitely the highlight of the night, especially for his theatrics and for the way that he performed for the Bridge School children, performing his sexually charged lyrics directly to them. In an acoustic concert where most artists interepret that to mean their hit songs, but slower, having Billy Idol going full blast was a big energy booster and got everyone going.

Neil Young
Sugar Mountain and Blowing in the Wind (how many cannonballs�before they are banned?)

Jill Sobule
Kathie Lee loves me
Slutty Mouseketeers (Bitter song)
Survivor

Ben Harper
songs to sleep by
Song w/ mother

REM
The other song from automatic for the people
Everybody Hurts
Sugar of life (or whatever that crappy song is called)
Losing my religion

Dave Matthews
Song w/ Tracy Chapman
Sometimes I find its better to be somebody else
Crash
I did it
w/ Neil Young: All Along the Watchtower. This was actually cool.

Pearl Jam
The Kids Are Alright
Wishlist
2 new songs (last hope? Written by Mike). Very appropriate for acoustic
Lowlight (first live performance)
Nothing as it Seems
Black
1 unidentified song (truth)
Indifference w/ Ben Harper
Soldier of Love

Tracy Chapman
More songs to sleep by

Billy Idol
White wedding
For What It's Worth w/ Neil Young (in cowboy hat) - Buffalo Springfield cover
Rebel Yell
Mony Mony

Neil Young
Blowin' in the Wind
Imagine