2 posts tagged “wiltern”
Somehow in the feeding frenzy of Ticketmaster.com ordering, I managed to score two loge (lower balcony) seats to the Sufjan Stevens show at the Wiltern. That the seats were on the aisle was a bonus. We arrived during the opening act, My Brightest Diamond, which as best I could tell was a subset of Sufjan's band, but led by his talented backing vocalist and musician, Shara Worden. We caught the last two songs, one of which was a heady cover of a Nina Simone song. The aisle seats paid dividends immediately, because we were able to vault to the upstairs bar before anyone else knew the opening act was over.
The crowd was entirely made up of what my girlfriend affectionately calls "nerdbos" (long 'o'). A nerdbo, as best I have been able to decipher, is a term of semi-endearment referring to a position in the spectrum of nerds to geeks thusly: they are cooler than nerds, but not as internet-centric as geeks. Nerdbos are often seen at other venues in our neighborhood, because they border on hipster. Sufjan Stevens, my girlfriend deemed, is also a nerdbo.
The show began with about fifteen musicians coming out wearing masks and butterfly wings. There was a string section of violins and cellos (or were they violas? I wouldn't know how to tell.) The horn section had trumpets and a trombone. Sufjan himself came out also wearing a mask, but bird wings. He introduced the ensemble as "the majestic songbird and his butterfly brigade."
His album, Illinois, was my favorite of 2005, so I was very familiar with all those songs. Less so the ones from Michigan, which I do own but now view as a warm-up act for the former. I know even less from The Sevens Swans, but the songs are all very accessible: intricate arrangements tending to make full use of the horn and string sections, which die out in time for his soft-spoken vocals. At times the music overwhelmed the vocals.
During The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts, they brought out dozens of inflatable Supermen and tossed them into the audience. It was amazing to see these cartoon characters crowd-surfing below us. However, a lot of people soon realized that the Supermen would be make great concert souvenirs, and merely held on to them. These folk immediately lost "nerdbo" status and were demoted to "downers".
I was happy to see Sufjan mess up a couple of times, only because he's such a prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist that it was nice to discover he was actually human. The concert overall was very fulfilling, and he had probably been at the top of my list of favorite artists I haven't seen live. The Wiltern, which I usually hate, ended up working well, especially because we had seats – none of his songs are especially danceable, so it was fine. The crowd was uber-enthusiastic, and the standing ovation at the end of his set was one of the longer ones in my recollection. Nobody sat down until he came out and played a few more songs in the encore.
Last night we saw The Raconteurs play at the Wiltern, one of my least favorite venues in the city. The Wiltern has a weird kind of general admission where there are different levels of elevation to the floor, and when the first fills up, security guards prevent you from moving forward. I happen to like general admission shows, because my five foot tall girlfriend is simply amazing at pushing her way to the front. I just carry our drinks like a big oaf behind her, and nobody can really say a thing. Last night we had general admission seats in the balcony. What?!? That means first-come, first-served seating, which sucks if you didn't, ahem, know that going in ahead of time. But I digress.
The Raconteurs are the new project between Jack White of the White Stripes and Brendan Benson of, well, himself. The album is okay. Some winners, some losers. But during the show, I felt a little pang of guilt. Where's Meg? Then feelings of resentment swelled up: has Jack taken on this allegedly side project because he's tired of Meg's [unique style of] drumming? For god's sake, he wasn't wearing any red, white, or black last night (as is the motif of The White Stripes). Did he really want to play with a bassist so badly* that he would forsake her?
The irony is that the songs he wrote for the band still sound like White Stripes songs, just fuller in sound. Which in my opinion sucks. I've seen the Stripes four times, and it's always amazing to me that they manage between the two of them a better sound than five guys on stage (was the keyboardist at last night's show really necessary? He didn't even merit an introduction.)
The one thing I'll say is that all their touring has paid off for The Raconteurs. They play a pretty tight set.
* For the record, I have seen the White Stripes play with a bassist before, but that bassist was Beck, who had popped in at the Greek Theatre show a couple years ago.
