Back in March I wrote about my encounters with the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. One of the specific encounters was seeing El Perro Del Mar and the two opening acts. Well, I have made another visit with the Great American Music Hall, and have a new set of encounters to describe: seeing Au Revoir Simone, the Sound Team, and Voxtrot in concert.
For this new round at the Great American Music Hall, my partner in crime was my friend Yumiko, who was not familiar with the bands mentioned. The show was mainly for Voxtrot because, I guess, they’re big. I had only recently heard about them via Pitchfork Media and some music blogs. The Sound Team I was not even aware until the concert was advertised. Au Revoir Simone was the band I knew about the most. I first heard of them when I was listening to David Byrne’s satellite radio station and more specifically, his June 2006 playlist, where he had a track playing called “Through the Backyards,” which I thought was an amazing song. I did my homework trying to find out more about them and there wasn’t much. They had a website where you could order their CD through it. It was not available in general stores nor sites like Amazon or iTunes. I received their album through Paypal, and it was a rotating disc of bliss.
This past month, their second album was released, which was a bit more polished. There was more dedication, it seemed, placed on this album. However, I still haven’t found the equivalent to their song “Through the Backyards” on the latest album.
There was quite the line outside the venue, which was more than what I saw at the El Perro Del Mar show. The line was mostly people in my age bracket, some older, some younger. There was one thing I kept noticing, in line and inside: there were all these dorky-goofy-looking white guys with cute Asian girls. This overwhelmed me, then this pain struck the middle of my forehead, and that was the physical sign of hypocrisy because there I was, a dorky-goofy-looking white guy with a cute Asian girl. I don’t know what this meant but it was apparent.
The concert opened with Au Revoir Simone, which was unfortunate because, as we all know, the opening band doesn’t get as much play time compared to the other bands. So, the band maybe played six songs and left the stage.
When reading about the band, I found out that it is three hip young women from Brooklyn who were all part of other bands at some point and decided to become something of their own. The main connection between the three of them is that they all use a keyboard. Seeing this in concert made me really realize this. All their songs have fun poppy jingles in them and various little beats and bumps, but I forgot to consider that these sounds can all come from a keyboard. For some reason, I found disappointment in this; the three women had made pre-recorded sounds and with a touch a button, that sound repeats itself over and over. I know they were doing more with the keyboards but for some reason, I wanted to imagine a backup band, or at least someone playing a set of drums, but I was completely wrong.
For this new round at the Great American Music Hall, my partner in crime was my friend Yumiko, who was not familiar with the bands mentioned. The show was mainly for Voxtrot because, I guess, they’re big. I had only recently heard about them via Pitchfork Media and some music blogs. The Sound Team I was not even aware until the concert was advertised. Au Revoir Simone was the band I knew about the most. I first heard of them when I was listening to David Byrne’s satellite radio station and more specifically, his June 2006 playlist, where he had a track playing called “Through the Backyards,” which I thought was an amazing song. I did my homework trying to find out more about them and there wasn’t much. They had a website where you could order their CD through it. It was not available in general stores nor sites like Amazon or iTunes. I received their album through Paypal, and it was a rotating disc of bliss.
This past month, their second album was released, which was a bit more polished. There was more dedication, it seemed, placed on this album. However, I still haven’t found the equivalent to their song “Through the Backyards” on the latest album.
There was quite the line outside the venue, which was more than what I saw at the El Perro Del Mar show. The line was mostly people in my age bracket, some older, some younger. There was one thing I kept noticing, in line and inside: there were all these dorky-goofy-looking white guys with cute Asian girls. This overwhelmed me, then this pain struck the middle of my forehead, and that was the physical sign of hypocrisy because there I was, a dorky-goofy-looking white guy with a cute Asian girl. I don’t know what this meant but it was apparent.
The concert opened with Au Revoir Simone, which was unfortunate because, as we all know, the opening band doesn’t get as much play time compared to the other bands. So, the band maybe played six songs and left the stage.
When reading about the band, I found out that it is three hip young women from Brooklyn who were all part of other bands at some point and decided to become something of their own. The main connection between the three of them is that they all use a keyboard. Seeing this in concert made me really realize this. All their songs have fun poppy jingles in them and various little beats and bumps, but I forgot to consider that these sounds can all come from a keyboard. For some reason, I found disappointment in this; the three women had made pre-recorded sounds and with a touch a button, that sound repeats itself over and over. I know they were doing more with the keyboards but for some reason, I wanted to imagine a backup band, or at least someone playing a set of drums, but I was completely wrong.
Three chicks with keyboards After the first song was played, one of the members revealed to us that her keyboard was being lame and was doing some weird stuff. I didn’t know what was going to be at hand with this. She then announced that “the keyboard will make the music dirty.” Of course, she emphasized the word dirty and the crowd became giddy. Later on, that specific keyboard would suddenly blast random sounds during certain songs, so that was what she was talking about.
The band, like I said, is composed of three young women, and they all look very similar: they’re all white women with long brown hair, and were all at least 5’8”. Yumiko made the comment that it was like watching some cult: a cult of long brown hair women with keyboards.
Of course, as a heterosexual man I was checking them out, and the one who announced that her keyboard was dirty I thought was cute, but eventually something was troubling me. It finally came to me when Yumiko had asked me a question.
“So, which one is your favorite one?” she asked with a silly grin on her face.
“Well, I thought the one with glasses was but then I realized she looks like my mom when she was, you know, young, thin, not married, and didn’t give birth to three kids,” just laughter coming from Yumiko’s end.
This became a problem for me. Every time I looked at the singer I kept thinking of my mom from the pictures in her wedding album, her high school pictures, etc. I cannot find this musician attractive! At one point, she was getting into one of the rhythms of the songs and was making a sort of thrusting motion, and that killed me: ahhhhhhhh! my mind screamed. I cannot look at that singer anymore, so I rested my eyes on the other two musicians who were to her right.
So the music was overall good for Au Revoir Simone, but my Freudian/Oedipus bullshit was something that dampened my mood for the performance.
They left the stage after six songs (and they did play “Through the Backyards,” which was cool). Then came on the Sound Team about five minutes later. Since I didn’t know much about this band, I went to their myspace page and listened to one of the tracks, which seemed decent. When I was in LA a couple of weekends ago, I was in Amoeba Records and they had two Sound Team CDs in the used rack for $4.99 each, so I bought them. They were not good. Just a lot of guitar jamming and some singing, nothing really special. I figured this would be the disappointing part of the show, and I was dead on.
From a general standpoint, the Sound Team is not a bad band. A bad band would be a group of people on stage kicking a bunch of buckets and yelling “We’ve got the funk!” into a microphone. They do know how to play instruments quite well. However, there wasn’t really anything unique to the band. I felt we had heard this music before, and I think the band knew that too. The other factor was I think the Sound Team was trying to develop an ego for themselves. The lead singer was wishing he was part of the Strokes, I felt. Then he experimented with his singing capabilities and would try to sound like Robert Plant. There was a song that just happened to have the lyrics, “Ohhh, makes me wonder,” and the singer dove into that Plant-esque style of singing, and I thought, “no way is he trying to mimic Stairway.” Between songs they would reiterate that they were the Sound Team and that they are from Austin, Texas. They eventually left the stage.
Voxtrot was the last band, and the headliner. You could tell based on (not the marquee but) the crowd, it became insanely more packed once they hit the stage. Voxtrot is a very fun band to listen to, and therefore is a very fun band to watch. They are very easy listening, definitely not trying to make intense/ultra poetic pieces but just hip songs about infatuations and best friends. Nothing wrong with that.
There were five members to the band and they all had their own image. The lead singer and the lead guitarist were the ones who stood out the most. The lead singer was very mobile on stage, he would be at the microphone stand at one point and then grab the microphone and wander around, then migrate to the piano and act like a Ben Folds figure and then meander back to the microphone stand. While singing, I noticed his left arm had a mind of its own because it kept trying to leap off the body. During songs, he would hold the microphone and then, boom, the left arm is up in the air and then back down, and then up again, and then back down. Even on the piano the arm would jump up. I felt a net was needed to capture and tame that appendage. The lead guitarist was unique looking; he looked like a living form of a drawing of Paul McCartney illustrated by Garry Trudeau.
The band, like I said, is composed of three young women, and they all look very similar: they’re all white women with long brown hair, and were all at least 5’8”. Yumiko made the comment that it was like watching some cult: a cult of long brown hair women with keyboards.
Of course, as a heterosexual man I was checking them out, and the one who announced that her keyboard was dirty I thought was cute, but eventually something was troubling me. It finally came to me when Yumiko had asked me a question.“So, which one is your favorite one?” she asked with a silly grin on her face.
“Well, I thought the one with glasses was but then I realized she looks like my mom when she was, you know, young, thin, not married, and didn’t give birth to three kids,” just laughter coming from Yumiko’s end.
This became a problem for me. Every time I looked at the singer I kept thinking of my mom from the pictures in her wedding album, her high school pictures, etc. I cannot find this musician attractive! At one point, she was getting into one of the rhythms of the songs and was making a sort of thrusting motion, and that killed me: ahhhhhhhh! my mind screamed. I cannot look at that singer anymore, so I rested my eyes on the other two musicians who were to her right.
So the music was overall good for Au Revoir Simone, but my Freudian/Oedipus bullshit was something that dampened my mood for the performance.
They left the stage after six songs (and they did play “Through the Backyards,” which was cool). Then came on the Sound Team about five minutes later. Since I didn’t know much about this band, I went to their myspace page and listened to one of the tracks, which seemed decent. When I was in LA a couple of weekends ago, I was in Amoeba Records and they had two Sound Team CDs in the used rack for $4.99 each, so I bought them. They were not good. Just a lot of guitar jamming and some singing, nothing really special. I figured this would be the disappointing part of the show, and I was dead on.
From a general standpoint, the Sound Team is not a bad band. A bad band would be a group of people on stage kicking a bunch of buckets and yelling “We’ve got the funk!” into a microphone. They do know how to play instruments quite well. However, there wasn’t really anything unique to the band. I felt we had heard this music before, and I think the band knew that too. The other factor was I think the Sound Team was trying to develop an ego for themselves. The lead singer was wishing he was part of the Strokes, I felt. Then he experimented with his singing capabilities and would try to sound like Robert Plant. There was a song that just happened to have the lyrics, “Ohhh, makes me wonder,” and the singer dove into that Plant-esque style of singing, and I thought, “no way is he trying to mimic Stairway.” Between songs they would reiterate that they were the Sound Team and that they are from Austin, Texas. They eventually left the stage.
Voxtrot was the last band, and the headliner. You could tell based on (not the marquee but) the crowd, it became insanely more packed once they hit the stage. Voxtrot is a very fun band to listen to, and therefore is a very fun band to watch. They are very easy listening, definitely not trying to make intense/ultra poetic pieces but just hip songs about infatuations and best friends. Nothing wrong with that.
There were five members to the band and they all had their own image. The lead singer and the lead guitarist were the ones who stood out the most. The lead singer was very mobile on stage, he would be at the microphone stand at one point and then grab the microphone and wander around, then migrate to the piano and act like a Ben Folds figure and then meander back to the microphone stand. While singing, I noticed his left arm had a mind of its own because it kept trying to leap off the body. During songs, he would hold the microphone and then, boom, the left arm is up in the air and then back down, and then up again, and then back down. Even on the piano the arm would jump up. I felt a net was needed to capture and tame that appendage. The lead guitarist was unique looking; he looked like a living form of a drawing of Paul McCartney illustrated by Garry Trudeau.
Voxtrot: maintaing left arms and cartoony Beatle looksI was glad that I attended the show, but it wasn’t totally on the plus side. Au Revoir Simone was the burning reason why I wanted to go and to see them as the opening band was not as cool, plus the Oedipal complex and sole reliance on keyboards didn’t help the situation, the Sound Team I could have done without, and Voxtrot was decent, just next time I need to bring tranquilizers for the lead singer’s left arm.
1 comment:
I suspect there's more to this story.
J'accuse.
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