Andrew Bird/Ra Ra Riot, July 11 at the Greek Theater

The only thing I knew about Andrew Bird is that he didn't set me on fire when I saw part of his set at Outside Lands but, shit, I'd go see Barenaked Ladies and Metallica if I was going with Vanessa, Noa, Andrew, and Leeza. We had a picnic before the show in the park next to the Greek (I brought chicken wings from Hooters, Vanessa and Noa brought wine) so, heck, I was ready to see anything. Vaenssa got tickets for everyone right after they went on sale, though we still had seats near the farthest row, just in front of where they sectioned off the seats that didn't sell. I don't know what that's about but it's bullshit.

No real comment about Bird's performance itself since I have no reference but it was a lot of whistling and music loops. As far as the show went, I really went to see Ra Ra Riot, whose album I liked but their live show didn't really make me like them any more. They were a little flat, betraying how they sound on a studio recording.

Then the 10:30 curfew and everyone went their separate ways on a Friday night.

Andrew Bird's set-list:
"Why?"
"Darkmatter"
"Fiery Crash"
"Opposite Day"
"Fitz and the Dizzyspells"
"Oh No"
"Effigy"
"Lull"
"A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left"
"Anonanimal"
"Imitosis"
"Cataracts"
"Fake Palindromes"

"Weather System"

the Old 97's/Rhett Miller, July 9 at the Henry Fonda Theater

The Old 97's always put on a solid show, even if it's usually the same. Their newer songs have gone a bit downhill over the years, always somewhere between power-pop and alt-country, but they still play like they've always been big stars, especially due to singer/songwriter Rhett Miller's exuberance and charming, aw-shucks modesty that people keep showing up to see them yet again. I don't know if they had new material to tour or if it was only to support Rhett's new solo work, as he was also the warm-up act. From Twitter I found that the Old 97's weren't going on until after 10 and I didn't need to see Rhett's solo act (especially since I had seen him solo recently), so I showed up (finding no street-parking but opting for the lot next to place, which sure was convenient, but it damned well better be for the $25 I paid) and saw just the end of his opening act, which could have been an Old 97's set, for the music and as much as the crowd were into it, except that he was on stage alone with only a guitar. I've seen Rhett play solo shows before, in the intimate setting of Largo (so intimate I didn't even get a concert ticket for it) and this wasn't nearly the same but it wasn't supposed to be. I met up with Erin, who had gotten within 10 feet of the stage, and we chatted until the Old 97's went on, which included a refreshed but grateful Rhett. And it was another solid show, not particularly notable except that they got done just after midnight, so it's a good thing I didn't take the subway (though it would have saved me that $25).

Death Cab for Cute/Tegan & Sara/New Pornographers, July 5 at the Hollywood Bowl

If you haven't been able to tell by now, I'll go to just about any show. I'm a sucker for shows at the Hollywood Bowl and of course I trust Vanessa for her music taste (and ability to drink). She got tickets for us, along with one for Noa, and I don't really care what I'm doing if it's with those two. I'm not a Death Cab for Cutie fan but I admit I hadn't seen them when I had the chance at various festivals over the years and, playing with the L.A. Philharmonic, I looked forward to a special show that might change my opinion. But really, I was going to see openers the New Pornographers and Tegan & Sara. The three of us took our time picnicking outside and missed most of the New Pornographers but I didn't mind, since I've seen them before, they're not an amazing live band in the first place, Neko wasn't singing with them, and I was fairly full of wine. Tegan & Sara did a fine set but even they had to admit that they were way out of place in such a gigantic space (and looked positively tiny on stage). At that point, and with more wine in me, I anticipated Death Cab, and I suppose for a fan of theirs it was a splendid show but to me it was just as boring as anything I've heard by them. And a symphony playing behind a band might make the show a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle but it's not going to make it any more exciting. And when they played their own material as just the band I wondered what having the Phil did for them in the first place. And I never figured out which was the guy who wears glasses in the band, making pretty much all of them as uninteresting as their music.

Death Cab For Cutie's set-list:
"Marching Bands of Manhattan"
"Your Heart is an Empty Room"
"The New Year"
"Crooked Teeth"
"President of What?"
"No Sunlight"
"Photobooth"
"Summer Skin"
"I Will Possess Your Heart"
"Little Bribes"
"Cath..."
"The Sound of Settling"
(with the Los Angeles Philharmonic:)
"I Will Follow You Into the Dark"
"You Can Do Better Than Me"
"Grapevine Fires"
"Title and Registration"
"A Movie Script Ending"
"Soul Meets Body"
"Transatlanticism"

Tegan & Sara's set-list:
"Dark Come Soon"
"I Bet It Stung"
"Walking with a Ghost"
"Hop A Plane"
"Living Room"
"Like O Like H"
"Burn Your Life Down"
"19"
"Where Do the Good Go"
"Call it Off"
"The Con"
"Back in Your Head"

The New Pornographers' set-list:
"My Rights Versus Yours"
"The Laws Have Changed"
"Use It"
"All the Old Show Stoppers"
"Challengers"
"Mass Romantics"
"Sing Me Spanish Techno"
"The Bleeding Heart Show"

She Wants Revenge/Living Things/Great Northern/Rocco DeLucca/the Honorary Title/Nico Stai, July 2 at the Echo & Echoplex

As I've said before, L.A. is a great place for unordinary shows, shows put on for benefits being common, with one-off performances by usually local bands. I don't know the person that this show was put on for to help but it had some great bands, mostly local, and I hope the person benefited. Vanessa and I just knew that we liked the bands that were playing and it would be a night out, which I reckon is all you need. We started out at happy hour at the French place nearby, knowing that it was close to the place but not realizing it was a short walking distance from the Echo/Echoplex, a place that somehow both of us had missed going to (though I dimly recall maybe going there once, maybe maybe). The place was confusing since there's an entrance on Sunset Blvd. for the Echo and another on Glendale Blvd. for the Echoplex, two clubs in the same building which are usually separate but as it happened, for this show, it was free to pass between the two, for two stages, one upstairs (the tinier Echo) and the downstairs (the Echoplex, a decent size). Both excellent, fairly intimate venues, once you figured out how to get there.

Vanessa didn't love Great Northern last time but I dug them, so we saw only part of their set, enough to see that it was a bit more solid and maybe just better in a space larger than the Roxy; The Honorary Title apparently was/is one guy and a guitar and nothing more notable than that; Vanessa went mostly to see Nico Stai, who she lusted after the last time we saw him; I don't know what Rocco DeLuca was about. This guy opened for U2?; The Living Things are one of the best live bands going, if not overall best bands, touring today. These guys' live shows put most headliners to shame. You want rock n' roll, well here it is. This band was who I came to see and even though they were playing to only about 50 people, they acted like they were putting on the heaviest set of their their career and they didn't disappoint. You get the feeling they're putting every ounce of their beings into the performance, whether it's for two people or an arena (where they should be). It's ferocious and dirty and has a message, all of it colored by monster riffs, a confident swagger, and a performance so tight that it can go as loose as they want because they can spare it; She Wants Revenge have worked their hometown of L.A. hard, enough to headline over Placebo for the local date on their joint tour and probably enough to make everyone in town sick of them but they were still big enough to play last at this one and in a space small enough that the place got packed by then. They closed the show, and with enough material from their first album to mostly forgive playing more from their second. But I've missed most of their other shows (sometimes purposely) so this was mostly new to me. I don't even care that they sound just like Interpol (who sound just like Joy Division. Hey, the similarity actually helps). By that time we were done with the extended show and for Vanessa to get home in time to go to work the next morning. We were even there early enough to get street-parking, which surely would have been impossible if we had gotten there after the show started.

Spinnerette/Har Mar Superstar, June 24 at the Troubadour

Spinnerette were actually tighter in concert than they are on CD, the reverse of what is true for most bands. And Brody Dalle is a goddess with a guitar, no matter what band she's in. And Har Mar Superstar is a spectacle, necessary to be seen to be believed. Another show with Vanessa, another night of drinking. She didn't even know what band we were seeing, and I hadn't heard anything besides the Ghetto Love EP, but it turned out to be a solid night of excellent rock.

Spinnerette's set-list:
"Valium Knights"
"Bury My Heart"
"All Babes Are Wolves"
"Geeking"
"Cupid"
"Baptized By Fire"
"A Spectral Suspension"
"Distorting A Code"
"Sex Bomb"
"Driving Song"
"Borderline"
"Rebellious Palpitations"
"Impaler"
"A Prescription For Mankind"
"Ghetto Love"

Art Brut, June 18 at Spaceland

I have no idea how Tana and Jamin got into Art Brut but the first time I was at their house they were playing them on their stereo and it was at that moment that I knew we would be friends. Art Brut were playing a residency at Spaceland and the Echo so we went, along with Vanessa. Rumspringa and Voxhaul Broadcast, both, I think, local bands, opened, and they didn't mean much but Spaceland is always a good value, packing in a lot of bands into one night, and you never know where one of them might go (or if you have to see them again, or if you become a friend with someone in the band by accident). Art Brut aren't for everybody -- their sound is loud and fast and somehow beyond pop and punk and yet maybe closer to what both of those genres will be in the future. Eddie, the singer, forgoes singing for talking, which would be disconcerting or even off-putting for some, until you realize that rap music has the same mode of vocal delivery, and sometimes it's more about what's being said rather than how it's being said, here talking about comic books and awkwardly getting with girls like he's still a teenager. And once you get over the speak-singing, it's pretty easy to enjoy the band, though doing that is generally asking a lot of an unadventurous listener these days. The band is tight and fidgety, British kids as punk it gets in England anymore. Drinking at the show is dangerous since the music moves so fast, you may find yourself clocked upside the head by neo-British punk (an approach from the same direction that the Streets took American hip-hop) that is moving way too fast and too loud for anyone to follow with any precision. Agreeing with Spin: one of the best live bands touring currently. Ready, Art Brut?

the Von Bondies, June 15 at the Viper Room

Weren't the Von Bondies supposed to be really big? They had a great song ("C'Mon C'Mon") that became the opening of a popular TV show and people seem to know them even now. But the last time through town they played a small place and the Viper Room is even smaller. But with a band like that, the smaller the place, the less the space can contain them and the more they'll tear it apart. They're a bar band too good and catchy to be a bar band but hey, if they have to play in a bar, they're going to do that and do it exceptionally. This was the only L.A. date on the back of an incredible album (Love and Hate and Then There's You), their first in some years (due to record label troubles), and it's a shame they couldn't capitalize on it or play some summer festivals, like how they built their name to that point. But hopefully with various troubles behind them they'll be more frequent with releases and find bigger venues to burn to the ground.

Set-list:
"Broken Man"
"Going Down"
"Pale Bride"
"Tell What You See"
"She's Dead To Me"
"Pawn Shoppe Heart"
"This Is Our Perfect Crime"
"No Regrets"
"Accidents Will Happen"
"The Fever"
"Shut Your Mouth"
"Been Swank"
"It Came From Japan"
"Not That Social"
"Chancer"
"R & R Nurse"
"Lack Of Communication"
"C'mon C'mon"

Neko Case/Jason Lytle, June 12 at the Greek Theater

As much of a fan as I am, I was thinking that Neko Case was going to be a diva, coming on stage and coldly -- but powerfully and beautifully -- singing her songs then promptly walking off at the end of her last note. But she was warm and appreciative of the crowd, and even more powerful and beautiful. Strangely her back-up singer did most of the between-song banter but at least it was funny. Jason Lytle, formerly of Grandaddy, opened and it was very Grandaddy-ish (which is to say that it didn't do a whole lot for me). Strangest thing: the show got out at 10:30 since apparently the Greek has a curfew. Vanessa and I were left to wonder what we should do, never having gotten out of a show so early. So we went and drank.

Neko Case's set-list:
"Maybe Sparrow"
"People Got a Lotta Nerve"
"Fever"
"Hold On, Hold On"
"The Pharaohs"
"Middle Cyclone"
"Deep Red Bells"
"I Wish I Was the Moon"
"I’m an Animal"
"Prison Girls"
"The Tigers Have Spoken"
"Margaret vs. Pauline"
"Polar Nettles"
"Red Tide"
"Don’t Forget Me"
"That Teenage Feeling"
"This Tornado Loves You"

"Vengeance Is Sleeping"
"Star Witness"
"Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth"
"Magpie to the Morning"
"Knock Loud"

Rhett Miller, June 10 at the Grammy Museum

Erin invited me to the Rhett Miller show and she's a bigger fan than I am. He did a show at the Grammy Museum but it was less of a performance and more of a Storytellers interview thing which was seeing him answering questions and talking about his music and inspirations and stories and such, in a very intimate performance, with only about a hundred people in attendance. But of course being a performer he had to play some songs so he did a few solo and acoustic and ended with "Timebomb", his regular band the Old 97's' best and loudest song not quite fitting played just on a guitar by himself but an interesting experiment. He hung out afterward to sign CDs, and he was pleasant, enough to almost dull the fact that I paid $20 for a CD just for him to put his name on. The Grammy Museum was also nice. I had never been before. It was shiny and new and it seemed fairly limited in what it had on display but I hope that it can be something that will be worth returning to in the future, along with the solo and intimate shows they put on there.

Metric, June 8 at the Wiltern

Metric has a large fan-base in L.A. but I never would have thought they would sell out the Wiltern. They're a band that you'd think would have a string of hit songs but they do okay with just being a solid indie-pop band and touring a lot. Their best shot at a hit song, "Combat Baby" (from a past album), they didn't even play that night (which can be forgiven because it's old -- forgiven because these things happen and good songs don't become hits, not so much forgiven because they didn't play it). But the crowd was into it and I'd say it was a successful show. However, I was with Noa and we were super-drunk off our asses and I don't remember it much. But I remember it was a good show. And that they didn't play "Combat Baby".