No Rock And Roll Fun

AT LAST, IT'S ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES USA: I've been threatening to bring Becky Bamboo's reviews to the BSN site forever, and been thinking in terms of giving her a page. But instead, I've got loads of them sitting on the scrapbook. So, in order to keep up-to-date, I'm using XRRF to bring you: Becky at ATP:
I wanted a good seat for big star and wilco, so we
went to UCLA right at 4 when the first bands went on. luckily they were both playing in the royce theater which has seats. nice padded seats. we settled in 7th row center and began our long vigil.

first guy up was chris lee. nice. fairly forgettable.

then.. deerhoof. lord. the guitarist played about as well as I do (i.e. not at all), the drummer looked like he was having a seizure (at one point he was actually kicking the bass drum), the little keyboard thingie was fine, but the singer couldn't stay in tune. at all. what was merely embarrassingly painful then became hilarious when all of a sudden the singer began screaming like some cut-rate yoko ono. she kept trying to pace the front of the stage but her mic cord was getting caught on the monitors. I was laughing so hard I had to slide down in my seat so everyone wouldn't see me.

next up was destroy all monsters. they started setting up all these bizarre instruments. they had a mannequin torso with a guitar neck coming out of the chest, a set of legs with a saxophone mouthpiece coming out of one foot and a trumpet mouthpiece out of the other, a head and torso with a pipe coming out of the top of the head, and what looked like a giant plastic squeezable bok choy. no, I'm not making this up. the drum set looked like the guy from rush's and then they brought out a scooby doo blanket and set out a bunch of rubber duckies and other sqeeze toys. and what looked like 4 junior high science teachers were hooking up what a telephone switchboard thingie. needless to say we were *very* expectant. I theorized that after the buildup with all the instruments anything other than a set of abba covers was bound to be a disappointment. and indeed, the first song was. so much so that after about a minute or two I fell asleep (in my defense I had gotten up at 5:30 that morning after 3 hours sleep to drive 400 miles to see this shit). the first song went on for about 20 minutes. they'd used up all their time setting up so their next song was their last. it consisted of 3 minutes of the drummer beating a bass drum and yellin about the bruins getting their asses kicked. it featured the immortal phrase "ass-crackin'", which is now my new favorite. do I need to mention that once again (after I woke up) I was laughing hysterically? no? okay. they didn't even get a chance to play any of the funky instruments. some different science teacher came out and played the rubber duckies as they were packing everything up, though. so we did get that.

then califone. I can't decide if I really, really liked them or if I was just so relieved to have actual, decent music up there. I stayed awake during their set, so that's something.

then came some slideshow/guitar feedback/voice sampling thing that would've been much more appropriate as an installation in a museum of modern art. I managed a good 20 minute nap.

next up were the jackie o. motherfuckers. we had high hopes for this band, figuring it was a kickass name, so they were probably awesome. er, wrong yet again. tuneless mumbo-jumbo. after 2 minutes I fell asleep. have I mentioned how happy I was we had comfy seats?

then came papa m who I kept comparing to m ward. and since I absolutely love m ward, papa m didn't impress me all that much. I did enjoy his set, though, and managed to stay awake.

FINALLY. big star. mmm... I got chills. no, really. they just kicked so much ass. as soon as the lights went down the audience was on their feet. everyone was really into it. they played mostly stuff from the first 2 albums. but they did 'I am the cosmos' so I was happy.

at this point helena and nayla took off for the other venue to see aphex twin. as they left the guy next to me said there was a huge line and they probably wouldn't get in. so I wasn't surprised when they came back 10 minutes later. I felt so bad cos aphex twin was basically the whole reason why they came.

wilco came out and started with a new song. there was another new one and 2 from summerteeth, but the rest were from YHF. they only got to play for about anhour. I was a little disappointed, but nayla and helena loved them. so that was good.