TV on the Radio/Boxed In, July 25, 2015 at the Annenberg Space for Photography

KCRW has done a series of free summer shows, and we got one that we'd make the effort for.  Even when a free show has talent that you'd want to see, usually everyone else knows and it gets to be a crazy scene, and more often than not pulls a crowd much greater than expectations and becomes a real horror show.  But maybe KCRW could coordinate one of their own, and maybe we could get there early enough to get a good place in the crowd.  Generally, just for the trouble, we'd rather pay to see a show that isn't a hassle than a free thing that's miserable throughout but Vanessa and Tana were interested in seeing TV on the Radio and we had the Saturday afternoon free.  We got a good place on the lawn in front (due to accidentally cutting  in line -- so many people to get in meant a bit of crowd disorder (though worked out for us -- accidentally) -- and having a view-line and a place to sit and not being jostled by the crowd can always make a difference.  Meeting up with the girls, we spent a lot of the afternoon, while Jason Bentley spun some tunes (who's great but is so ubiquitous for us that we can take him for granted), folding paper cranes for our wedding coming up and drinking wine.  Boxed In opened, and they (or just one guy) were good enough to have sympathy that some Brits would have to expend an effort at making a splash in the States for a free show that might be disregarded by people wanting to get in to something that they don't have to pay for.  KCRW might have been holding them up at the time -- and maybe this could have been more for them -- but their name didn't come around much later. After a few hours in a relaxed atmosphere, chalked up to a crowd that respects each other as much as college radio, TV on the Radio turned in a show that could have been good enough to pay for. I've gone on about how inconsistent their shows are, and this one didn't set anything on fire, but it was good enough to put it on the level of the other decent times we've seen them. It didn't even seem like an abbreviated set (at least not compared with one at a festival or the recent one at the Fonda that started late). They even had Cullen Bohanon off to the side on trumpet and percussion.  Maybe it was more about the afternoon spent with friends, especially after the other two times we'd seen them recently, but whatever KCRW put into that show and series, it felt like a gift to their listeners in L.A.

TV on the Radio's set-list:
"Young Liars"
"Happy Idiot"
"Golden Age"
"Lazerray"
"Could You"
"Winter"
"Wolf Like Me"
"Blues From Down Here"
"Mercy"
"Province"
"DLZ"
"Repetition"
"Staring at the Sun"

"Trouble"