October 01, 2004
Echo and the Bunnymen at the House of Blues, Anaheim
I forgot to mention one thing about the Air show on Sunday: Beck showed up and sang along to one of their songs!
Moving on to the subject at hand -
I went alone to see Echo and the Bunnymen at the House of Blues on Monday. The HOB has started this annoying new habit of taking your picture at the entrance. I feel like a thug at Magic Mountain getting ID'd in case I kill someone.
I got there half an hour after doors opened and no one was around, so I kicked it upstairs, sitting down, until the opening band, Earlimart, was done. They were pretty standard, but not a good match for the headliner. Some loud lady near me complained about them the whole time. Being alone at a show sucks, by the way.
Echo did an okay show. Not the best I've seen them. Ian McCulloch has taken up the habit of playing God - pointing at the lights when he wants them to turn off, and the guy in the lighting booth obeys. "Let there be darkness!" Heheh. I think he's easing up on the cigarette intake: there were only 7-8 cigarettes in 1hr and 45 mins. Believe me, that's less than I've seen in the past. He also did the throw and kick the cigarette out thing twice.
The show was a little bit lacking. I can't tell if the band didn't care, which made the audience bored, or vice-versa. Whichever way, they almost never had actual light on McCulloch, which makes the show less interesting; he only got into a few songs towards the end; he kept on breaking up songs with his unintelligible improv moments (it took the audience a good while to realize he was singing "Take a walk on the wild side"); and about 75% of the audience spent the whole show talking to each other.
All in all, it was a mediocre show, but moments like "The Cutter" made it worthwhile enough for a night out on my part.
Posted by wendytime at October 1, 2004 09:20 AM | TrackBack