Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Street Scene 8/5/06

sc000186fd

street-scene-2006

This was the second year in a row that Street Scene was held in the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot. It also happened to be the same time I was scheduled to spend a week in the Pacific Northwest for my Mom’s wedding and my 10-year high school reunion. Sometime after I booked my flight to go to Oregon/Washington it was announced that Tool would be headlining Street Scene. I was never all that pumped about going to the high school reunion so ultimately I decided I would rather see four dudes that I had not seen for almost five years (Tool) rather than see a bunch of people that I had not seen for 10 years. Street Scene was Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th but I came back just for Saturday.

I remember coming home to a dead battery in my car since it had been parked for a week. After I convinced my then roommate Macy to drop me off I got to the concert with just enough time to find my friends Marvin and Bob, have a beer with them and get over to see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They were touring in support of their new album Show Your Bones that was released about four and a half months earlier. This was my second time seeing them, with the first time being about two years earlier right after I first moved to San Diego. They were as great as they were the first time but now had another album of songs to choose from.

SETLIST: Gold Lion, Fancy, Phenomena, Mysteries, Honeybear, The Sweets, Maps, Y Control, Date With the Night

It was convenient that Tool played the same stage as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs since we were already in good position at that stage. This was my fifth time seeing Tool but as stated earlier I had not seen them for about five years and now they had a new album in 10,000 Days that was released just about three months prior to this. Everything started off well but then all hell broke loose with the crowd near the end of their second song “The Pot.” People were being trampled near the front to the point where Maynard was telling people to move back during the song and then they ended up stopping the show for about 10 minutes until people moved back. Apparently 15 people ending up getting seriously hurt. I think if Maynard would not have stopped the show that count would have been much higher. I got separated from Marvin and Bob but apparently Bob ended up having sex in the audience. I am not sure how that is possible with people on all sides of you but the crowd was very raucous and Bob is not known to be a lying braggart.

SETLIST: Stinkfist, The Pot, Forty-Six &2, Jambi, Schism, Sober, Lateralus, Vicarious, AEnema

Article about 15 fans injured during Tool

Yeah Yeah Yeahs 6/10/04

sc0003c96809

It’s fitting that my first concert in San Diego was of a band I was seeing for the first time who I had originally heard about through my friend Aria, the first friend I made in Portland. This concert was roughly two months after I moved and I still felt like I was on vacation in what truly is “America’s Finest City.” We lived two blocks from the ocean and two blocks from the action of Newport Avenue in eclectic OB. Coming to the southern most point of California sight unseen would change my life forever but then again that was kind of the idea.

Soma is cool little venue that hides in a strip mall and feels like a high school gymnasium inside. The Killers opened up and were blowing up thanks to their song “Somebody Told Me” but I had no shits to give because they just don’t do it for me. Most people there were into it but I remember sitting down in the back with Marvin because we just weren’t into it and it was rather warm that evening inside of the Soma.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs were touring for their debut album Fever To Tell that had been released about a year earlier, but their popularity soared when they released the song “Maps” as a single about two months before this show. I bought the album after Aria turned me onto it and they played pretty much the entire album. I love watching three-piece bands. This one is unique because you have an intricate guitarist and a drummer pounding the shit out of the drums with a lovely female voice. I play guitar so I was enamored by the way the guitarist would play something and then loop it so he could play something over the loop. Amazing.

yyysfeveer