Wow, a big show in Long Beach. Lived here most of my life and the only show I’ve ever seen there (outside of the circus) was Frank Sinatra. I’ve always frowned on bigger shows yet some of my favorite’s have been in 2000 plus venues. Jeremiah called me near last minute and informed me he had tix for the show. I politely said, “hey, there’s probably somebody else out there that would enjoy it more than me”. All the people he knew that would have had already made plans. Cool, I love live music and it was only a couple miles from my house.
Our main reason for going was because Jeremiah wanted to shoot Weezer. Hmmm, OK. The only time I saw Weezer was at Coachella a handful of months ago and they really didn’t do too much for me. They seemed to be playing the nerd card a bit too much and just seemed bored as they rolled through their festival set. First off I was blown away upon entering the Arena during Hot Hot Heats set. The stage was huge, the sound was pretty damn good, and there was plenty of room to move on the floor. If you wanted to, you could weasel up to about 30 feet from the front of the stage.
Weezer took the stage to “My Name is Jonas” and you could instantly tell this was going to be different. Rivers didn’t have black rimmed glasses and didn’t just stand in attendance. He worked the whole stage while smiling and playing along with the audience. The stage set up was quite unique with multiple risers placing the rest of the band on what looked like the back of a white-on-black sea creature. Rivers wasn’t holding back on the vocals either, he was pushing his range on new (“Beverly Hills”, “We Are All On Drugs”) and old tracks (“El Scorcho, “Tired of Sex”) alike.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one jumping around to “Damn those half japanese girls…” and “Surfwax America”. It was a perfect mix of urgency and playfulness. The set was dead on and was mixed up enough to feel like it was the songs they wanted to play as opposed to one they felt obligated to. It was Arena rock at it’s best, fog machines, confetti, fist pumps, and frampton style rock and roll. Jeremiah and I met up as they left the stage and just nodded at each other. I love being wrong sometimes.
Little did I know it was about to get even better. For an encore Rivers ran out behind the soundboard to a makeshift stage to do a solo acoustic version of “Island in the Sun”. With one spotlight from the rafters he gleefully held the audience in awe. He then ran through the crowd back to the stage while the other band members recruited someone from the crowd to come help play guitar on “Undone (The Sweater Song)”. Sometimes you wonder if that kinda stuff is all planned out ahead of time but you could tell by the nervousness and flaws in his playing that Mike had no idea he’d be playing with Weezer tonight in front of 10,000 people. Rivers did everything he could to make him feel at ease including motioning to the rest of the band to stop playing so he and Mike could rock a duet. ha.
Foo Fighters arrived next and we soon found out that we wouldn’t be able to shoot them because we didn’t have prior approval. I’m not sure if that affected our moods but it sure didn’t make us any happier. Dave Grohl was on fire. I’ve never heard someone say f^ck as many times as he did during the set. It was all in good fun though. Amongst their hits “DOA”, “Best of You”, “Everlong”, and “Learn to Fly” he peppered the audience and encouraged them if they loved music to “go ahead and steal it”. He proclaimed that in the 10 year history of the Foo Fighters that this tour that was rapping up in a week was the best he’s ever been on. It was pretty obvious that everyone in the band and crowd was having a great time. We kicked it for a while and dug the laser show and Taylor Hawking over the top drumming before calling it a night.
Good to see Long Beach doing it right.
