Better than Coachella: A Possibly Annoying Live Music Journal
Tue May 2, 01:11 PM by Skylab Smith
Is my favorite band God? Can one band unite the world? Is Ice Cube still in the gangs? Is the Fillmore heaven? Is there something inherently wrong with saying you saw angels at a stadium show?
If you are easily annoyed, read no further.
April 8: Crime in Choir at the Hemlock Tavern
As I read off of a Good Earth black tea teabag label the other day, Voltaire wrote, “Anything too stupid to be said is sung.” Crime in Choir will make no such mistake – either saying or singing something stupid. Instead, that’s my job, as I try to describe their beyond-complete, powerfully wordless live show.
That’s right – they’re one of those bands with a musical vision aimed straight for the hearts of all you neo-prog-label-label-emo-rock snobs who claim you “don’t like music with vocals” and then proceed to buy albums by bands with such pretentiously wordy names that they have to be condensed to strings of letters. I’m not saying that if you like GYBE!’s LYSFLATH! or Dirty Three’s SHNSA – or any number of other bands/albums I could make pointless references to – you’ll definitely like CIC. I’m saying if the entire world was changed into one large Crime in Choir live show, you wouldn’t be able to hear anything that anyone else said, and for a good long while, you probably wouldn’t care.
And you might still respect yourself the next day.
The only remaining problem: what do you do when a good band is plagued by boring fans, who stand immobile and self-conscious in the audience with their bike messenger bags and Velcro sneakers? Quote Voltaire again, see if that helps: “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
Which begs the question is/are Crime in Choir god? Toward the end of the show, the guitarist announces that they’ve got just two more songs to play and someone in the back of the room yells, “twenty more” – to which the guitarist replies, “OK, we’ll play twenty but we’re going to play them ten at a time.” Enough said.
*Warning to anyone that might be compelled to try getting a Crime in Choir album: the one they’re playing in concert right now is the one you want, and possibly due to some record label type stuff it won’t be released until this fall.April 20: Rob Zombie at the Warfield
This is my first time seeing Rob Zombie
so I’m half-hoping, half-afraid that the show will be exactly like The Devil’s Rejects. It’s not, and that’s probably a good thing.
From my vantage point against the wall at the back of the balcony, I look down precipitously through the dark heat over the heads of Zombie legions to the stage far below, where Rob appears to be springing around on grasshopper-like legs, wearing Converse tennis shoes. They play all the hits, including some White Zombie, and make liberal use of smoke machines. Which means that this show is perfect for a novice like me, though hardcore fans are probably disappointed. When Rob pumps the audience for applause and makes three of four obligatory encores (before ending promptly at 11:00, as scheduled) and screams, “What do you want, San Francisco? I don’t know what the fuck you want!?!” – you’re really not sure if he’s taunting you or pleading with you. To be on the safe side, I think you’re supposed to just do whatever he wants.
April 23: Soulfly at the Fillmore
If Zombie was hot and dark, Soulfly is anything opposite: pure white light.
I’m that shirtless bald guy in front of the stage, glistening with sweat and dancing with the Brazilian flag stretched between my uplifted arms, mesmerized and gratified when the diamond banner in the middle of Max Cavalera’s Brazilian-flag-motif guitar begins to glow neon orange in the dark. I can see all the other guys’ eyes on me, our bodies colliding in this frenetic, euphoric, mosh pit and I realize, suddenly and happily, all of us are gay!
OK, so actually I’m the stoned girl well behind the mosh pit, right in the section where those who subscribe to the axiom “my right to swing my fist ends where…” – mix freely with those who maybe don’t. So, in full disclosure mode, I’ll tell you that I’ve spent the past four days at the annual NORML conference, and in the car on the way to the show the talk was of how, as we approach our 30s, we should really stick with sativa and lay off of the indica. Plus I’ve had a fascination with the Brazilian flag for as long as I can remember (“Ordem e progresso!!”) – but this show is amazing!
I’m hearing the beats within the beats within the beats and I’m thinking maybe world peace is not so far off, afterall. I mean, at what other time have I been to a show where fat, pasty-white techies worked the back stage and Mexicans were in the audience? A cool, fresh breeze seems to come off of the thrashing bodies in front of the stage. This is a metal show where the costume changes consist of band members putting on different flag-themed T-shirts between songs, for chrissakes. At one point, I swear, a little boy comes out on stage to participate in a drum solo, and a shy, radiant smile stretches across his face from one earplugged ear to the other. If one band could unite the world… well, like I said, something or other is affecting my reasoning.
April 25: Ice Cube w/tha Doggpound at the Fillmore
The Doggpound are the first band I’ve ever seen that complained that not enough pot was being smoked in the audience. One could safely assume it has been done before, I’m just saying I haven’t seen it. Which kind of raises a question for any San Francisco historians out there: Can the Fillmore be hotboxed? I’m sure many a valiant effort has been made back in the day, but those are pretty high ceilings (no pun intended). Wesssssssiiiiiiide. But enough of that!
Ice Cube says people have been telling him he shouldn’t still be in the gangs. To quote: “I said, people have been telling me, I shouldn’t still be in the gangs!”
FYI, he still is, I assure you. The way I know is I heard thousands of big black men singing “gangstas make the world go round” together. In falsetto.
Seriously. At some point after that I remember thinking Ice Cube was about to stop the show and ask for more money – just hold the entire audience captive while we all pulled out our wallets and passed the cash forward. 
That idea I had about Soulfly uniting the world? Ice Cube would obviously have to be involved, too. Like John Lennon famously said of the Beatles, Ice Cube is simply more popular than… well, Soulfly for starters.
And on a religious note, here’s where all I’m going to say is, Rock Meds rock. Rock Meds have been part of two of the experiences in my life that I would come closest to calling “religious.” Though I have no desire to have any more of these particular types of religious experiences, nor would I wish it upon anyone else, I sincerely hope the Rock Medics are there for us all if it happens.
April 27: Depeche Mode at the Shoreline Amphitheatre
Martin Gore has my vote for Best All-Time Use of Face Glitter. Every move this guy makes is so perfectly calculated; his masterminding of the use of face glitter should come as no surprise.
With signs of my deliverance increasing through each show this month, it stands to reason that Depeche Mode are my angels. Yeah, I was surprised. I saw the Violent Femmes once and could hardly enjoy the show because the fourteen-year-old-singalong element was too irritating to me. But when 10,000 people at the Shoreline sing “try walking in my shoes, you stumble in my footsteps...” it is actually beautiful. I guess that’s how easy it is to make a seemingly self-important song into a ballad of the masses. It’s a hell of a lot of shoes to try walking in, I’ll tell you that much.
We’re perpetually threatening to swear off these stadium shows, with their tedious parking, $8 beers, cheapskate lawn “seats” and microscopic bands, but in this case it was ideal. I could see everything on stage from where I stood, the sound was excellent, I got to the bathroom and back while David Gahan was still singing “I Feel You,” and nothing was thrown at me during the entire show (this is usually a problem I have). And as good as the view was from the lawn, it was far enough from the stage to preserve the illusion that Depeche Mode are still boyishly beautiful.
At least, that’s what I was thinking before the big-screen camera finally zoomed in for some crotch shots half way into the second set and – maybe it was the magical spell of the music – but Gahan looked as hot and disturbing as ever. The performance was perfect: Everybody in the audience wanted to be the sixteen-year-old boy in the songs (yes, I maintain that all Depeche Mode songs are written about teenage boys) and I was reminded of my preteen days, one week in the summer when for some reason we decided to spend (numerous, it seems) afternoons putting together jigsaw puzzles while listening to Violator on repeat.
I don’t care how cynical you are. This is what it is all about.
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Lastly, and partly because I don’t think anyone will read all the way to the end here, I have to say that I owe a couple people thanks for getting my ass out to all these shows – people easily more amazing than all the guys with all the guitars put together.
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