Dinah and I initially were going to see Ra Ra Riot's Friday night show, but it sold out by the time that we actually decided we would go for sure. Instead, we got tickets for St. Vincent at the Great American Music Hall. I had actually just heard her CD when we got the tickets. I actually wanted to also see A.C. Newman today. I held off on the tickets because I had put my name down for a contest for free tickets. I didn't win them and by Thursday the tickets were sold out. So sad.
Anyway, I'd been excited about the show for a while. Thursday night rolls around, I check funcheapsf.com and lo and behold, there's some Diesel music event earlier in the day on Friday, where several Noise Pop performers (Ra Ra Riot included) were doing a free show in the Diesel store. All you had to do was RSVP. So I did, just in case I decided some time during Friday that I would have enough energy for two shows in one day (hey, I've done it before).
So, after I managed to trudge through my ConLaw assignment for Monday, I decided to give that Diesel show a try. I had a couple of hours to kill before the St. Vincent show anyway, so what the hell, right? I get all the way out there at around 5:45, stand in the line to get in, only to hear that the people in front of me got turned away because they didn't RSVP before Tuesday. Apparently, they were supposed to tell people who RSVPed after that they weren't going in, but they didn't. She offered to let us come in after 20 minutes, but at that point it wasn't worth it so I walked back to the Tower. Oddly enough, after all of that, the only thing that I was upset about was that I wasn't getting free pizza out of the whole thing. I hardly eat pizza, but for some reason the thought of free pizza that wasn't from Costco set off the pizza cravings. I stopped by Lush on the way back because I love Lush. Also went to Rasputin and thought about getting pizza at Blondies next door for 3 minutes until I decided that $4 was too much to pay for a slice of pizza when I had loads of jambalaya still waiting for me back at the Tower.
I got back to the Tower, ate dinner, and passed out for a while until Dinah got here around 8. We walked over to the Great American Music Hall. It's O'Farrell and Larkin-ish, which is actually up near the Olive Bar and that place that we had GAAP Idol. In fact, it's actually right around the corner. By the time we got there, the first band was actually performing their set. In fact, it must have been an incredibly short set because they finished a couple of minutes after we got there. The venue wasn't that crowded by the time we were there, so we managed to make it up to a spot pretty close to the stage.
The first band we saw/second band up was really good. The band was Rafter and they played pretty fun dance-y music. Also, they introduced almost every other song that they played as being about "sex and love." I really liked their set, actually, and was surprised that they had gone up so early.
I've also come to realize that for all the awesome that my camera is what with taking shots at 40x zoom and all, it really hates taking non flash pictures at shows that are not incredibly blurry. This is unfortunate because I'm not a big fan of taking flash pictures at shows anymore, but fortunately the fact that I can change my flash setting to taking really soft pictures makes up for that problem a little.
Anyway, they put on a great show and I was totally set to get their music after the show if the next band wasn't impressive.
The next band was Crypatcize and I was expecting a lot from them because they described them as mindblowing experimental indie pop. I guess that meant I was expecting something more in the vein of Animal Collective or maybe Deerhoof or something. They were pretty fun to watch, but they were definitely more pop-sounding. They were also incredibly cutesy, and kudos to the awesome sea otter shirt that one of them was wearing. They were fun to watch, but I liked the first band more. And actually, now that I have found their Myspace and am listening to the music there, I like their music more.
Actually, between the Rafter and Cryptacize sets we ran into a girl, Brooke, that we had not seen since high school and we talked a lot with her and her friends between Cryptacize and St. Vincent. It was pretty random, but it was really cool to see her again.
As is usually the case, the venue got incredibly packed after Cryptacize's set was over and we started being crowded by people that we had not seen the entire evening. That was fun. In fact, while I was trying to talk to someone, this gross couple started like grinding against me or something to push their way in front of me while they were doing god knows what. That's always a pleasant experience. In fact, that couple and their friends provided a lot of groans from our now merged group throughout the show.
The girl was strange. She looked at my purse at some point and became very distraught. "How do you clean your purse if you can't machine wash it?" This question caught me off guard, mostly because it's often surprising how out of touch with reality technology has made us. I responded "You hand wash it." She glared at me and went back to sitting on the ground.
St. Vincent took the stage and we knew that this would be another interesting show because security guards were trolling the crowd trying to catch people who were taking flash photography. Thus, I only got a few good shots in of St. Vincent.
Anyway, almost as soon as this show begins, the group of people in front of us lit up a joint and started smoking. Right in front of me. In fact, I'm pretty sure more of the smoke hit my face than they actually got to ingest. Which is fine, people like to smoke marijuana at shows. But usually, this is something left to Dave Matthews or Jimmy Buffett concerts. St. Vincent's most definitely not in that vein of pot-smoking music. Also, being the nerd that I am, I spent a good five minutes applying what I learned in Property class and trying to figure out in what ways these people were being a public nuisance.
Finally, one of the guys in the group. The tallest guy, who happened to stand directly in front of me, had some creepy stalker obsession with St. Vincent. He would try to engage her in conversation between songs and she clearly looked upset about this.
Sometimes I wonder why people are the way they are.
Other than that obnoxious bunch, the show was great. I expected her to be playing with a band or something, but she was up there by herself. I couldn't see but I think she had some sort of recording device set up there with her for the drums and other effects. She played a lot of songs that I recognized from the album and some new songs that will be on the new one. She played all the songs that I liked and that was good with me.
All in all, this was a great show and definitely made my one Noise Pop 09 venture very worthwhile.
After the show was over, we said goodbye to Brooke and her friends and headed over to the Rafter table to get their music. Also picked up a couple of free Noise Pop buttons and a Noise Pop 08 sampler. They had some deal going on where you could get all four of the albums for $20, so I said why not and did that. This made the singer very happy, so he gave me his pick. It's somewhere piled under my stuff. I should put it with the other picks (mostly Phantom Planet) that I've accumulated over the years.
We left the venue and instead of braving the Tenderloin at midnight, took a cab back to the tower. Good day for music.
There have been a few free happy hour shows throughout the week. I missed a chunk of them because they were during the week and I had class, was volunteering, or studying, but there was a Saturday afternoon one that I wanted to go to with this awesome band Music For Animals. I would have gone but around 3:30, I decided that I was in a stay in doors and study mood, so I stayed in.
That's about it. Time to go back to Moot Court.
