December 15, 2008

  • Yesterday, I was able to go to the second night of KROQ's "Almost Acoustic Christmas" concert, at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Hollywood (tickets sold out literally within a minute). I was able to go to this last year as well, and as long as they keep churning out lots of bands that I want to see, it will be a yearly thing for me. Once I did get there, I bought a souvenir shirt to commemorate the event, and at that time I had a little over an hour until the first band played. I pretty much just roamed around the place, and also stayed by the KROQ stage where at the time DJ Kat Corbett was doing a live on-air interview with the band "Snow Patrol." After wards I decided to just go in and wait. This year, I was able to get a seat at the lower orchestra section, so this was the closest I've ever been to the stage so far. I got a great view, and I was hoping that there won't be any super tall people that will block my line of sight (it did happen for a couple of the bands).

    The first band that played was Vampire Weekend, which was one of the ones I wanted to see. They did a great job being the opening band, and I think they even impressed a lot of the audience who never heard of them before. Snow Patrol was next, and while a good band, most people where there pretty much just to listen to their big hits.

    Scott Weiland followed, and unlike the night before when he performed as lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots, he showed up as a solo act. His performance was the one that most of the audience decided to go out for a merchandise / food / restroom break or something, because he just did not have that sound that would have wowed this audience. For one song, he did have Adrian Young from the band No Doubt play drums, so that was cool.

    Franz Ferdinand was the band that performed next, and they where phenomenal. Their music is the type that would get people up and about in the first place, and in fact up to this time, most of the audience were sitting down, but once their song "Take Me Out" started playing, the crowd was off their seats. The next band scheduled is Paramore, but to our surprise it was Kanye West that showed up on stage as the secret act. You wouldn't think that a KROQ crowd would enjoy Kanye West, but the audience went crazy and absolutely loved his performance. He was pretty damn good live.

    After Kanye finished his short setlist, Paramore took the stage and rocked out like they normally do. Since I'm a fan, I did enjoy their performance, but I've got to be honest in saying that I felt like half the audience were just not into them at all. With Franz Ferdinand and Kanye West, most everybody were out of their seats, but with Paramore, more than half of the audience seemed to have sat down again. Once Death Cab For Cutie showed up on stage after Paramore ended their set, most everybody was off their seats again... well until they realized that Death Cab's tunes are downbeat enough that it eventually got people to sit down again and just listen to their awesome set.

    The Killers was up next and they absolutely rocked the whole house. The great vibe was there and everybody was loving it. I believe the majority of the audience were there for the Killers, and it showed. The iconic band The Cure topped off the night as the headliner, and the die hard fans were definitely excited and happy to see them. Like most of the audience, I was pretty much just waiting to hear their big hits, but the songs that I were not familiar with weren't bad at all. It's just that after an upbeat band like The Killers just performed, the night pretty  much ended with calming music. Overall, the night was spectacular and I look forward to next years.

    * click here to see the photos I took *

    * click here for all 40 videos I took of the whole concert *

    * listen to the Kevin & Bean show's recap of the concert (part one + part two) *

    p.s. This past day will also mark the day that our white dog ran off outside the house for the first time. The garage door was accidentally left open, so the brown dog took off, and the white dog followed her. They were eventually recovered and brought home, and luckily they were actually together when they were found.