Can I get some chips with my Odelay?
Two different friends went to see Beck at the Civic Auditorium on Tuesday, and neither of them left as happy customers. “Too contrived,” hissed Darin. Both agreed that the sound sucked. (Somewhere Bill Graham rolls around in his grave knowing that that horrible concrete pit bears his name.)
Perhaps Darin & Veronica would have been better off if they headed out to the Mission for dinner. Kid Guero gave an improptu serenade at a burrito joint, apparently ticking off the usual crowd of mariachis pretty good.
SFist: Hey, Who’s That Gringo Mariachi?
Here’s what Darin wrote:
…his show just felt a little too pre-meditated. He’s got a lot of excellent songs but there is something about seeing him live where his humor seems more manipulative than sincere or
self-deprecating. It was clearly a warm-up show for a tour. The band was on the sloppy side. The song selection/pacing were pretty scattered. We’d get two or three songs and he’d get us excited… then we’d get a couple clinkers….and the breaks between each song were too long. The crowd threw me. Teenage Walnut Creek and Novato were
peppered with Berkeley young’uns in dreads and thirtysomethings who looked like they drive Subarus and play in soccer leagues. A group of
the latter jumped back into conversation ten seconds into EVERY ballad. At times, with his kind of hippy/everyman/funky anthem sound, I wondered if Beck isn’t just a craftier Dave Matthews. The sound was terrible at
the beginning but they did get it dialed in pretty well by the end. They were filming, so they had these blue lights shining down from the
sides of the auditorium that “killed my buzz, man”. There we some good moments but the missed potential left me feeling like I could just as
happily stayed at home and done stuff. I don’t know….I’m just way too picky (and crotchety), I think. I know for sure I am spoiled by the
likes of the Fillmore. BGCA is out, that is for sure.
Postscript:
I didn’t even bother mentioning the guaranteed-to-please-the-pre-IPOD
era giant boom box lowered (belatedly a la Spinal Tap) from behind the proscenium, the dancing percussionist whose repertoire of moves was dominated by rhythmic sports mime or the percussion dinner theater scene. (The latter could have been much better if it didn’t feel so…..as you said, contrived.)
Hell, he put on a decent show. It truly would have been 50% better if he’d just been in a reasonable venue.
Too contrived? What does that mean? What, was he wearing a costume or something?