Hugo’s blog

The Sadies at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival on 2007-10-06

On Sunday, I went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to watch The Sadies play. I unfortunately missed a good chuck of their show due to a major traffic jam, but I really dig them. Ever since I saw them opening for The Tragically hip back in March, I’ve liked this band and I was glad to see them.

I saw a number of other bands as well, though I paid less attention to them.

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival is pretty cool: good music (even if not all of it is what I would usually listen to), nice venue, well organized, free. I’ll be going again next year.

Genesis at HP Pavilion on 2007-10-09

Every time I saw an old band get back together, I have been tempted to go see them. I feel like it’s like going to see an old painting in a museum, being able to witness some musical history live. Though sometimes the rendition of songs may have faded a little, or the band isn’t quite the same. Anyway, I always stopped myself from doing it when I saw the price of tickets: I’m always wondering how much they do reunions to have fun and make fans happy versus making insane amounts of money, and the latter seems to be the main motivation. Fans are older, they have more money, hence they can pay hundreds of dollars (plus proportional TicketBastards fees) to relive a piece of their childhood.

Genesis’s reunion is no different, but for some reason I was interested enough to make the jump. A significant jump for me, as I hate large venues, and of course they don’t play in small places. So I bought some outrageously expensive, only after joining the fan club ($35 more) to ensure that I could have access to pre-sales in order to have my outrageously expensive ticket not suck too much in this huge venue.

So how was it? It was actually pretty good. Phil Collins is an excellent showman and makes your forget that you’re in a large venue far away from him. Their performance was good, mixing some recent songs with some old material for 3 hours:

• Behind The Lines / Duke’s End
• Turn It On Again
• No Son Of Mine
• Land Of Confusion
• In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels
• Afterglow
• Hold On My Heart
• Home By The Sea / Second Home By The Sea
• Follow You Follow Me
• Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like
• Mama
• Ripples
• Throwing It All Away
• Domino
• Drum Duet
• Los Endos
• Tonight Tonight Tonight
• Invisible Touch

• I Can’t Dance
• The Carpet Crawlers

One thing which struck me is how much Tony Banks never smiles. You really wonder how he feels being on stage.

Anyway, I had a good time. I’m glad I went, but I think that I’m not going to go to a reunion tour show or a large venue anytime soon.

I almost forgot to mention that the best part of this whole experience was actually my neighbor: he was obviously a dedicated Genesis fan, early post-Peter Gabriel period. Every time a song he liked came up, he was becoming completetly ecstatic, grabbing the rail in front of us and vibrating from head to toe, playing air drums with Phil Collins. Fun!

The Tragically Hip at The Warfield on 2007-10-10

I saw The Tragically Hip only a few months ago, but it was such a great experience that I had to go again when I saw that they were playing again in San Francisco. And it was awesome, even better than the great performance at the Fillmore.

The Warfield is a smaller venue, and at the very front of the pit. Gord Downie was on fire, and show they played was amazing, with a great version of Hundredth Meridien for which Gord came on the rail right in front of me. This allowed me to take great pictures with the crappy camera in my Treo. Some bands give guitar picks to the crowd, Gord Downie gives his cloth tissues covered in sweat, and he gave his microphone to the girl in front of me. He likes to play with microphones.

The set list was great, and a little unconventional (e.g. Put It Off that they had not played live since 1997 according to HipBase):

• The Lonely End Of The Rink
• Grace, Too
• My Music At Work
• Gus: The Polar Bear From Central Park
• Family Band
• Ahead By A Century
• Gift Shop
• In View
• Poets
• Pretend
• Fireworks
• At The Hundredth Meridien
• Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin’ Man
• Fiddler’s Green
• Yer Not The Ocean
• Locked In The Trunk Of A Car
• Fire In The Hole

• Put It Off
• Mr. Soul (Neil Young cover)
• New Orleans Is Sinking

Update: here’s the video of Put It Off at the Warfield:

I have a short video (I removed the sound because it was horrible):

I’m looking forward to my next Hip concert!