ON LIVE MUSIC

Upon driving back from Lowe's where I was buying some new 3-stage filters for my Pür faucet-mount water filter system (shameless attempt at scoring an umlaut into my blog), I was thinking a lot about Thievery Corporation and the injustice that was their live concert in SF.

I'm going to steal some comments of mine from the NoP msgboard in order to explain...

I will now refrain from the puns that have been overused to describe the concert in particular and this critically-acclaimed duo of turntablists. As was mentioned by a friend-of-a-friend, "Thievery sucks live." I agree with this, to a point.

The music was not bad, at least that which was soft enough as to not saturate my hearing system. Maybe it was the venue? Maybe it was the engineers? The duo themselves? The wafting fog of "righteous bush" in the air? But, it was by all accounts: TOO LOUD!

There comes a point in technology where making something bigger and better crosses the line. When the possibility of generating 5 Billion decibels is a reality, maybe it's better to hold off and keep the volume at a level where human physiology can still grasp the whole concept that is "music". There is a gray area between music and noise, and mis-use of a single variable (such as volume/wattage) can slide a soft Yanni work into a death metal tirade of pain.

Additional to the general loudness when Thievery actually got on stage, starting the concert 3 hours later with a generally very boring warm-up pair of DJs was in no way worth the cost of entry. The lights were turned up too much, and the music was only good enough to allow for some drug-induced care-free dancing freaks to solo out on the floor. People watching for 3-hours is fine when the atmosphere allows them to be more comfortable with themselves, but when the lights are that bright the freaks are less common.

The bass at the entrance to TC was so extreme that it was a fun effect for about 5 seconds. When it continued on it began to remind me of an episode of South Park where the kids go to a Worldwide Recorder Concert. The episode is also lovingly known as The Brown Noise because Cartman discovers a noise which causes humans to lose bowel control. The Regency nearly hosted such an event. Fortunately, only the hairs on my arms vibrated in a pseudo-massage line-dance tango.

Lighter note: The part I enjoyed the most was drinking the ice-loaded overpriced cocktails. If it wasn't for these, I would have written another paragraph about how bad the concert was.

I'll continue to appreciate the musical creativity in Thievery Corporation albums, but never again go to a concert where they are the headliners.

In contrast to this, I attended an intimate concert at The Bottom of the Hill where the genre was "post-punk" and I was more than impressed. The opening band was From Monument To Masses, which is composed of 3 talented and creative musicians, one who is a jrhigh/highschool classmate of mine, Francis Choung (drums, etc). The music started close to the time promised on the billing, the sound was just loud enough, and the passion was there in full.

I was impressed enough to purchase a T-shirt and regret buying a copy of their CD for myself. Next time or online maybe. Their music is a driving creative mix of socialist speech/rally samples played off of an iPod mini. The melt of the live instruments and sampling was unique and refreshing. The message of their music, and not necessarily the socialist aspect of it all, was powerful and inspiring to me.

The group after FMTM was a San Diego-based band, Tristeza. Their sound was a bit tighter/crisper than FMTM, but expressed a bit less passion. The sound overall was smooth, soft and sexy as opposed to FMTM's gritty, driving punches. I liked hearing these two bands in contrast. Variety is the spice of life. The third band, Hood, was the headliner but was too sloppy of a sound for me to really appreciate. They also had more vocals than the other groups, but it seemed too much a jumble of unintelligible english. They weren't bad, but compared to the other two it really wasn't a welcome style for my listening taste.