Weve been looking forward to getting our junior photographer, Bodie Seefeldt, out in the field again and what better place for a 9 year old to shoot a show than the Los Angeles Natural History Museum?!
The NHM cleverly booked The Bird and the Bee for their First Fridays-Darwins R]evolution show, which nearly coincided with the 200 year anniversary of Charles Darwins birth. Not only did they line up a great evening of music with The Bird and the Bee and [Jukebox the Ghost, but they also hosted Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters, a lecture examining the evidence for evolution from fossil data.
After the lecture, the evening got going with Philadelphia based, Jukebox the Ghost. JTG did a good job of warming up the capacity crowd. Before they even set foot on-stage, there was line waiting to get into the mammal hall (which hit max occupancy really quickly), despite the heavy rain outside! Jukebox the Ghost churned out upbeat poppy sounding rock, reminiscent of Joe Jackson and Ben Folds.
For those that couldnt make it in to see JTG, the African mammal hall featured DJs Phatal and Michael Stock and some swanky couches for relaxing.
As the crowd eagerly awaited The Bird and the Bee, the mammal hall started to heat up, I mean it got really hot. By the time The bird and the Bee took the stage, people in the jam packed hordes were visibly perspiring. The audiences sweltering proved to be well worth the suffering as The B&B delivered an amazing set.
The Bird and the Bee are really a duo, Inara George and Greg Kurstin, but their live set consists of the aforementioned duo, as well as four back-up singer/musician/dancers. Each of the four back-up singer/musician/dancers wore a bright colored clear plastic dress (pink, blue, red, yellow, respectively), with Inara George wearing a complimentary plastic polka dotted dress. Their poppy outfits matched their jazz influenced candy electro pop.
Greg Kurstin appears content to go unnoticed on stage and let Inara George shine, which she does. She is cute, charming and has a great stage presence, not to mention an amazing voice. During the hour long set, the band played my favorites, Polite Dance Song and Love Letter to Japan, both of their newest album Ray Guns Are Not the Future. Somewhere in the set they threw in an awesome cover of Hall & Oates, I Cant Go For That, that really got the crowd audience moving. The Bird and the Bee closed out the evening with an amazing cover of the Bee Gees How Deep is Your Love.
