Greek Weekend

It's an odd thing to spend a day and a half out of town. Just as you're becoming accustomed to the feeling of staying on people's couches and traveling unfamiliar stretches of road, it's time to hop back into an airplane, whirl around the atmosphere for an hour and touch back down in familiar old surroundings.

I generally drive when traveling to Northern California, because it's only a 5-6 hour drive for most destinations. When I announced my intention to attend Radiohead's sold-out second night at Berkeley's Greek Theater, however, my parents insisted on flying me out instead. They were using a form of mathematics with which I was unfamiliar, possibly something non-Euclidian, to mysteriously calculate a $200 plane ticket as being cheaper than two $40 tanks of gasoline. How could such a thing be possible?

No matter. The flight was booked (even though I had no photo ID at the time, my wallet having been lost the week before) and associated airport drop-offs and pick-ups were planned. So on Friday evening, after working a mercifully brief video store shift, I embarked for SFO.

The trip was largely uneventful for most of Friday and Saturday. The flight up north is a breeze, particularly in comparison to the 6 Hour Festival of Suffering that is the flight to Florida I experienced a few months back. I had some coffee on the ride out, and I swear to you it was the strongest brew I have ever tasted. It was like four cups of espresso had been compressed into a single, small serving of Starbucks Coffee. I think they're maybe hoping to get non-coffee drinkers addicted to caffeine with just this one cup, creating an entire new generation of Starbucks Zombies to whom they can sell CD's, movies about spelling bee champions and $10 packages of Whole Bean Italian Roast.

Immediately upon my arrival in San Francisco, my friend Matt, his anxiety-prone dog Pepper and I drove on to Santa Cruz, where our other friends Dave and Aaron share a condo. I mean to say, they are mine and Matt's friends. Pepper seemed rather ambiguous on the subject.

The last time I navigatged this particularly stretch of road, it occured to me, was two New Year's Eves ago, racing from one Bay Area gathering to an entriely different Bay Area gathering with a hurried sense of anticipation that, looking back, I am utterly at a loss to explain. This time was much calmer, and we arrived without incident. (Except that Pepper whined in the backseat for the entire trip, and pretty much any other time someone was not giving her direct, engaged attention).

We did the Santa Cruz thing for the rest of the night (which means, nothing) and then watched the Mexico-Argentina World Cup game in the morning while Matt cooked eggs and sausages. (French-style eggs, as it turns out, which are just like the eggs I make at home, except with 5 extra sticks of butter, some green stuff and significantly less Tapatio sauce). Some guy named Maxi Rodriguez managed to bounce the ball of his chest and then kick it into the net to score the game-winning goal, which even I, an avowed anti-sports dissident, have to admit is fairly impressive.

The entire sport of futbol soccer requires so much athleticism and endurance, I always find myself feeling badly for the players by the end of the game. Those guys must be exhausted! Can't we take a five minute break? What, they're adding time to the clock? Surely Gariagga's going to pass out soon.

As impressive an athlete as Shaquille O'Neal is, you can't really picture him huffing it up and down one of those massive soccer fields repeatedly for 90 minutes at a go. Even his character in "NBA Live" needs to sit down and rest every now and again. And you don't want that guy getting fatigued mid-game. He falls over, the force of impact could take out 3 or 4 more players.

Once the game was over, we all disembarked for Matt's house in San Bruno, where I'd be spending that night. I didn't realize there was a town called San Bruno, but then again, I didn't realize there was a guy named Saint Bruno. Saint Bruno? Does he have a more Anglicized name that I might be more familiar with? It sounds like a decent name for Bruce Willis' sophomore album but not a name for a saint. Unless he's the patron saint of loan sharks and bookmakers. Then, okay, I'll give you that, even though it really should be Saint Bruno "The Nose" Carbinelli, if that's the case.

San Bruno's a fairly typical California suburb, by which I mean that it's a rapidly-deteriorating maze of strip malls and generic housing tracts that all look alike by design. A good place to live if you work somewhere else, don't have a lot of money and don't mind some peculiar, wannabe gangster 19 year old living in the sinkhole below yours.

Then, right away, we had to rush from The Bruno to get to Berkeley for the concert. I hadn't realized the Greek Theater was actually on the UC Berkeley campus, to which I haven't been since a high school trip to determine whether or not I wanted to matriculate therein. (Nope!) I didn't get to spend any time in the actual neighborhood as we were late and there was traffic, but it seemed alright to me. Lots of bakeries for some odd reason. I can't think of any bakeries near UCLA. Which, now that I have typed it out, I realize means very little. Is it possible to bring something up on a blog just to make conversation? Or am I just getting a little funny in the head?

So the theater's on campus, and you kind of just have to find a spot to park in one of the campus lots, which I'm sure is really fun for the students. Even more bizarre, the Greek Theater is general admission, which means you just sit wherever you can find available seating. I can't say I've ever been to a show in a place this large (it fits, I'd guess, between 4 and 5 thousand) without any assigned seating, but people kind of organized themselves, and it didn't seem overly chaotic or problematic.

I wondered whether a show in LA with similar arrangements would come off as smoothly. I suppose so, though it just seems to me that there's a generally more relaxed, laissez-faire attitude up north about such things. I felt like, in LA, there would be a lot of laid-back people who would just sit wherever, but there would also be self-important assholes who insisted on pushing their way through the crowd to get closer or reserving whole large sections for their 500 closest friends. No way for me to check on this...it's just a theory.



I really dug this crowd. No ludicrous drunk dancing jackasses. No one talking through the music (they were even respectful to opening act Deerhoof!) Only one doofus rushed the stage, and that was during the second encore, when I suppose such shenanigans can be tolerated.

Even better was the Greek Theater itself. Sure, concrete benches aren't exactly comfortable for several hours, but there was no security check, no invasive searches, none of that crap you usually have to go through when entering a large-scale concert. There isn't that Police State vibe I've been encountering lately at shows, particularly at a certain KROQ show I don't feel that I have to mention here, both at the front gate and inside the venue as well. My friend Dave suggested that it's because the Greek is just run by the school, not some corporation, and I'm inclined to agree.

Deerhoof came on promptly at 7:30 and only played for a half-hour. I would have thought they'd go a little longer, as they only got to play five songs or so, and they are after all from San Francisco, but it was still cool to see them live. My one previous chance would have been All Tomorrows Parties in Long Beach a few years back, but we couldn't get over to the Second Stage area without missing Modest Mouse. And that wasn't going to happen.

They sound much more like a regular old indie rock band live than the wacky experimental freakout of the albums, though there is a lot more shouting of the word "bunny" than you'd hear at, say, a Death Cab for Cutie show. Lead singer Satomi Matsuzaki hops around the stage and makes inscrutable gestures at the audience, the songs tend to begin and end abruptly, but other than that, you could be watching any number of loud, occasionally melodic punk-inspired trios. I meant that as a compliment, but somehow they have turned out sounding "ordinary." Maybe this is because there were so few songs.

I tried to get a photo of Deerhoof on my camera phone. In person, we were fairly close to the stage. I mean, the entire Greek Theater isn't so large and there aren't many bad seats, but as an added bonus, some of Aaron's friends saved us a spot. But my phone's so crappy, you can't even tell it's Deerhoof. It just looks like three blobs in the distance.

Aaron went on and on about how his phone has a Zoom function, and was therefore clearly better than mine, and then sent me the following photo:



If you wanted Matisse's interpretation of what a future rock band might look like, yeah, that would work for you. But as a reproduction of the image of Deerhoof playing before enthusiastic fans, it's not entirely satisfying.

Then it was time for Radiohead. I have seen them three times before. Once at a KROQ Weenie Roast in the mid-90's, before I knew any of their songs beyond "Creep" and "Fake Plastic Trees." I enjoyed them, but was there to see...ugh...The Red Hot Chili Peppers and I don't really even remember who else I was really excited for, although I know Garbage and Lush were both there as well. I guess I could look up the complete line-up, but I'm not going to.

The second time was at the Hollywood Bowl. This was when I lived pretty near the Bowl, and we were taking a cab up there anyway, so we decided to get stinking drunk at my apartment and then head out to the concert. Anyway, we missed opening act Supergrass completely, arrived two songs into the Radiohead set, couldn't find seats and at a few points in the evening I think I forgot the details of my identity and what I was doing in this huge crowd. I'm sure a fun time was had by all, but it's not really the ideal concert-going experience.

Then I saw Radiohead at Coachella 2004. After The Pixies' set, I went to the bathrooms and then didn't feel like re-penetrating that massive swelling crowd. I still really dug Radiohead's post-Pixies performance (particularly "Exit Music" and "Karma Police"), and there's something kind of vague and indescribable and exciting about being in a crowd of 100,000 people all listening to the same song, but I didn't actually get to see anything.

Last night at the Greek Theater were ideal concert circumstances. I was pretty close, the band played an awesome and diverse setlist, the weather was perfect...All in all, a really amazing night. There was a time when I would struggle to remember what songs a band played in the days after the concert. I'd remember one or two and then blank because I was so distracted with enjoying the music (and, okay, high.) Now, thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can go to the Radiohead fan site and just pull up a complete and accurate setlist.

01 Airbag
02 2+2=5
03 Where I End And You Begin
04 15 Step

This was the first of the night's many new songs, and it's great. Of course, it's hard to tell just from the live versions, because so much work goes into a Radiohead album from the production side, but it sounds like the new album will be more up-tempo and pop oriented than anything in their catalog since...maybe ever. At least since "The Bends."

05 Kid A
06 Dollars And Cents

Having said that, a lot of the evening's highlights were slower, more intimate songs like "Kid A" or deep album cuts like "Dollars and Cents." Big venues like the Emprie Polo Grounds in Indio tend to force bands to go for their most grandiose big arena anthemtic songs, whereas a setting like the Greek allows for a more subtle, quiet and focused performance. These songs were both completely incredible.

07 Down Is The New Up [with long jam at the end]
08 Nude [Thom stops then starts at the beginning and says, "Don't go anywhere, stay where you are".]
09 Paranoid Android

Definitely one of the best Radiohead songs ever, and accordingly, they've played this every time I've seen them live. Of all the songs, this and "Fake Plastic Trees" got the biggest reaction of the night. They're both great songs, but it's surprising to me that even their fans don't seem ready to embrace the more experimental albums or even the more conventional (and terrific) "Hail to the Thief."

10 No Surprises
11 The Gloaming

It's better live than on the album, but this is still one of my least favorite Radiohead songs. I guess at least one of them like sit, though, cause they play it in concert all the time.

12 All I Need
13 Climbing Up The Walls

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. One of my favorite "OK Computer" songs and I have never seen them do it at a show before. After the concert, Aaron told me the following anecdote: "I once warned a guy not to listen to that song over and over again or he'll go insane. He did and he did." The guy says stuff like that all the time.

14 Go Slowly ["Then we'll do 'Burn The Witch." jokes Thom]

I don't get what this joke means, nor do I recall hearing Thom Yorke say that at the show. I still really love this song, another one from the new album.

15 Myxomatosis
16 Bangers 'N Mash

This one is really poppy and radio friendly. Possibly the first new single?

17 How To Disappear Completely

Off "Amnesiac," this is probably the spookiest, most haunting Radiohead song of all time, and therefore it's among my favorites. A grand, sweeping way to end the regular set.

Encore 1

18 Fake Plastic Trees

Radiohead had previously played a show the night before at the Greek, and driving in to Santa Cruz, Matt and I heard a couple of guys on the radio reviewing the performance. They had been underwhelmed, citing a weak setlist and the fact that the band was just having "an off night." I didn't notice anything of the sort at my show, which was definitely the best performance I've seen personally by the band.

One of the songs those guys complained about not hearing was "Fake Plastic Trees." It's a great old song, but there are plenty of other "Bends" songs I prefer that they play a lot less than this one. (I'm not sure I've ever heard them play the other big "Bends" single, "High and Dry.") Just think it's odd how people obsess about this particular track all these years later.

19 Arpeggi
20 Black Star

This is one of those "Bends" songs I'd rather hear than "Fake Plastic Trees." Hell yes, what an awesome track to dig out of the vault. Bravo, guys.

21 True Love Waits
22 Everything In Its Right Place

Encore 2

23 Bodysnatchers

Still my favorite of the new songs. Johnny Greenwood was absolutely shredding through this entire song. His solo, with one spotlight aimed on him at all times, was downright Gilmour-esque.

24 The Tourist

The closing track of "OK Computer." Sweet...totally sweet...

I wish I had tickets for when they breeze through LA, but I'm broke after all and scalpers are selling those things for hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

The sudden overwhelming swell of cars all aimed at the campus exit was mighty indeed. We all thought that Dave, our driver, should try to find an alternate route out of there. It was, after all, a big college campus. There must be more than one road leading out to the city, right?

Of course, none of us attended Cal or had even been there for any length of time. We drove around aimlessly in the dark for a good 20 minutes, praying we weren't accosted by campus police wondering what four guys were doing tooling around central campus in the middle of the night reeking of marijuana smoke and pulling improbable U-turns. Eventually, after driving around more barricades and dead-ends than I'd care to remember, we found our way back to the massive line of cars and waited an hour to get to the freeway. Yay.

This morning, I awoke to the sound of...Pepper whining, this time because Matt was trying to get her to actually eat food. I have never met a dog that whined and required encouragement when presented with food before. Usually, they'll grab and begin digesting anything within a 100 yard radius that even vaguely resembles food.

Later, Matt and I went and ate dim sum at the Dim Sum King. I don't know if you've had dim sum, but it's kind of a mix between a casual lunch out and an eating competition. You select a lot of peculiar dishes from a long list of options (choices include delicacies like Beef Stomach, squid, pork buns and beef tripe in brown sauce, the last two of which Matt actually ordered.)

BBQ pork buns are exactly what they sound like. Dinner rolls, topped with a sweet glaze, filled with barbequed pork. It's pretty good, actually...Like going to a restaurant and stuffing all the complimentary bread into your mouth while you enjoy your entree. Also, there was normal food, like spareribs and chicken and dumplings. I mainly stuck to that stuff.

And then the flight home, where I sat next to an extremely precocious little girl (I'd guess of around 10) who was flying alone, and did so all the time, and seemed not in the least put out by the experience. She spent the entire flight, including take-off and departure, reading the in-flight magazine. Weird...

Then I came home. Then I checked my e-mail and started writing a blog post...That's where you all came in. End of anecdote.