Tchaikovsky Vs. Sleater-Kinney

August 27, 2002

So this past Saturday I hit up the Hollywood Bowl again with the crew, and it was alternatingly the best and worst night I’ve spent at the Bowl. It was the the Tchaikovsky Spectacular, which included a full fireworks show during the 1812 Overture. It’s a great way to spend an evening.

Unfortunately, too many people agree with me. The Bowl was packed to the gills, so much so that they ran out of parking. We were also surrounded by this gigantic family filled with kids. Now, I know kids are going to get restless and a bit out of control during this sort of thing. I know if I was eight years old I would probably be absolutely batty. That doesn’t explain why the parents insisted on talking throughout the show though. This ain’t your living room, pal.

Grrrrrrrr.

The next day I trudged out to Sunset Junction, which is essentially a huge street fair in Silverlake. They lock up a long stretch of Sunset Boulevard and fill it with rides of death, games of redemption, and booths of funnel cake. While I like street fairs well enough, the real reason I dragged my ass out was that Sleater-Kinney was playing a free show at the end of the night.

As always, they put on a great show, fighting off technical difficulties to play an hourlong set of mostly new material and a couple of older tracks. Tracks like Oxygen and Light Rail Coyote absolutely catch fire live, while Sympathy and Step Aside let Corin Tucker expand her vocabulary into blues and soul with remarkable success. Carrie Brownstein remains one of the single most charismatic stage presences around, and I had to openly chuckle when she fired up the wah pedal during Step Aside. Janet Weiss’s drums were mixed incredibly loud last night, often overpoweringly so. The extra volume actually helped though, as most songs rumbled like a runaway train and pulsed with life. Classics like like Call the Doctor and Dig Me Out have lost none of the their resonance over the years, and still remain the high energy showcases for the show.

The audience wasn’t terribly into it, and I think Sleater-Kinney works a bit better at an indoor show when all the energy and force gets compressed into this little box. The sound was pretty awful too, with the vocals too low in the mix and Carrie’s microphone encountering heavy feeback during Funeral Song. Still, Sleater-Kinney fought on and delivered admirably, showing off the incredible professionalism and skill that often eludes musicians these days.

The pictures I took didn’t come out, so just pretend that this attached picture was actually in Hollywood and outdoors at Sunset Junction and not at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Hey, I never claimed journalistic integrity, did I? Here’s another pic I didn’t take:

Sidenotes regarding concert jackassery:

If a band is promoting the new album that came out last week, it is a dumb thing to yell out “When does your new album come out?” TWICE. Especially when the first time someone anwswered by yelling “It came out last week, superfan!”

If you’re a supposed punk rocker (complete with designer mohawk) it isn’t cool to stand in the middle of a crowd and yell stuff about being a real punker. No one cares. Especially when I saw you mouthing the words to Cheap Trick during the warmup, you poser.

It’s 2002, I’m 25 years old, I don’t need people moshing around me. I don’t need any more elbows in the kidneys.

When the band actually admonishes you for moshing, and you then proceed to body surf the next song to prove how cool you are, you are officially a dumbass.

Posted in From Blown Speakers