Summer at the Bowl

Although we're now officially into Fall, I've decided it's not too late for a Summer recap. While it may result in a somewhat sloppy haphazard presentation, I'm going to let the photos in this post do most of the talking. Unless otherwise noted, these pix were taken by Becky with our far from perfect Olympus FE-170 digital camera. And now, without further ado, here are a few selected highlights of the 2008 Hollywood Bowl season:

R.E.M./Modest Mouse/The National May 29th, 2008


The National trying to make the best out of having to play in the daylight. This is truly a thankless gig, as virtually no one in LA can make it to the bowl by 7 on a week night. We arrived about halfway through their set, and I can't say I was all that impressed.

Becky and I clearly not as enthused as the Modest Mouse Fan on his feet behind us.











Still, though, I had to admit being pretty excited at seeing ex Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr playing with them:








Finally, it was time for the main event. R.E.M. thrilled the audience by kicking off their set with "Pretty Persuasion" from their 1984 album Reckoning. I've had my ups and downs with R.E.M. over the years, but there was something thrilling about hearing Peter Buck playing those notes on his signature Rickenbocker guitar. Below is video (sadly, without sound) of the band's stripped down acoustic performance of "Let Me In" from Monster:



Overall, R.E.M. really delivered, and I still maintain that Accelerate is one of their very best records.


Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers/Steve Winwood June 25, 2008

Becky is a longtime Tom Petty fan, so we ponied up some serious dough to get pretty decent seats for this. Neither one of us really cared about Steve Winwood, though, so we got to our seats just as he was finishing his set. Fortunately, later in the evening, Winwood and Petty would join forces on the only two Steve Winwood songs that anyone ever needs to hear, "Gimme Some Lovin'" and "Can't Find My Way Home". Tom Petty took the stage and announced "We're here to rock Hollywood", and then proceeded to do just that. See if you can find him in the blurry photo below:













July 4th Fireworks
Spectacular:
A Ball at the Bowl with the Dodgers
July 3rd, 2008


Just over a week later, we were back again for one of the Bowl's patented 4th of July fireworks shows. This has become an annual event for us, generously sponsored by my Uncle Dave. Seriously, I have a very large extended family, and every year, Uncle Dave buys tickets for any and all who want to go see the fireworks show at the Hollywood Bowl. He pays for these tickets out of his own pocket. To say that this is incredibly generous is putting it mildly. Photos below.

























Obligatory notes on the 4th of July program at the bowl:
The theme was the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers, which meant that they trotted out Tommy Lasorda to work the mike for a few minutes. Love him or hate him, Lasorda's a born entertainer. He kind of upstaged Randy Newman, to be honest.

A bunch of random Dodgers past were also paraded across the Bowl stage, which was okay, I guess.

Be that as it may, the 4th of July fireworks at the Hollywood Bowl are some of the best you'll ever see. Worth the money, worth the wait.

And finally, from a couple of years ago, yours truly pictured with the man behind the madness, Dave Beard, who's a man not afraid to wear flag antennae if the occasion calls for it:






Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds/Spiritualized/Cat Power 09/17/08

For a bill my friend referred to as "the Heroin All-Stars", this was a surprisingly rocking show. Cat Power opened, and this was the first time I'd seen her since her famously "troubled" club days. The rumors are true, and she's definitely performing with much more confidence these days. She even got down off the stage and walked along the edge of the pool circle at the bowl, which is something that I've never seen anybody do at a show there. Sadly, original material was in scant supply, but the parade of covers included one of "Fortunate Son", which is a song that I never seem to get tired of.

Spirtualized ably filled the middle slot with a muscular, stripped down approach, although their lyrical focus seemed limited to either songs about drugs or songs about God. Overall, though, Jason Pierce and Company held my interest and did their job, which was to get us ready for the main event.

And what to say about Nick Cave? The guy just walked out on stage and completely owned it from the very first second. Shifting effortlessly from new material like "Dig Lazarus Dig" to piano driven ballads like "Into My Arms", Cave and the Bad Seeds displayed their virtuosity again and again. If you've only heard Johnny Cash's version of "The Mercy Seat", do yourself a favor and seek out Cave's original. Ending the set with a blistering version of "Stagger Lee" from his album "Murder Ballads", Nick Cave showed that at 51, he hasn't lost a step.

Beck/Spoon/MGMT September 20th, 2008

Due to some technical difficulties, and in the interest of posting this end of summer round up before Christmas, I've decided to forgo uploading my usual crappy cell phone pix of the Nick Cave and Beck shows. This was a great bill to wrap up the summer season. Openers MGMT clearly had a lot of vocal supporters in the crowd, and while I was a little luke warm to their set, I've sinced listened to their album, Oracular Spectacular, and really enjoyed it.

Spoon delivered a rock solid set, complete with the occasional live horn section embellishments. My only complaint is that they should've ended with "The Underdog" (from their Ga Ga Ga Ga LP) instead of the less compelling tune that came after it.

From the moment Beck took the stage and began his set with "Loser", it was clear he and his band were in a crowd pleasing frame of mind. Covering material from nearly every phase of his career, the set was taken to an even higher level by bringing on a full orchestra to accompany some of the more somber tunes from Beck's Sea Change album. Add to the fact that this orchestra was conducted by David Campbell, (Beck's pappy) and this show was a prime example of a local boy making good.

Jenny and Demme

One of the things that marks the end of summer is the unofficial beginning of Oscar Season. It's a gradual process-the supply of superheroes at the multiplex starts dwindling around the end of July; this gives way to a handful of August comedies, one or two of which might actually be funny; then next thing you know, it's Labor Day Weekend and we start seeing movies about boring old human relationships again. Last night Becky and I went to a preview screening of Rachel Getting Married, a new drama directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Jenny Lumet, who happens to be the daughter of legendary octogenarian director Sidney Lumet. Jenny Lumet was on hand for a Q & A afterward, as was one of the film's producers, Neda Armian. The film and the discussion were lively, and as an added bonus, I walked away with an autographed movie poster for answering a trivia question about Jonathan Demme and Roger Corman. (For those keeping score at home, Demme got his start working for Corman's production company in the early 70's. His 1974 debut Caged Heat remains a...highlight? of the Women in Prison genre.) In spite of the strength of the film (Anne Hathaway's performance is already generating early awards buzz), the highlight of the evening for me was a story Jenny Lumet told about the famous folks her father would sometimes bring home for dinner. There's a scene in the movie where two characters compete to see who can load up a dishwasher in under two minutes. This was apparently based on a real life incident from Lumet's childhood, except in real life the participants were Cabaret director Bob Fosse and Sidney Lumet. After dinner, Lumet was loading the dishwasher while the always fastidious Fosse sat at the table smoking a cigarette. Fosse suggested that if Lumet were to load his pyrex lids into the top rack of the dishwasher, he would be able to fit at least 10 % more dishes into the machine. Lumet responded by inviting Fosse to go fuck himself, and the two men then spent the next several hours loading and unloading the dishwasher. Only 11 or 12 years old at the time, Jenny Lumet said she remembered this story not for the famous people involved, but because it was an example of two adults acting "completely psychotic." Either that, or Bob Fosse extended his passion for choreography into even the most mundane aspects of his life. A great story, regardless. Rachel Getting Married is recommended, the trailer's below:

Pamela vs Palin

I never thought that the first appearance of video on this blog would feature Pamela Anderson, but this is just too good to pass up. In the same way that Michelle Obama felt like she was really proud of her country for the first time, I'm finally proud of one of the normally vapid personalites that fuel the company I work for. Preach it, sister!


BONUS!

I'm going to include a second Palin video for the following reasons:

1. It's really funny.
2. I worked with Gina Gershon as a Production Assistant on Bound in the summer of 1995 so in a very tangential way it's connected to my Hollywood experiences. She was a bit of a diva in those days, having just come off of filming Showgirls with Paul Verhoeven. This was an interesting moment since Verhoeven was on a Hollywood hot streak at the time, having directed Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct in rapid sucession. When we began production, however, Showgirls was in the can but hadn't been released. So Gina came to the set of Bound (a low budget indie with first time directors Larry and Andy Wachowski) as someone who had just finished a featured role for an internationally acclaimed director. Of course, Showgirls landed with a huge belly flop when it came out before going on to become a beloved camp classic. Regardless, Gershon's performance in Showgirls is by far the most consistently entertaining, and this video spoofing Palin is more than enough for me to forgive her for all the time she kept us waiting on the Bound set.

See more Gina Gershon videos at Funny or Die

Insect Politics

Those of you who have any familiarity with director David Cronenberg's work will doubtless remember his 1986 classic The Fly. I don't usually use the word classic when describing a remake, but when Cronenberg updated the 1958 Vincent Price horror film, he was able to use updated special effects and modern questions of genetics to make the material ten times creepier. Can't get enough of this story? Neither can Cronenberg, apparently, because he's gone and teamed up with Howard Shore and turned the whole disgusting story into an opera. That's right, an opera. Becky and I have been lucky enough to attend the LA Opera a few times over the past year with her parents, and today's matinee peformance of The Fly is one I won't soon forget. The results are far from perfect, as film composer Shore's music never really achieves the high drama required for this medium, and the libretto sometimes stumbles under the weight of the story's exposition, but for those who are looking for something out of the ordinary, this production is well worth checking out. The Fly costume and makeup is impressively grotesque, and there's even a few brief moments of male frontal nudity, if you're into that sort of thing. Oh, and for those of you who've watched both major party conventions and still haven't gotten your fill, there's the aria called "Insect Politics", where you can reconsider the whole thing from the winged, six-legged point of view. It'a almost enough to make you swallow your Netflix pride and queue up The Fly II.

www.laopera.com/productions/0809/thefly/index.htm