Adrian's Summer/Fall Concert Blitz, Part 7: Blondie, Marymoor Park, Redmond, WA, 9/17/13

This was my second time at Marymoor Park this summer, the first being for Steely Dan. This night was noticeably much cooler than for that first show, as I drove to the park through some light drizzle in one of the final days of summer.

If any of the concerts on my Summer/Fall Blitz was an impulse decision, this was the one. I had no expectations from this show other than to enjoy a night out and hear some of the songs that made up the soundtrack of my childhood. Blondie's Autoamerican album was one of the first I ever bought with my own money, after I heard their reggae-meets-new wave hit "The Tide Is High" on the radio. I'm not sure what attracted my 9-year-old ears to that song, but I wouldn't be surprised if Debbie Harry's voice had something to do with it. I've always preferred female singers to male ones, even back then. And there's always been something about Debbie's voice that set her apart from her peers -- it was the way she could slide so effortlessly from that kind of breathy, angelic tone she used for the high notes into a deeper-voiced, full-on attack when she wanted to take control of a song. Her singing style, in short, does a lovely dance combining vulnerability and power. Very versatile; very impressive.

The crowd was one of the most normal-looking I'd seen at any of the shows this summer! Most were in my age range, I'd say -- late 30s to early 50s -- and most of them looked as if they could have just swung over to Marymoor after picking up their groceries at the local Safeway. At my summer shows I've seen hipsters, hippies, abundantly tattooed and pierced punks, and overly earnest, bearded, bespectacled young men who looked as if they'd just walked in from a poli-sci debate at the corner coffeehouse. Not a lot of that stuff going on here. The most I saw were a few ladies walking around in their black rock-band T-shirts, tight skirts, boots, and fishnet stockings, evidently trying to recapture that punk/new-wave vibe from the late '70s and early '80s. I figured a lot of them were probably there to see the opening act, X, whose material I know just enough to say with some certainty that they were a little more punk while Blondie learned a little more toward new wave.

I missed X's set and only got to my seat about 15 minutes before Blondie came out. And as soon as the lights dimmed, people from all around me abandoned their seats to crowd themselves down around the stage -- which meant I had to stand to see anything.

Debbie came out wearing a black robe and a rimless, pointy black hat. At first I thought she was trying to make like a witch or a wizard, but then it occurred to me that her current tour is called "No Principals." Note the spelling. Was she maybe combining a graduation gown and a dunce cap?

Well, in any event, the costume came off in stages during the show. She lost the cap after the first song, revealing her full head of still platinum-blonde hair.

A few songs later, the gown was unzipped, revealing a black top, black leather skirt, and black knee-high boots underneath. OK, maybe those punk-rockers I saw before the show wouldn't feel so out of place at a Blondie show after all.

Debbie had a great stage presence. She was energetically shimmying around the stage and interacted a lot with the crowd -- even leaning down to dole out some high-fives while she sang. The song I was mostly there to hear, "The Tide Is High," sounded great with a new arrangement. If you remember the Blondie original, you know the mood relied a lot on strings and horns. But there were no strings or horns in sight -- only Debbie, two guitarists (including her longtime musical partner, and former romantic partner, Chris Stein), a bassist, and a drummer. The staccato offbeat rhythm was there, courtesy of the guitars, leaving the basic reggae groove intact, but the middle instrumental section turned into a surprisingly heavy, guitar-driven romp, played in a straight-ahead rocking 4/4 beat. Interesting twist.

To their credit, the band played all the hits you would have expected to hear -- "Call Me," "Heart of Glass," "One Way or Another," "Rapture" -- and they didn't shy away from leaning quite a bit on newer material. They played around half a dozen songs from their newest album, Ghosts of Download, that hasn't even been released yet! So kudos to Blondie for pushing forward and not just devolving into an oldies act playing the circuit. And the new material sounds fresh and exciting, with the same kind of energy and blending of styles -- pop, rock, dance, new wave -- that was always one of the band's trademarks.

The group even pulled out a few surprise cover tunes -- The Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax."

My biggest complaint of the night is that it was obvious a lot of pre-recorded backing vocals were being piped in to sweeten the sound. There just weren't as many people with their mouths to microphones onstage as there were voices in the air. On a couple of occasions, Debbie even stopped singing momentarily while her vocals continued. Oops.

Not that she was lip-syncing the entire show, because a lot of the older material she sang really showed the age of her voice. That angelic lilt she used to have is largely not there anymore. She sang "Rapture" in a lower voice than on the original, and she didn't even attempt to go for the higher registers on "Call Me" and "Heart of Glass," which were already pretty severely transposed down.

But I can't really knock her for that. Age takes its toll. Debbie Harry is 68 years old, for goodness' sake. She's full of energy, puts on an entertaining show, and seems to still love singing. I couldn't really have asked for more than that.

Setlist:

One Way or Another
Rave
Hanging on the Telephone
Union City Blue
A Rose by Any Name
The Tide Is High
Drag You Around
Maria
Winter
Rapture
No Sleep Till Brooklyn
Atomic
What I Heard
Wipe Off My Sweat
Sugar on the Side
Heart of Glass

Encore:

Mile High
Call Me
Relax
Dreaming

The Day That Changed Everything

I saw a lot of people posting their thoughts and memories of 9/11 today, and I think this quote from Dr. King sums up my feelings fairly well. The Buddha shared a similar thought some 2,500 years ago: 

In this world, hatred has never been defeated by hatred.
Only love can overcome hatred.
This is an ancient and eternal law.

I remember where I was when I heard about the attacks, as most of us do. I first felt confusion, then fear, and then anger. I wanted revenge. I remember pulling out our flag that evening and hanging it from our balcony at our apartment back in Michigan. My tribal mind took over (and make no mistake; all nations are essentially tribes, when you get down to it). We all felt a need to rally behind each other.

But as my anger cooled, I looked on in dismay as our government seemed to want to fix the problem in ways that made no sense at best, and were an affront to our own liberties at worst. And that far too many people, still driven by fear or vengeance, found no fault with it all.

At that time, I probably would have considered myself a pacifist Republican. I was raised in a conservative Catholic home, and the Catholic "consistent life ethic" always resonated with me. Lots of Catholics I knew were pro-life on abortion, but how many opposed capital punishment? How many followed Pope John Paul II in condemning the Iraq war? Not many that I knew.

So I felt myself more and more at odds with our policies, with the popular political climate, and with the "solutions" from both political parties. While most people were focused on revenge, I wanted to know why the attack happened in the first place. I read the Koran. I immersed myself in the history of American foreign policy and Middle East politics. I came out the other side with a new political perspective -- one that was mostly libertarian, and still very strongly pacifistic, but one that also more clearly grasped the cause and effect in what had happened to us.

Today, I think things have gotten worse, not better -- economically, politically, and attitudinally. And as I continue to learn and grow, I again find my worldview beginning to shift in subtle ways. I sat down this evening and read 9/11, a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky -- and I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what I read. That would never have happened five years ago, or even one year ago. I've always had a soft spot for Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich, but Chomsky and Howard Zinn are beginning to join them in a particular sphere of influence that I'd never entertained in any serious depth before. Now it's starting to click.

My point? Never stop questioning, and never stop learning. It's easy to get caught up in the narratives we build for ourselves, aided by the media, popular culture, and our leaders. (One word of advice? Turn off your TV, and leave it off. It's one of the best things you'll ever do for yourself.) I think that, to a large extent, we're biologically wired to want to look to our leaders to fix things for us. We're group animals. That's why, as the nefarious Nazi propagandist Herman Goering pointed out during the Nuremberg trials, it's easy to rally the people to war. It takes courage to stand up against popular opinion, as we don't want to be banished from the pack.

But it's the rebels, the non-conformists, the ones unafraid to stand up and announce that the emperor has no clothes, who are the catalysts for change. As that great American philosopher Frank Zappa is claimed to have once said, "Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

One reason I've always identified with the hippie movement is that the hippies weren't afraid to call out the establishment, no matter the political party in power. And they were just crazy enough to think that a world built on love, peace, and justice would be better than the one we have. Consider the words of some of the movement's patron saints:

John Lennon: "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

(Attributed to) Jimi Hendrix: "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Again, John Lennon:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Peace and love are revolutionary ideas in a world gone mad with war and hate. Follow your heart, not the crowd, and I believe it's a revolution that can be won.

Here's to a better tomorrow.

Adrian's Summer/Fall Concert Blitz, Part 6: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Showbox SoDo, Seattle, 9/5/13

Part of the fun of writing these reviews is that it pushes me to take the music that's the fabric of my life and explain it to someone who may have never heard it before. That's a particularly strong challenge with Montreal octet Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

First, let's look at the genre in which GY!BE is considered to be at the forefront. "Post-rock" is kind of a nebulous term, but it's meant to encapsulate a certain musical aesthetic in which rock instruments aren't used in typical rock-music contexts. You could say that for progressive rock, too, but post-rock isn't at all like prog. Displays of virtuosity aren't the norm, nor is working from a highbrow classical-music template (not that all prog is "symphonic" prog, but there's no need to wander off in the weeds about that). The music is more about creating and setting an intense mood, drawing the listener in, and then shifting that mood to something new and just as arresting, often through the use of long crescendos -- building, for example, from quiet ambient drones to furious, thundering peaks. Vocals are rare to nonexistent, textures replace melodies, and there's little regard for brevity. Sounds can linger in the air for minutes on end before a new idea begins to slowly present itself. If you're imagining something very dramatic and very avant-garde, you would be correct.

I think there actually are some prog-rock touchstones one could point to as being influential in building the post-rock movement, which is perhaps what interested me in it in the first place. I hear the experimental electronic drones of early Tangerine Dream (especially their masterpiece Zeit), I hear formless ideas being slowly looped on top of each other (think Robert Fripp and Brian Eno's No Pussyfooting), and I hear the pulsating rhythms of some of the early Krautrock outfits (particularly Can). If there is one piece of prog-rock that, in retrospect, might best sum up the post-rock sound to come, I humbly submit King Crimson's "Starless and Bible Black," a nine-minute live instrumental performance from their 1974 album of the same name. An amorphous soup of sound creeps out of the silence, with buzzing guitars, eerie Mellotron chords, random percussive clanks, and the occasional growl from a bass guitar all swirling around each other, slowly coalescing toward a shared direction. A tight 4/4 rhythm kicks in, slightly funky -- but also slightly menacing. The drums and bass lock into a groove, giving us our only hint that this was all composed and not improvised when the two players hit a succession of notes at the same time. The sustained wails from the guitar cut through like a buzzsaw, and the Mellotron pushes on with its eeriness, seemingly oblivious to the growing tension even as it adds to it. There's no melody, not even a discernible tonal center. Then with the crash of a cymbal, everything breaks apart. The rhythm ceases, the instruments clatter around each other, and we get one more jolting blast of noise before everything fades back into the darkness.

Not your cup of tea? Understandable. Hey, I admit there aren't many people who would go and see the smoldering classic rock of Heart, the delectable piano pop of Sara Bareilles, and then this craziness all in the same week. What can I say? I love music in almost all its forms. Sometimes I want to be challenged, and sometimes I just want to sit back and rock out. Post-rock in general, and GY!BE in particular, decidedly fall down on the "challenge" side.

Godspeed! You Black Emperor currently consists of three guitarists, two bassists, two drummers, and a violinist, in addition to a projectionist who is crucial to creating the band's stage mystique. The group put out three full-length albums and an EP in fairly quick succession and then kept a low profile for the past several years. Their latest album, which was released last year, was their first new music in nearly a decade. I hadn't heard it yet before going to the show, but naturally there were plenty of copies for sale at the merchandise table.

But there was much more for sale at the merch table. Anarchist literature. Lots and lots of anarchist literature. There were even some lectures on CD from the likes of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, including a talk on civil disobedience in times of war. I was very tempted to pick that one up -- but alas, I came without cash. Still, this was heavy stuff to be encountering at a rock show.

On the other hand, for anyone who's followed GY!BE, none of this was bound to be a surprise. The band is notoriously reclusive and rarely grants interviews, but as they told the Guardian in a rare interview last year regarding the meaning of their music: "Figure it out for yourself. The clues are all there." Indeed they are. But since the music is instrumental, you won't find them in any lyrics. Where you'll find them is in places like the snippets of world leaders whose words are weaved into the music, or in the many field recordings of ranting street preachers, or ordinary people railing fruitlessly against a system that harasses them with its niggling regulations and fines but offers nothing of value in return for the tributes it demands.

Or there are the graphics on the album packaging. The back of Yanqui U.X.O. has a hand-scrawled diagram illustrating the links between record companies and defense contractors like Raytheon. The gatefold of Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven features a woodcut-style illustration of a zombie-like George Washington, wearing a necktie emblazoned with a dollar sign, as he cuts the hands off a young man shedding a single tear. Behind them on a table is a signed document -- evidently a contract the young man signed agreeing to this predicament.

Or there are the song and album titles -- in particular,Yanqui U.X.O. "Yanqui" is the Latin American version of "yankee," typically used in a pejorative sense, and "U.X.O." stands for "unexploded ordnance." Put them together, and you have a compact commentary on an imperialist nation that has meddled in the affairs of Latin American nations for ages and has left behind the equivalent of landmines -- unexploded bombs that litter the landscape and no one dare approach.

So yeah, this is what I walked into. And you might be surprised to know that there was a healthy turnout for this show. Showbox SoDo is kind of a divey little place -- pretty much a warehouse, with a bar at one end and the stage at the other, with a restaurant off to one side -- but it has plenty of open space to pack the people in. And there were several hundred people packed down on the floor with me. I was about five rows of people from the stage, as close to center as I could get.

And no one moved.

Through the entire show.

Oh, there was the occasional shifting of weight from one foot to another, and sometimes a slight bobbing of a head here and there. But mostly there were very earnest-looking young men staring mesmerized at the stage for two hours. A few even closed their eyes as they stood there, presumably immersing themselves in the experience. It was by far the stillest and quietest audience I've ever been a part of.

You can't really blame them, though, because the overall experience was less like being at a concert and more like watching a movie, with the music serving as its soundtrack. The stage was lit only by a few dim orange-ish lights, with most of the illumination coming from the films projected onto the back of the stage throughout the concert. There was no visual narrative to speak of, but the choppy, gritty images all lent an air of anxiety and bleakness to the proceedings -- hundreds of typed and handwritten words flying past, too quick to read; jumpy black-and-white scenes of desolate desert-type landscapes and beaten-down industrial sites; flashing red lights against a night sky, too blurred and dark to put into context.

That was the visual focal point for the entirety of the show, because GY!BE doesn't indulge in hair-flipping guitarists doing exaggerated rock poses in the spotlight. No strobes, no smoke machines, no pyrotechnics. Theirs was an intense, studied performance, with the three guitarists playing seated on the stage and hunched over their instruments. One guitarist, sitting at the very edge of the stage, actually performed most of the evening with his back turned to the audience. With the two drum kits at the rear of the stage, everyone else was lined up in a half-circle -- they're anarchists, you see, and there's quite pointedly no leader in a circle, like at King Arthur's Round Table -- and they played the show with a minimum of movement and outward emotion. There was no interaction with the crowd whatsoever, and very little between the musicians themselves. If the individual musicians didn't have a part to play, they would often either leave the stage or sit down on the stage floor and wait for the next part to come around -- essentially removing themselves from the equation if they weren't needed at the time. It was as if they were forcing us to place our attention on the music and the visuals, rather than on who was manipulating the instruments to play the notes we heard.

And boy, did it work. We were all motionless, it ultimately seemed, because we were so utterly consumed in the performance -- I dare say we became part of the performance, with no more outward movement than the band members but no less emotional absorption in what was happening all around us.

Six compositions were performed over the course of two hours, but with the way the individual pieces ebbed and flowed, with no intuitive construction to serve as signposts from beginning to end, it felt more like one long, continuous piece. There were chords, but few obvious progressions. Occasional riffs and sketchy outlines of melodies might briefly emerge, but before you could connect with them, they'd be swallowed up by the ominous soundscapes that had been swelling around them. The end result was something like being on a restless sea. Just when you think you can relax into the pulsating waves and float along, the winds suddenly pick up, the sky darkens, you hear the distant roar of a giant wave hurtling toward you, and you prepare yourself the best you can for the coming onslaught.

Right from the opening E-flat drone that opened the show and remained there for a good five minutes while the band slowly built a musical edifice around it, there was a nearly constant sense of anticipation hanging in the air. It was all tension and no release as layer built upon layer. Where was the music going next? That was the perpetual question. It always sounded as if the band was gearing up to veer in another direction. Sometimes they did; sometimes they didn't. The drummers might establish a new, thundering rhythm, or they might just start accenting a different beat within the measures, and perhaps a new riff might emerge, built on just a few sparse notes, and played over and over while a wave of noise gradually built up around it to ultimately sweep it all away. Another riff may start to form, or the notes may hang in the air for an interminable time and build a tense, anxious aura. Eventually the pieces would decay into silence, but not before mentally exhausting the listener.

Now I know what apocalyptic despair sounds like.

That's possibly a strange reaction to have, because GY!BE claims their music is an expression of joy. If so, perhaps it's the desperate want of joy, in a world that beats us down and gives us no hope.

It's not as if I was unfamiliar with their material before the concert, but experiencing it in person really drove home the utter bleakness it conveys -- at least for me. At turns, their music sounds like the end of the world, and the crushing sorrow in the aftermath.

Like I said, heavy stuff.

As the performance drew to a close, the band members all made their way off the stage, with the feedback and looped layers of sound they had built up still washing through the amplifiers. After several minutes, the sound died down to a single drone, then a whisper, and then the house lights came up. No encore. No band members coming out arm in arm to take a bow. That was it.

They pummeled us and then left us standing there, stunned and helpless.

I shuffled my way out of the venue and stepped into a midnight downpour. I was drenched by the time I got to the car, but at least the rain helped bring me back to my senses.

That was a performance I will not soon forget.

Setlist:

Hope Drone
Mladic
Behemoth
Chart #3
World Police and Friendly Fire
The Sad Mafioso

Adrian's Summer/Fall Concert Blitz, Part 5: Sara Bareilles, Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery, Woodinville, WA, 9/2/13

I blame it all on getting our car radio fixed.

We used to have an XM receiver in our car, but when we took it out several years ago, we never reattached the antenna to the radio -- it was too hard to get to. Even the local stations were fuzzy, so we just got into the habit of grabbing some CDs (if it was my music) or an MP3-stocked phone (if it was Lori's) when we wanted music in the car.

Well, on one of our aging car's many visits to the shop this year, we had a technician get the radio working again. And while Lori and I were enjoying spinning around the dial, we stumbled on one of Seattle's pop stations and landed on a really catchy tune. Now, modern pop has never really been one of my great musical loves, but mixed among the jaunty little electronic drumbeat coming from the car speakers was an insistent eighth-note pattern on a piano and an arresting female voice. I've always had a soft spot for female singers -- I even have a Slacker station set up to play only female artists, to give you an idea -- and this voice was particularly sweet and melodic, with some good heft to it. Then the chorus came around, and I got a taste of just how powerful this singer's voice could get. And as a bonus, the melody was really catchy.

Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly
I wanna see you be brave

At that point I had to dig out my phone and pull up the Shazam app.

"Brave," by Sara Bareilles.

Hmm. Nice.

I found out that the song was from her then-forthcoming release. So I decided to see what else was out there, and within the next week or so, I'd tracked down her two major-label releases up to that time: Little Voice and Kaleidoscope Heart.

The former album opens with a jangly piano line that you could briefly mistake for Chicago's "Saturday in the Park," before it unfolds into a perversely upbeat kiss-off song.

I'm not gonna write you a love song
'Cause you asked for it
'Cause you need one

The best part? It's not about a relationship gone sour. It's a song Sara wrote about her record company, pressuring her to come up with a hit. This is the first song on her major-label debut, mind you. Now there's a woman not afraid to say what's on her mind.

Later on the same album is a tender piano ballad called "Between the Lines," which I take to be about a woman who's devastated when she finally comes to terms with the fact that her partner has been unfaithful and doesn't love her anymore. I've always found sorrowful songs to be some of the most beautiful ones, and this one hooked me right away -- but then it floored me when it got to the chorus. As one astute YouTube commenter put it, the chord progression is the stuff dreams are made of. I was breaking out in goosebumps the first time I heard it unfold. If you only listen to one of Sara's songs as a result of this review, make it "Between the Lines."

So now I had a pretty good handle on what Sara was capable of. She plays piano, she plays guitar, she writes her own music, she has a powerful mezzo-soprano voice with great range and control (and boy, is it a sexy voice when she dives down into contralto territory), she writes smart lyrics and incredible melodies, and she can work up anything from an upbeat piano-pop stomper to a heartbreaking ballad about love gone wrong. If I had to liken her to any other artists, I'd say she's sort of like a cross between a less sarcastic Ben Folds and a more irreverent Sarah McLachlan. Yeah, she has the whole earnest singer-songwriter thing going, but she has that playful edge that saves her from ever taking herself too seriously. There's not a lot of navel-gazing Lilith Fair-type stuff in her catalog. She doesn't dwell on how miserable she is over a broken heart; instead, she tells you off for breaking her heart in the first place.

Her second major-label album, Kaleidoscope Heart, has scarcely left the car's CD player since I got it. As pop confections go, it is delectable. Just overflowing with delicious piano riffs, unbelievable melodies, and, of course, Sara's commanding and beautiful voice. You get treated to everything from an a cappella title cut to the finger-snapping shuffle of "Gonna Get Over You," the soulful "Not Alone," the 6/8 blues-pop of "Machine Gun," and a few Sarah McLachlan-like tender moments in "The Light" and "Breathe Again." There's even a chorus in 11/4 on "Let the Rain," to satisfy my inner prog-rocker! The highlight, though, is "King of Anything," built around one of the tastiest piano grooves I've heard in a long time. Like "Love Song," the upbeat arrangement belies the subject matter -- in this case, a woman who's sick of someone else's unsolicited advice:

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be
Who died and made you king of anything?

I've been digesting her latest release, The Blessed Unrest, over the past several weeks. I haven't warmed to it as quickly as the rest of her material, even though the opening cut, "Brave," was what got me interested in her music in the first place. With the exception of a few notable tracks -- including "Brave," "Little Black Dress," and "Eden" -- it's a much more subdued album. The melodies are still gorgeous, of course, but the arrangements tend to be a little more introspective and subtle -- more mature in many respects. But they're slowly growing on me. The one thing I don't like is the synthetic electro-pop sounds on "Brave" and "Eden" that just scream "play me on Top 40 radio." Sara's best music is organically good and doesn't need the sheen of synthesizers and plastic drums to dress it up. I really hope she doesn't let her label or her producers bury her unique musical personality under a slick, generic pop veneer going forward. That would be a travesty.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a concert review, so let's talk about Chateau Ste. Michelle, shall we? It's a winery northeast of Seattle that puts on a summer concert series every year. It was fun walking past the vineyards to get to the open field where the stage was erected -- but that wasn't half as fun as watching all the people milling about with their bottles and wine glasses in hand before the show. I was actually a little reluctant to go and see this concert, because I thought I'd be completely out of my element, surrounded by screaming young girls and kind of feeling like a dirty old man. Turns out I was out of my element, but only because tie-dye and long hair don't mix so well with upper-middle-class attire -- guys in button-downs and slacks; ladies in blouses and skirts -- being worn by people who looked like they came right from their middle-management jobs at Microsoft. Oh, and of course, they swung by the daycare to bring their teen and tween daughters with them.

On the bright side, at least there wasn't a stinky cloud of marijuana smoke hanging over the audience. That was a nice change of pace from all the concerts I've been to recently.

Sara is co-headlining her tour with One Republic, a band that Lori likes but I know very little about. On this warm summer evening, Sara played first. With a big smile and a wave, she moved straight to her grand piano at center stage and launched her band -- guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, and two cellists who doubled as backing singers -- into a piece from The Blessed Unrest called "Chasing the Sun."

Good song, but an odd choice for an opener, as it's a slower piece (about 80 beats per minute) with plaintive lyrics urging us all to chase after life and not let it pass us by. The piece is sung from the perspective of someone standing in a cemetery in Queens and realizing how fleeting life can be. Like I said, an odd choice for an opener, but I admit it did make me connect with the song more than I'd been able to by just listening to it on the CD. There's a lot of emotion packed into that song.

Wearing a black pantsuit and a gray fedora, Sara was dressed more casually than a lot of people in the crowd! But she seemed relaxed and came across as if she was having a great time. The smile hardly ever left her face, and she had a great rapport with the audience.

She came across as very down-to-earth, and at times seemingly humbled by the warm reception she got. She made lots of jokes about the ubiquitous wine bottles. ("You know what's great about wine? You can still get wasted, but you look so classy while you're doing it!") She seemed especially taken with a young girl in the front row, probably 11 or 12 years old, who apparently sang every word to every song. Midway through the show, Sara came down off the stage to give the girl a high-five -- and then Sara decided to reach out and hug her. Aww! So sweet. "Hey, I'll hug anyone else who knows all the words," she joked as she climbed back up onstage. I told Lori about that, and she said I should have tried to get Sara's attention! Only problems: (1) I know a lot of the words, but not all of them, and (2) Sara Bareilles is such a tiny thing that I'd probably crush her if I gave her a hug. Nice thought, though.

On the second song of the evening, "Gonna Get Over You," I noticed right away that some of the fun little ba-ba-doo-wop backing vocals from the studio version were absent. Sara's backing singers were busy harmonizing with her, so something clearly had to go. And on the next song, the R&B-flavored "Many the Miles," the sound from the stage completely cut out for about 10 seconds near the end! Things got back on course after that, but the missing doo-wops and the audio flub made it occur to me that there were no backing tracks being pumped in to sweeten the sound of the performance, the way a lot of performers do these days. I gave Sara a lot of credit for that. The temptation has to be there for an artist to "cheat" a little bit and let some pre-recorded music help flesh out the sound and pick up some of those studio overdubs that can't be replicated in a live setting. I think that kind of thing is especially prevalent for artists who do a lot of dancing and choreography onstage, to the point where some pop stars probably end up just lip-syncing a lot of their shows. Fortunately, Sara is more concerned with the music than with any flash or glitz. Even the apparent concessions she made on the album with the electronic drum beats were played live by her drummer on a drum pad attached to his set. The fact that this was a WYSIWYG type of pop concert was made very transparent. And that was refreshing to see.

Next came "Love Song," to a roar of cheers. And then a track I'd never heard before, called "I Wanna Be Like Me." Sara said it was an iTunes-only bonus track from The Blessed Unrest, and that she wrote it for her nieces, as a way to encourage them to stay true to themselves and the type of people they wanted to be, rather than what other people might want them to be. I'm all for the self-empowering, be-yourself anthems. The first thing I thought was that this would be a great theme song for Miranda. One of the things I want most for her is to boldly choose her own path in life, even if it's one I didn't see coming. You have to follow your muse wherever it leads you. Great song, too -- very poppy and upbeat, with a neat kind of stuttering start-stop rhythm pinning down the verses. It marked the first time during the evening that Sara stepped away from her piano and stood with mic in hand at the front of the stage.

After a slow ballad called "Gravity" -- a song about a person who tries to resist someone else but keeps getting pulled back -- Sara sat down at her piano and said she wanted to pay tribute to a song and an artist who'd been very influential on her. And that gave us one of the highlights of the evening -- a solo piano performance of Elton John's "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

Sara brought a beautiful wistfulness to her arrangement while paying great homage to the original song. I've heard her play a number of cover songs online, with some of the more remarkable highlights being the Beatles' "Oh Darling" and Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," and I really hope she decides to gather them all up someday for an all-covers album. You can just hear her love for those songs in her performances.

Next came "Manhattan," a slow, jazzy piece from The Blessed Unrest that I could easily hear coming from the likes of Diana Krall. Sara explained that the song was about her new home in New York, after moving across the country from Los Angeles, and how she felt alone after the end of a long-term relationship. That comment made me understand the new album a lot more -- it's little wonder that it all sounds more subdued than previous albums, if it was written in the aftermath of a breakup.

Sara moved through two more pieces from the new album: the too-much-pop-and-not-enough-Sara "Eden," and the gentle love song "I Choose You," for which she donned an acoustic guitar. That was a nice one. It's a song I can imagine being played at a lot of weddings in the future.

Next up, Sara gave me a chuckle as she transported me back to high school band -- when she grabbed a pair of concert crash cymbals off the top of her piano. Talk about being down to earth and putting the music first! How many pop divas do you think would dare to stand on stage looking like they were getting ready to go out marching on the football field at halftime? She crashed the cymbals together to punctuate the lines of the chorus in one of her best songs off the new album, "Cassiopeia," in which the constellation becomes a cosmic stand-in for a woman yearning to "collide" with the object of her affection. Sara's gorgeous glissando on the powerful chorus only added to the dramatic feel.

The show went way too quickly. Sara wrapped up with "King of Anything" and "Brave," followed by an encore of "Uncharted," a driving piano piece from Kaleidoscope Heart. There are so many more songs I would have loved to hear, especially "Between the Lines." Heck, she could have covered Donny Osmond's catalog for all I cared -- anything to hear her keep singing. It was a great show, and I'll definitely be going to see her again if she comes back this way.

My only complaint is that Sara possesses -- as she's put it in an interview -- the mouth of a trucker. She doesn't litter her lyrics with a lot of swearing, but she couldn't make it through any of her stage patter without dropping some crude language. I guess that's how she's inspired to express herself, but she also has a lot of impressionable young fans in her audience. Well, what can you do? I was just there for the music anyway.

The best thing about Sara Bareilles, in my view, is that she's living proof that some really good and genuinely talented artists still make it to the big time today. She's a bright ray of light shining over what I find to be a pretty crappy pop music scene. The problem is, a lot of people who might be interested in someone like Sara Bareilles will never hear her -- and that's one reason I wanted to write up this review. I know many people who never come near modern music and would miss out as a result. After all, I didn't hear Sara on classic rock radio; I heard her on a pop station that no one in my demographic is likely to seek out. That's a pity, because she has what it takes to carry the torch forward from great singer-songwriter icons like Joni Mitchell and Carole King. Seriously, she's that good. Check her out if you ever get the chance.

Setlist:
Chasing the Sun
Gonna Get Over You
Many the Miles
Love Song
I Wanna Be Like Me
Gravity
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Manhattan
Eden
I Choose You
Cassiopeia
King of Anything
Brave

Encore:
Uncharted

Adrian's Summer/Fall Concert Blitz, Part 4: Heart (and a Cast of Thousands) at Bumbershoot, Seattle, 8/31/13

Bumbershoot has been around for as long as I have. It's become a Labor Day weekend tradition here in Seattle -- a three-day festival that includes some art and theater but mostly features music. Lots of music. On multiple stages. Most of the musicians are local or regional, but the festival always manages to bring in some big names to serve as the headline acts for each of the three nights. Topping the bill for the first night of Bumbershoot this year was Seattle's own First Ladies of Rock -- Heart.

I got to Seattle Center about four hours before showtime, with the intention of walking the grounds, seeing if any other acts caught my attention, and just enjoying the vibe.

Sometimes I still feel like a tourist, even after three years of living here, because I'll find any reason to come up and spend some time enjoying the Space Needle, the International Fountain, the Pacific Science Center, or any number of other fun things that were built here for the 1962 World's Fair. Seattle Center is, in my opinion, the jewel of our city. The Needle, a fanciful notion of what people half a century ago thought architecture might look like in the 21st century, still makes our skyline unique. You see the Needle; you instantly know what city you're looking at. I think of it as America's Eiffel Tower.

On this night, in the shadow of the Needle, two things filled the air: music, and marijuana smoke. In some ways, I felt out of place. For one thing, I've never smoked weed in my life, but the familiar scent seems to show up at every concert I go to. I'm actually glad to smell an occasional tobacco cigarette just to break the olfactory monotony. And second, a lot of the music I heard was clearly geared toward a younger crowd. Lots of punky energy, raging vocals, and thumping hip-hop beats. I'm fine with that, but it's not a type of music I actively seek out. And sure enough, most of the people I saw walking the grounds looked to be around college age or even younger.

Clearly, Bumbershoot and I have both hit our middle ages.

I felt a little bit more at home when I swung by one of the stages to check out Gary Numan: There looked to be a lot more Gen Xers in the crowd. Remember "Cars" from the '79-'80 period? That was his big U.S. hit. Even as a kid, I remember how that song grabbed my attention when it came on the radio -- and how my mom hated it because she thought it just went on and on and didn't do anything. Not everyone's cup of tea, sure, but Gary was a pioneer of electronic music -- one of those guys who went out and pushed the new musical gadgets of the time to their limit, creating a new template for rock and pop music in the process.

I still dig the electronic music of that era. Having grown up at the dawn of home computing, it fascinated me to hear all these new instruments emerging that not only made their own novel and synthetic noises but also sampled others' works and mixed them up into something brand-new. Would music become automated in the future? Would musicians give way to machines? We didn't know back then. It was an exciting time for music in many ways. To this day I still count The Art of Noise -- who were at the absolute cutting edge of all the Fairlight and Synclavier technology -- among my favorite bands.

I never explored too much of Gary Numan's catalog beyond "Cars," but I knew enough about him to realize that "Cars" was just one small part of his musical makeup. He'll always be associated with that early '80s electronic era, but a lot of his music has a much rawer edge to it. In fact, watching him perform at Bumbershoot, I can confidently say one thing: Before there was Trent Reznor, there was Gary Numan. You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just walked in on a Nine Inch Nails concert -- right down to Gary's stage mannerisms. I read once that Trent listened to Gary's music every day as he made his way to the studio to work on The Downward Spiral. You can tell. And that is not, in my estimation, a bad thing.

Anyway, after a few songs, I decided to wander over to Key Arena, in hopes of getting there early enough to grab a good seat for the big show. I could have stayed for the entire Gary Numan performance and still made the Heart show, but I decided to see what Heart's opening act was up to. The opener? None other than Jason Bonham's Led Zeppelin Experience. I found a seat right behind the sound guys, with the stage directly in front of me on the opposite side of the arena, and I sat down a few minutes before Jason -- looking slightly menacing in a black stocking cap and aviator glasses -- took the stage with his crew.

Jason Bonham is a big man, as befits the legend of the drummer he was paying tribute to. And much like his dad, he plays his drums with all the subtlety of a Mack truck. But that's what you need for Zeppelin music, I suppose. This was the last show of his tour, and he seemed to be having lots of fun up there as he and his band tore through pretty much what you'd hear in a Zeppelin block on a classic-rock station. Funny that his kick drum even bore the famous interlocking three rings that Bonzo used as his "symbol" in the title of Zeppelin's fourth album. Jason is apparently really into honoring his dad. The good news is, he does it in great style. I think his performance would have made John Bonham proud.

He had a great rapport with the audience, too. This being Seattle, he of course had to mention the infamous Red Snapper Incident involving his dad (if you don't know what that is, look it up). I got excited when he said he was going to pull a track out of left field for us from the Presence album. Ooh! "Achilles' Last Stand," pretty please? Well, no, but we did get "Nobody's Fault but Mine," which was the next best thing. I can never help air-drumming along to that song, with all the unison stops and starts, the tricky syncopation, the whole thing. Those long moments of silence that hang in the air before the whole band comes crashing back in -- I love that. The only thing missing was Robert Plant's killer harmonica solo, but the guitarist replicated it fairly well.

While I'm flailing around like Animal on The Muppet Show, I notice that the couple to my right was sliding down the row a few seats. Can't get too close to the long-haired, tie-dyed weirdo, for heaven's sake. Sorry, but if I can't get my air-drummer geek on at a Jason Bonham show, where else am I going to do it?

Well, other than those party-poopers, I have to say I felt much more among my own kind, so to speak, inside Key Arena than I did out walking the grounds. Gen Xers and baby boomers abounded. Scraggly beards, graying ponytails, bandannas hiding bald spots, and middle-age spreads pushing out the tie-dye shirts. To my immediate left, a willowy woman with long brown hair, bless her heart, was standing and gyrating to the music like a flower child from Woodstock. We had a great talk between the Bonham and Heart shows about music in general, about how she used to have a black Gibson Les Paul guitar and idolized Jimmy Page, and how her greatest regret was never going to see Zeppelin perform live before Bonzo died. She asked if I'd ever seen them. I said Bonzo died when I was only 9, so no. She smiled. "Oh, you're just a youngster," said the woman who could have been my ... uh, well, my older sister.

When we stopped chatting, I noticed that the Love mix of the Beatles' "Within You Without You" was playing over the PA -- the one that adds Ringo's drum groove from "Tomorrow Never Knows." So there I am playing my air drums again, and then the lights go down as the song fades out -- but the droning sound of sitars continues to hang in the air. Neat. Heart programmed that as a segue into their own show.

The cheers go up from the crowd as figures bathed in shadow walk on the stage -- then the spotlight cuts to Nancy Wilson as she fires up the galloping riff to "Barracuda." And off we go.

Heart also pretty much stuck to a greatest-hits setlist, mixing some of their harder-edged '70s cuts like "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You" with their biggest '80s hits, including "Alone" and "What About Love." They also slid in a new track, "Dear Old America," from their latest album, Fanatic -- and if that song was any indication, the sisters have definitely ditched the fluffier '80s sound and gone back to their rock-'n'-roll roots. Great stuff. Sadly, it got only a lukewarm response from the crowd, which is the curse all these old bands seem to have to deal with. Nobody wants to hear anything new, no matter how great it may sound. They just want to relive a past moment in time. Me? I love the familiar as much as anyone else, and the memories associated with those songs, but I love to see an artist pushing forward with new ideas. Bring it on!

The backing band was terrific. I didn't catch the names of the musicians, but I noticed their keyboard player looked as if she wasn't old enough to have heard Heart on the radio in their heyday. She nailed the solo on "Magic Man" -- and from what I could see, it appeared that she played it on an honest-to-God genuine Mini-Moog, with all the requisite knob- and dial-twiddling that goes along with it. Hooray for vintage equipment!

We also got a surprise performance during the show, as Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready came out and joined the band for "Crazy on You." It didn't quite reach the heights of Dave Grohl joining Paul McCartney onstage, but then how many things could? And it was still neat to get an unexpected visit from a member of another great Seattle band.

Ann Wilson hasn't lost a thing with age. Her voice soared to the greatest heights it always has, and she belted through the hard-rocking moments like nobody's business. I noticed, though, that she didn't move around a whole lot on stage, nor did she interact much with the crowd. We didn't get a hello until six songs in, and when she did talk to us, it was in awkwardly phrased sentences, as if she was fumbling for the right words. Maybe she's shy, even after all these years of performing in front of people? Well, it didn't matter. Ann let her singing do the talking, and boy, did it ever. One of her biggest vocal highlights was on a slow, acoustic rendition of "Alone" that she did with Nancy and the keys player. The sparse arrangement and slower tempo drew all the more attention to her performance. Ann's emotive wailing reached into the stratosphere on that one, and the crowd totally ate it up. Fantastic.

The encore was an all-Zeppelin affair, with Jason Bonham himself joining on drums. Anyone who knows Heart knows of their immense love for Led Zeppelin. Spread across all of their live albums through the years, they've released their versions of the entirety of side one of the iconic fourth Led Zeppelin album. They opened up the encore set with one of those songs: "The Battle of Evermore," with Nancy playing mandolin and singing Sandy Denny's vocal parts.

The sisters covered "Evermore" a few tours ago and released it on their Alive in Seattle album -- and it was stunning. Their performance at Bumbershoot was no less so. It may be heresy to say it, but I like the Wilsons' version much better than the Zeppelin original. When Ann starts howling "Bring it! Bring it! Bring it!" at the end, it just floors me every time.

After that, the band ventured into the opening of side two of Zeppelin's fourth album, with "Misty Mountain Hop." We also got a goosebump-inducing version of "The Rain Song" (complete with Mellotron sample!), an "Immigrant Song" with a thunderous crunch so mighty that it threatened to tear the roof off Key Arena, and a faithful rendition of "Kashmir" -- not one of my favorite Zep tracks, but that's OK. I suppose I'm belaboring the point, but the best part of the whole encore was hearing Ann channeling Robert Plant, singing those great songs with all the fire and emotion that Robert himself once did.

Closing out the night, naturally, was "Stairway to Heaven" -- complete with a gospel choir. Wow, wow, wow. What can you say about such a legendary song? If you saw Heart's performance of "Stairway" at the Kennedy Center Honors and was as blown away as most fans were, then you have some idea of what it felt like to hear Ann Wilson and company playing that song in person. What a way to end the night.



But before I wrap this up, can we talk for a moment about Nancy Wilson? Yes, let's. She's such an unsung hero in Heart. First, there's her singing. During the show, Nancy introduced her sister as "the one with the voice from above," but Nancy is no slouch, either. Her velvety, honey-sweet voice is the perfect complement to Ann's mighty roar. One of the highlights of the evening, in fact, was to see Nancy standing alone on stage with her acoustic guitar and singing a song in tribute to her hometown of Seattle, Elton John's "I Need You to Turn To." And from there she moved right into "These Dreams," which is one of my favorite Heart songs. I don't know how many fans even realize that Nancy Wilson sings that one -- and that it was Heart's first No. 1 song. (For that matter, I wonder how many people realize that Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to both Elton's song and "These Dreams"! Heart got talked into recording a lot of songs written by other people in the '80s, and that was one of the best of the bunch.) 

Nancy's guitar playing bears noting, too. On electric, she mostly plays rhythm -- though she did take the second lead on "Barracuda" -- but her acoustic work is really something to watch. Think of that noodly bit she does leading into "Crazy on You." True story: When Nancy first wanted to join big sister Ann's band, she was asked to audition by playing Steve Howe's "Clap," the fast-moving country-boogie piece from The Yes Album. Surely not an easy thing to play, but she obviously got the gig!

But the thing I noticed the most about Nancy Wilson was her incredible stage presence. It's subtle, not at all flashy. The fluidity of her movements makes her almost hypnotic to watch. It's almost like a continuous dance she does with her guitar for the entirety of the show. One moment she'll be laser-focused on the work of playing her instrument, and the next she'll surprise you with a big leg kick, and she'll start gracefully bobbing and swaying, or twirling around, or hopping in place -- and then just as quickly she'll be hunkered back down over her guitar. It's as if she was born to be on stage. She looked both completely relaxed and totally in control. It was a beautiful thing to behold. I could have watched her all night -- and I admit my eyes were riveted to her for most of the show. She is a gorgeous woman to begin with, but the quiet, graceful, confident femininity that radiates from her is sexy as hell. Just goes to show you don't have to degrade yourself like a porn star to get people to notice you. Miley Cyrus? Not even in the same league with the likes of Nancy Wilson. The way Nancy owned that stage -- coupled with her long-sleeve knee-length blue dress, her black stockings, and her wavy blonde locks -- made her an absolute knockout. At 59, she is aging very, very gracefully. 

In all, a fun night at Bumbershoot. Not sure how the organizers could top Heart as a Seattle-roots headliner next year, unless they managed to get Soundgarden to play again ... or maybe summoned the ghost of Jimi Hendrix.

Setlist:

Barracuda
Heartless
What About Love
Magic Man
Kick It Out
Mistral Wind
Even It Up
Dog and Butterfly
I Need You to Turn To [Nancy solo]
These Dreams
Alone
Dear Old America
Crazy on You [with Mike McCready]

Encore [with Jason Bonham on drums]:
The Battle of Evermore
Misty Mountain Hop
Immigrant Song
The Rain Song
Kashmir
Stairway to Heaven