The Hollywood Bowl

This weekend we took in a show at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s a great venue. An outdoor venue set in the mountains, yet still inside the city of LA, under a sky that rarely rains. Good acoustics, people are allowed to bring in as much beer, wine and food as they can carry, the seats are cheap and the acts are pretty good.

We went to see a double bill on Sunday, a show called KCRW's World Festival: Groove Armada opening for Cafe Tacuba. Groove Armada really moved the crowd- everyone was on their feet, dancing and moving to the music. The headliners, Cafe Tacuba, were a letdown. It was as if all the air had been let out of the arena. We left before they began their encore.

Apparently, Cafe Tacuba is not a chain of boutique sandwich shops but is a Grammy-winning Mexican band with a large Latin following, all of which which became obvious right away, because they only addressed the crowd in Spanish. This really alienated the crowd, more than you'd think it would. The Mexicans, Brazilians, and Venezuelans in the crowd loved them, but most of the people we saw were turned off by the time the show ended. (Before you yell “Ugly Nativist”, it should be noted that the area we were sitting in was about 75% Asian. They were just as confused as the rest of the crowd.)

This would have been fine, expect that it was compounded by the fact that the lead singer for Café Tacuba was one of those singers who insisted on talking for long periods of time in between songs.

One of the Ten no longer goes to concerts anymore, but when he did, he was known as a man of principle. One of the things he demanded was that his singers devote as much time as possible to the singing, and little or no time should be spent talking in between songs.

His most famous moment came during a Jewel concert at the Paradise*, a night where she spent most of her time on stage talking to everyone about her experiences in Alaska and Seattle, living out of a car, singing for money on the street, trying to save up enuff money so she could afford the surgery to close the gap in her teeth yet refusing to sell out (this was before she sold her song catalog to Schick razors) , etc. Finally, our man had enough of this, and yelled at the top of his lungs “Shut Up and sing!” Totally threw her off her game. She mumbled something about fans wanting to hear her stories, and then went back to singing.

We could have used this guy on Sunday, to stand up in the middle of the Hollywood Bowl and yell: " ¡Cierre para arriba y cante!"

(By the way, we have no idea what this guy was smoking during the show. The show he reviewed ed is absolutely not the one we were at.

*Before you ask why in the Hell we would be at a Jewel concert, let us say it was 1997, it was free, were were young, and she was an attractive woman, at least until she opened her mouth.