Yes, my friends, there was a lot of dancing the last couple of days. It started on Saturday night at Spaceland, with the Uptown Lights. This is a straight up cover band which happens to be the alter ego of the entire Twilight Singers band with a girl singer crooning along with Greg Dulli. It was a rollicking good time; I don't think I've ever seen Greg so psyched up, and I've seen him plenty. They cover mostly soul stuff - "I'll Be Around" was seguewayed nicely out of "Backstabbers," I think... Oh dear... We were all a bit drunk and I get terribly in-the-moment and forget what I've just done at things like this. I also remember an awesome rendition of "Wang Dang Doodle," the surprise inclusion of the Twilight Singer's elusive b-side funk-out "So Tight," and the night ended with the whole place screaming along to the Face's "Ooh La La" as done by Dulli & Co. Honestly, the best part of the whole show was the fact that the band was having a ball; Greg likes to take people on a ride and this evening was no exception.
Afterwards, a few of us went to the Shorty, co-owned by Mr. Dulli and a good friend of mine. We had drinks and did some more dancing, but as the sun started to creep up, it was time to go home. Most of the boys were out for the night, and I had a long week of Pixies fun and needed to rest up for the next show on the agenda: Kraftwerk.
Monday night, under the Hollywood stars of the Greek Theatre in the Los Feliz hillside of Griffith Park, those wacky Germans hit the stage. It was more like a presentation: four older men, standing at podiums, with laptops (or items that looked like laptops) pushing levers, turning knobs, hitting buttons, all that. With these guys, it was all about presentation. There were terrific images up on screen for every piece, from that bicycle fetish they seem to indulge in oh-so-much, to flashing numbers, 50's archival fashion footage and lovely cars and trains from way back when... except then they thought these things were very futuristic. So, yea, it was very future retro. Does that make sense?
Oh, and robots. There were definitely robots.
Kraftwerk is one of those bands that has been around so long that you don't realize how many of their songs you actually know. "Fun fun fun on the autobahn..." That song is so... stupid, but it made me really happy to hear. And it made me want to rent a car so that I can drive real fast when I hit up Germany this fall. And the graphics for "Pocket Calculator" were so goofy that I laughed every time, and I mean every time, the little cartoon hand musically pressed the keys of the aforementioned pocket calculator. You can see some of these displays if you go to their website, and they are interactive as well! Oh, those Germans...
Music, non-stop!
