2002 – bootlegconfessions

Nadine’s Wild Weekend 2002: Luce, Essence, Noe Venable Trip, The Locals – Fillmore, SF, Thur., August 22

SETLISTS :

(LUCE) : (unknown), Numb, Long Way Down, If I Had The Wind, Good Day, Electric Chair, Eleanor Rigby, Divine, Life, Sunniest Of Weekends, (encore), Sister Golden Hair

This was the second and final occasion I’d see the flagship show of Nadine’s Wild Weekend at The Fillmore. On this night, they were in fact celebrating it’s fourth year of promoter and producer Nadine Condon’s cavalcade of bay area talent, boasting of an impressive roster of roughly 135 bands, 30 shows in 20 venues, over four days. This confederacy of music had expanded that year to other cities like Sacramento, San Jose, and Modesto as well. For more backstory on Nadine, feel free to read my previous entry of her Weekend from the year before. I will say that the line up that night was a considerable stylistic hard left turn from the heavy metal pioneers Judas Priest which graced that stage the night before this and leave it at that.

First up on stage that night was the boner inducing, singer-songwriter Essence who I had seen opening for Shawn Colvin there only a month before this show. Yes, Ms. Essence Goldman was without a doubt as fine as May wine, but more importantly, she wrote great songs and had the voice of an angel. I recognized a couple of her tunes from the time before including “Anything Is Possible” and “Still Crying”, the latter which I had also heard her playing during her soundcheck before the doors had opened. Nadine came out to introduce her, greeting us with her trademark salutation, “Hello, Babydolls!” Essence had been just solo acoustic when I first saw her, but she had the backing of a talented bunch of musicians in her band this time which really helped fill out her sound. I believe this was the last time I have seen her perform live, but she still makes music to this day, teaching and admirably using her talent to help people suffering from ALS with music therapy.

Nadine thanked her fellow producers and The Fillmore staff including Michael Bailey and Morgan Pittman before introducing Noe Venable and her Trio. Still quite young herself, Noe had been busy working locally at the Young People’s Teen Musical Theater Company and had opened for an impressive roster of notable artists like Ani DiFranco, They Might Be Giants, Dar Williams, and Boz Scaggs. Her music had also been recently used in the soundtrack to an indy film called “Cherish” starring Tim Blake Nelson, Robin Tunney, and fellow musician Liz Phair. Noe was promoting her new album “Boots” and mentioned an upcoming show she was about to do at the Hotel Utah, adding that the last time she played The Fillmore was opening for the aforementioned They Might Be Giants, though that was one occasion where I missed them. She joked that up front there were “a couple of enthused people yelling extremely random things” at her like “Save the whales!… But I appreciated their spontaneous burst of exuberance.”

She went on to say that she “brought my very small orchestra with me and we’ll attempt to make as much sound as we possibly can… The next song is a song about my favorite footwear of choice that you can’t see behind the monitors, but boots they are” and they then did the title track of the new album. Noe and her other bandmates took turns playing cello, violin, keyboards, and bass, but she also added that they had brought along an electric drum machine they playfully called Penelope. Though “Boots” was the only song I could make out the title to, she did introduce one song as being “about a girl who climbs up into a tree to escape the troubles of her life, but it’s also kinda like about what it’s like to make something, any kind of art, whether you’re writing a song or a story or whatever and to show it to people”. She introduced her last number claiming that it was “my mom’s favorite song… ‘That’s your hit, honey!’ It kind of inspired by feral cats” and somebody in the crowd shouted out “Meow!”

Last up on the bill that night was Luce, who were similar but slightly more palatable than some of the other local musical atrocities that Nadine help brutally unleash on the world like Third Eye Blind and Train, may God forgive her soul. Nadine came up to introduce Luce as well, wishing someone in the crowd named Lydia a happy birthday and joked, “I don’t know what this is about and if it involves some dancing boys, that is good with me”. Fronted by Tom Luce, they had only been together for a couple of years, but had been hard at work, claiming that they had already put 18,000 miles on their van, zig zagging across our nation that was only 3,500 miles wide and the year before had won the California Music Award for Outstanding Debut for their self titled first album. Tom had quite a few friends and well wishers in the crowd who helped him sing along to “Good Day”, his new single that had been used in the soundtracks to the seminal Rom-Coms “13 Going On 30” and “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days”.

Afterwards, he brought up a small string section and admitted that they were playing the song “Electric Chair” for the first time live that night, followed by a respectful cover of “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles. They followed that with a new one called “Divine”, an unreleased track that wouldn’t come out until many years later on a live album they did called “Live Stuff & Junk”, though that album had actually been recorded at Slim’s earlier that June. Like the others, Luce did a short set, only ten songs long, but Nadine urged them to come back on stage for an encore and they did one more, a cover of the 1975 America song, “Sister Golden Hair”. This was the only time I’d see them live and though I wasn’t a big fan, I felt sorry to hear that Tom’s house burned down in 2007 and the band had their equipment stolen from their trailer shortly afterwards when they were on the road. There was no poster at the end of the night, but they were handing out free promotional stuff at the door, someone shouting, “Free bag! Everyone wants a free bag!”.

Outside on the sidewalk, we were treated to an impromptu couple of songs from The Matches who were then known as The Locals. I had seen them perform in the poster room of The Fillmore and later on the sidewalk when The Get Up Kids did a two day stint there only two months before this show. I only caught a couple songs, but they did “Dog-Eared Page” and “The Jack Slap Cheer” which I had heard them perform previously. Like I mentioned in my review of those shows in June, these kids, still in high school, had actually been working at The Fillmore at the time, one as a member of the kitchen and another as a server, but would go on to modest success in the years to come, headlining The Fillmore themselves on a couple occasions. Though I wouldn’t see those shows, I’m happy to report these young local heroes made good had earned a couple nice Fillmore posters of their own.

https://archive.org/details/luce-fillmore-82202

https://archive.org/details/noe-venable-trio-fillmore-82202

https://archive.org/details/essence-fillmore-82202

https://archive.org/details/the-matches-the-locals-fillmore-82202

Judas Priest, Skinlab, Brian Kenny Fresno – Fillmore, SF, Wed., August 21

SETLISTS :

(BRIAN KENNEY FRESNO) : (1st Set) : The Star Spangles Banner (Drunk Version), Sydney Stole My Kidney, Slurpees & Pornography, Big Tujunga, (2nd Set) : (unknown), Chupacabra

(SKINLAB) : Slave The Way, Second Skin : New Flesh, Coward, Purify, Scapegoat, Breathe, (unknown)

(JUDAS PRIEST) : Bloodsuckers, Metal Gods, The Sentinel, Blood Stained, One On One, Victim Of Changes, Devil’s Child, Diamonds & Rust, Exciter, Hell Is Home, Breaking The Law, Turbo Lover, You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, (encore), Electric Eye, Living After Midnight, (encore), Painkiller

I had only just seen the leather clad, metal gods Judas Priest that January at The Warfield and they were already back to do a more intimate little thing at The Fillmore. This would be the last tour they would do with Tim “Ripper” Owens on vocals before the band would reunite with their original frontman Rob Halford a year later. Though they had just signed to Atlantic, their new album “Demolition” would be the final album they would ever record with Ripper. And after Rob returned, Priest would never perform any songs off that album or from their previous one with Ripper, “Jugulator”, live again, officially ending this nu metal era of the band. I would see the newly reformed Priest seven years later playing alongside Whitesnake at the Concord Pavilion, but that would be the last time I’d see them in the flesh. As usual, I was oblivious to these comings and goings at the time and was grateful to be in such a cozy venue, surrounded by Priest’s army of delightful heshers.

It was a hairy time around the world and this show was a welcome distraction from the bad news of the day. Not only was our invasion of Afghanistan closing in on its first year anniversary and the steady march toward our disastrous occupation of Iraq approaching, but the Russians were bogged down with a bloody insurgency in Chechnya. Just two days before this show, the separatists had shot down one of their Mi-26 cargo planes killing 127 of their soldiers, making it the worst aviation disaster in that country’s history. But one could not get farther from those quagmires than to be up in the poster room of The Fillmore watching the one and only Brian Kenney Fresno doing his oddball schtick for all those who came early enough to the show to enjoy it.

Brian had been up in that room many times before, brandishing his custom made guitar-like instrument, bearing a resemblance to a Chapman Stick, though he would forcefully insist that it wasn’t one if asked. He opened his set with a hilarious rendition of our national anthem, changing the lyrics to celebrate getting drunk. Imagine if you will these lyrics to the tune of that anthem, “Oh, let’s drink some beer, until we all just fall down, and we’ll get so damn drunk, that we’ll wake up the whole town”, then moving on to the high notes, “And we’ll puke in the trees and we’ll crawl on our knees, and we’ll piss off your mom as we drink until dawn, cus’ we got no job”. I and several others respectfully stood up with our hands over our hearts until he finished and I made sure to applaud and give him a salute. He continued to do a song about being betrayed by a young woman he met on a train while traveling across Europe that went, “Sydney stole my kidney while I was looking out for my heart” and later in Amsterdam that he “woke up in a hotel bathtub filled with ice and a note explaining my situation”.

Brian had a little keyboard that he would activate a sample of people clapping between songs too. Afterwards, honoring one of the many fine produce products of his native namesake city of Fresno, he passed around a “holy chalice” filled with raisons and I’m honored to say he approached me first, asked my name, and introduced me to the others watching and I proudly went about the room offering these tiny purple gems to all who would receive his sweet fruity sacrament. I made sure to solemnly mutter, “body of Christ”, as each audience member took one. Brian also spoke of how he was banned from Burning Man and that the city of Fresno had given him a grant to make his art, though he admitted that he had already spent all the money on “Slurpees and pornography”. I only had time to catch four of his songs before I had to return to work, but the last one was an ode to an adorable dog he once had named Big Tujunga, named after a stream in northeast Los Angeles county that flows from the San Gabriel mountains. Sadly, the dog in question ultimately ran away.

Back on the main stage, the opening act of the evening would be Skinlab, a band I was more than familiar with having recorded them a whopping seven times at Maritime Hall, more occasions than I think any other band that played there. This was the first and only time I would see them at another venue after the Maritime sunk the year before. But I’ve said it on previous occasions and I’ll say it again that Skinlab was one of those bands that gradually improved as the years went on and by this time, they had genuinely grown on me. God knows that they could have released a box set of live material I had recorded of them during those years at the Hall. Skinlab would break up the year after this show, but would reform in 2007 and would in fact released a live album a year later with the brilliant title “Skinned Alive!”, but that one had been recorded at The Metro in Oakland.

Skinlab was touring at this show in support of their new album, “ReVolting Room”, which included some funny samples of rantings of their fans who had called and left messages on their free fan club phone number. Their singer, Steev, reminded all those in the audience that the new record was on sale in the back for “10 fuckin’ bucks”. He also mentioned that it was their “first time we got to play The Fillmore and we’re suckin’ weed like a motherfucker” before they played the song “Purity”. Afterwards, Steev admitted, “I thought you were going to boo us off the fuckin’ stage. This song goes to all the scapegoats in the fuckin’ crowd. You got a fucked up boss. You got a fucked up friend who refused to take responsibility for their own actions” and then they played “Scapegoat”. I couldn’t make out what their last song of their set, but it was a miracle I made out any at all considering how deafening the volume was in there that night. It was one of those rare shows that was so loud that it overloaded my headphone mic a little. After their set ended, I went back upstairs and caught a couple more songs from Mr. Fresno, including a lovely one about the Chupacabra.

The crowd was chomping at the bit, chanting “Priest! Priest! Priest! Priest!”, by the time they took the stage. They would continue chanting that between songs all through the night and especially at the end after their encore. I suppose I was lucky to hear the Ripper songs since they’d never be played live again and he introduced “Blood Stained” asking, “How about we get a little heavier?” He naturally did all the golden oldies one more with the respect they deserved and let out an impressive scream when they finished “Victim Of Changes”. A couple numbers later, Ripper joked, “We’re going to slow it down a little here. Get your dance partners ready” before they did their cover of “Diamonds & Rust” by folk legend Joan Baez. Recorded in 1977, that was actually the first song of theirs to get radio airtime and Joan herself praised their unexpected version of it. Ripper made sure to mention their recently released “Live In London” DVD before they finished their set with “Living After Midnight” and had no trouble getting the crowd to sing along to one of the choruses near the end, accompanied by just the drums. Sadly, there was no poster at the end of the show and I would return to the Fillmore the following night for a very different bunch of bands for Nadine’s Wild Weekend with Luce, the Noe Venable Trio, and Essence.

https://archive.org/details/judas-priest-fillmore-82102

https://archive.org/details/skinlab-fillmore-82102

https://archive.org/details/brian-kenney-fresno-fillmore-82102

Area 2: Moby, David Bowie, Busta Rhymes, Blue Man Group, Ash, John Digweed, DJ Dan, DJ Tiesto, Shoreline, Mountain View, Wed., August 14

SETLISTS :

(ASH) : Jesus Says, Submission, Girl From Mars, Goldfinger, Cherry Bomb, Shining Light, Oh Yeah, Walking Barefoot, A Life Less Ordinary, Kung Fu, Burn Baby Burn

(BLUE MAN GROUP) : (unknown), (unknown), (unknown), Up To The Roof, Persona, (unknown), Your Attention, White Rabbit, Sing Along, I Feel Love, The Complex, What Is Rock

(BUSTA RHYMES) : As I Come Back, Woo-Ha! Got You All In Check, Genesis, Get High Tonight, Holla, Scenario, Dangerous, Put Your Hands Up Where My Eyes Can See, What It Is, Break Ya Neck, Pass The Courvoisier

(DAVID BOWIE) : Life On Mars?, Ashes To Ashes, Breaking Glass, Cactus, China Girl, Slip Away, Fame, I’m Afraid Of Americans, I’ve Been Waiting For You, 5:15 The Angels Have Gone, “Heroes”, Heathen (The Boys), A New Career In A New Town, Fashion, Everyone Says Hi, Let’s Dance, Ziggy Stardust

(MOBY) : 18, Extreme Ways, Go, Porcelain, Another Woman, James Bond Theme, Find My Baby, In My Heart, Move (You Make Me Feel So Good), Bring Back My Happiness, Natural Blues, South Side, We Are All Made Of Stars, (DJ Battle), Body Rock, Honey, (encore), Blitzkrieg Bop, Feeling So Real

Writing about festival shows is always daunting. They always make me feel like I bit off a little more than I can chew, recounting a show that encompasses enough musical material to comprise two to three normal concerts at a typical venue. The Area 2 Festival is especially a challenge having to transcribe the chit chat from such verbose artists as Busta Rhymes, David Bowie, and Moby, the festival’s founder. Thankfully, The Blue Man Group is shall we say, less talkative. Extensive as it is, I’ll try to keep it tight. I had enjoyed Moby’s Area One tour that came through the year before and it had returned with another eclectic line up and with Mr. Bowie in tow, there was no way in holy hell I was going to miss it. This was the second to last of only 12 shows this tour would do and I was frankly shocked that it wasn’t well sold, though it did make it easier to get around and enjoy. Likewise, it was no problem getting free comp tickets and I was there with my friend and fellow usher Matt Thayer. We made sure to get there early and by the end of the night, I would have 5 CDs worth of material, one of the only shows I kept in two separate CD sleeves.

I had mused to Matt during the show that I guess the next year’s festival would be called “Area 3”, but it wasn’t to be. As of today, 24 years later, the Area tours remain on infinite hiatus which is a shame. It was genuinely an eclectic tour, whose variety in genres was appreciated, especially with the end of the Lollapalooza tours. For whatever reason the festival stopped, it coincided with the beginning of a rough patch with Moby. But he was having a banner year in 2002, perhaps the very height of his career, having released his “18” album that May, the long awaited follow up to his breakthrough blockbuster, “Play” and the single “Extreme Ways” would be used in the soundtrack for the action film “The Bourne Identity” as well as all of its sequels. After this tour, Moby even would go on to perform at the closing ceremony at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The bad news was that he was experimenting with alcohol, drugs, and getting his freak on, not to mention the inexplicable feud he was sharing with Eminem at the time. He called Moby a “36 year old, bald headed fag” and Moby countered that Eminem had “an unrequited crush” on him. Anyway, back to the show.

The first act up bright and early was Ash, an indy rock band from Ireland who were catchy, but definitely radio friendly. They even made a point to thank Live 105, calling it their ”favorite American radio station”. I wasn’t sure if they were serious or not, but they dedicated their second song of the set, “Submission”, to the Spin Doctors. Afterwards, their singer said, “Thank you, beautiful people of San Francisco! You have a beautiful climate. We’re digging it… We want to interact with you. We want to have intercourse with the entire audience!” A few tunes later, he introduced “A Life Less Ordinary” as being the title song of the 1997 Danny Boyle movie, saying it was “a straight to video kind of affair, but it’s pretty good anyway”. They followed that with “Kung Fu”, which I originally mistook for “Teenage Lobotomy” by The Ramones. It did mention teenage lobotomy early on in the lyrics and there had been a lot of bands covering Ramones songs since Joey Ramone died, even then though it had been since April of 2001. In fact, Moby would do a brilliant cover of “Blitzkrieg Bop” during his encore at the end of the night.

Between songs, one could easily hear the telltale thumping of the subwoofers coming from the DJ tent from the lawn and there was a lot of talent in there as well, though Carl Cox wasn’t on the bill during that show for some reason. First up was DJ Dan, renowned turntable master, formerly of the Funky Techno Tribe. Writing this comes with a tinge of sadness because DJ Dan had just passed away only two weeks ago at the all too young age of 57. That man had talent. Flanking the DJ tent was a large skateboard ramp and as the music played all day out there, skaters would drop in and do their tricks, accompanied by a young man commenting on the loudspeakers. While Dan was spinning, the emcee gave away swag and mentioned that Jeremy Lee, one of the skaters there that day, was recovering from an injury that he got a month before the show, claiming “the doctors said he’d never ride again!”

I hurried back so I wouldn’t miss any of the Blue Man Group, this being the first time I’d see them perform. I knew of their eerie mime-like persona and obviously their trademark blue from shaved head to toe appearance, but I knew nothing of their music. Just as well, because practically all of the stuff they played was brand new and wouldn’t be officially released for another year on their second album, “The Complex”. Though they had been brand spanking new to me, they actually had been honing their act in New York City since the late 80’s. Slowly and steadily, they just got bigger and bigger, helped that they were a big hit and frequent guests on the late night talk shows like Letterman. I just wish I was down in the seats and not up on the lawn for their set. It was too early and bright on to see them on the video projection screens and there was obviously a lot going down there visually.

Theatrical and maybe even downright gimmicky as they were, I was instantly impressed by the skills as percussionists and the homemade instruments they came up with were truly original as well. Though they were known as an instrumental band, these blue weirdos apparently sworn to a vow of silence, this time they had brought along a female singer, Annette Stream from the band Venus Hum. She had a beautiful voice and did a brilliant cover of “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane, a high bar vocally, especially at Shoreline, the house that hippie music guru Bill Graham himself built. But the Blue Man Group’s cover of the disco anthem “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer was positively transcendent. Seriously, it gave me a feeling of total serenity even hearing it again all these years later and I still consider it one of the best cover songs I have ever heard. I was glad that I finally got to see them and would be lucky to catch them once more only a year later at The Warfield, up close and personal that time. When they were done, I high tailed it back to the DJ tent and caught a little more of DJ Dan too.

I was already familiar with Busta Rhymes, having recorded him at the Maritime Hall back in 1998 and seeing him headline The Fillmore only six months before this show. He and the Flipmode Squad made quite an impression on me and I was pleasantly surprised when they were added to this bill. He was about to release his “It Ain’t Safe No More” album that October, but we heard no new material that night. Busta had also been busy continuing his acting career, appearing in “Halloween : Resurrection” which came out just a month before this show and was a critical and commercial bomb, though he’d later be in “Narc” which came out that December and fared better. Mr. Rhymes and his crew actually had to miss the Area 2 show that was in Toronto because he got held up at the Canadian border by Immigration for some reason.

The crowd was still relatively sparse by the time he got on, but he and his hype man Spliff Star got things warmed up quickly. Like many hip hop acts, Busta made a point to give a shout out to the cities around the bay area and was one of the few, maybe the only one to bother to mention Mountain View where the show was actually taking place. After the first song, he said, “It’s OK if you don’t know about this cus’ we’re on this tour to change the mind state of those people who have not been listening to hip hop music too long. We’re going to have you leaving here with a whole other perspective of rap shit, hip hop culture. We are going to change your way of thinking about that way” and then they did the classic “Woo-Ha! Got You All In Check”. That helped loosen things up and then they got the crowd to leisurely clap together and Busta joked, “I got a little Tom Jones in me this evening. Is that cool with you? I feel like Marvin Gaye. I feel like Luther Vandross. I feel like Barry White this evening.”

One thing this bay area crowd could identify with Busta on was their love of ganja and he took advantage of that saying, “This is the part of the show where you minors have to stay in your place. The old folks, reach in your pocket. Hopefully, you brought your Easy Rider, your bamboo sheath, your licorice paper. Hopefully, you brought a bong or a pipe. Hopefully, you brought you Backwoods cigars… Hopefully, you brought a fuckin’ notebook if you got to roll up on that shit. Whatever you smokin’, this is the part of the show where we like to collectively involve everyone in this particular extracurricular activity. So if you don’t mind, feel free to roll your spliff, light your spliff, smoke your spliff. Last but not least and most importantly in this direction, pass your spliff… In the meantime, while you’re doing your architectural work in the construction and manufacturing of this product, we’re going to put the music on that goes most appropriately with the moment like this. It’s called ‘Get High Tonight’”.

With the herb doing its good work with the audience, Busta found it easier to have them make some noise as he goaded them, “Turn up the volume knob! Give me a good impression so I can talk shit to the next city tomorrow. You ready for some classic vintage Busta Rhymes shit?” and then they did “Scenario”. Afterwards, he introduced his band who playfully did a few licks of “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath, followed by a bit of the theme song from the TV show “Knight Rider”, before they dropped into “Put Your Hands Up Where My Eyes Can See”. A couple songs later, Spliff Star mentioned, “I brought an ambulance truck with me… That can mean only one thing” and Busta asked, “You ready to break up your foot? You ready to break your back with us today, people? How about us break our fuckin’ necks in here, people?” and then they did “Break Ya Neck”. Busta even did a little bit of the chorus of “Give It Away” by the Chili Peppers during that one.

Enjoyable as his set was, it finally had come to an end. Busta introduced the last song, “I just want to recap what transpired this evening. We came out and introduced ourselves. Some of y’all didn’t love us. Some of y’all did. And the good thing though, some of y’all who didn’t love us, it appears that you do now and I just not want to take that for granted in the slightest way. Thank you very much… Converted. Thank you very much for being open minded and coming around and just appreciating us, that much more than you did initially. God bless you all. Can you come over here and touch me please? I want to feel the love. Thank you very much. I appreciate the love.” And then Busta noticed a pregnant woman up front and smiled, “Oh! God bless you and your baby! Congratulations! We got a young hip hopper on his way, that’s right!” They finished off their set with “Pass The Courvoisier” and as usual brought a bottle of that spirit on the stage and generously shared it with the fans up front.

I was able to make it back down to the DJ tent to catch the end of Tiesto, a world famous DJ from The Netherlands, the first of his craft to hold DJ Magazine’s world title three years in a row starting that year. I joked with my friend Matt on the way there that at least Alex Graham, the son of the late Bill Graham, wasn’t performing there that day. We had just witnessed an interminable set of his opening for Jane’s Addiction at The Warfield the month before this show and agreed that it was possibly the most boring DJ set ever had to be endured by human ears. I quipped that if Alex had been on the bill, that “nobody would be in there. He would be alone.” Tiesto was quickly followed by John Digweed from England all the while the skaters continued their tricks next to the tent on their skate ramp. Digweed was so loud that it was one of the only times that the subwoofers were overloading my headphone mic.

Jeremy Lee was up again on the skate ramp attempting to do a 900 degree spin trick and the emcee kind of made us all cringe when he pointed out Jeremy’s arm. Apparently, in his last demo, Jeremy had accidentally ripped the skin off his forearm, taking all the hair with it, so he now had hair on one arm and not the other and the emcee had his show his arms to the crowd and we all collectively winced. Still, the emcee was able to get us all to chant, “Spin! Spin! Spin!” as Jeremy attempted to do as the emcee put it, “Not 1 full rotation, not 2 full rotations, but 2 and a half rotations to make a 900!” We all held our breath as the emcee teed him up, “Here he comes! The Spin Doctor!” and we all cheered as Jeremy pulled off the trick flawlessly.

But the night belonged to Bowie and I made damn sure to get back up on the lawn in time for the beginning of his set. Personally, I thought it was strange that they would put him on before Moby and I overheard myself saying to Matt while walking that I thought a lot of the crowd would leave after Bowie’s set and I was right. But the Area festival was Moby’s baby and what was done was done. David casually strolled on stage to thunderous applause wearing a black vest and pants with a white button down shirt, reminiscent of his “Thin White Duke” look around the time he put out “Station To Station”. He was joined by Mike Garson on keys, Gale Anne Dorsey once again on bass and backing vocals and Earl Slick on guitar. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Bowie was 55 years old then, only a little over a year older than I am now. Damn, he looked good for his age. He had just put out the “Heathen” album just two months before this show, his (gulp!) 23rd studio album to date, produced by Tony Visconti, his first collaboration with him since they did “Scary Monsters” in 1980.

David opened the show gradually with the golden oldie “Life On Mars?” and you can feel the entire crowd get goosebumps as he hit the high note at the end of the first chorus, his trademark tremolo belting out, “Ma-a-a-a-a-ars!” He greeted us after, “Good evening Palo Alto!”, and paused a moment, “You’ve got to say ‘Good evening, David & all your friends!”, and followed it with “Ashes To Ashes”. He then apologized, “Sorry you saw so much of my back in that last song, but I’m learning the drums, so I got to watch him a lot”. It is a rare honor when Bowie covers another band’s song, but The Pixies were given that honor when he did a respectful version of “Cactus” which was included on the new album along with “I’ve Been Waiting For You” by Neil Young. I assume David took a shining to Neil after he performed at Neil’s Bridge School Benefit in 1996. Always looking to try out new material on the road, David treated us to six songs from his new album that night. Still, he joked, “We’ll be doing songs from the 1980’s. 70’s, 60’s… All the way back to the negative years. The negative years are really interesting” and then he talked like he was talking backwards for a bit.

Afterwards, he produced a Stylophone, a pocket synthesizer that he first began using when playing “Space Oddity”. The crowd went wild when he played a couple lines of that classic song and he described the instrument as something “thrown together in the 60’s… You can get your very own. I’ll be coming among the audience. I have these in three colors, yellow, blue, or white… 19, no 15? $12.95 each! But wait, there’s more!… And of course, we have an endless supply of Juggalos” and then they did “I’m Afraid Of Americans”. Bowie did a quiet start to “Let’s Dance” before the drums kicked in and then they finished their glorious set with “Ziggy Stardust”. And that was it. I would see Bowie one final time a year and a half later at the Shark Tank in San Jose before his tragic passing in 2016, but I’ll always be grateful that I got to see him perform as many times as I did.

Like I said, a good chunk of the crowd bailed after his set, but I liked Moby and wanted some closure to this long festival of music. Though I had already seen Moby five times in only three years, including recording him once at the Maritime Hall, he did have the courtesy to put this little wing ding in the first place and I thought it was also just polite to hear him out. Obviously, I was familiar with his music by then, but we did get to hear five of his new tunes that night. He opened with two new ones, “18” and “Extreme Ways”, and a couple songs later did “Another Woman”, which he introduced, “When I first started coming to San Francisco in the early 90’s, one of those things that always impressed me about the San Francisco dance scene was the sort of subtlety and femininity that was missing from the other dance scenes. So, I would very much like to dedicate this sultry, sexy little disco song to all the wonderful people in San Francisco who have been making and supporting dance music.”

He did his usual noodling on his electric guitar, once more boorishly demonstrating how eclectic he was with his musical tastes, first doing a few riffs from “I Love Rock & Roll” by Joan Jett. He went on, “Even though I had a straight, white trash upbringing in New England, there is a part of me that always wanted to be from the south, largely in part because my mother was a literature major and she loved southern gothic literature like Tennessee Williams and Walker Percy… So, in my white trash, New England way, I’d stay home summers and I’d read these books and dream about growing up in the deep south with mangy dogs finding a place to die and dirty diapers in the front yard, in-laws having sex with each other… But this next song is a testament to my deep desire to have grown up in the deep south” and then they did “Find My Baby”.

Moby continued with his electric guitar riffing, saying that he wanted to start a cover band that just did five seconds of each song, the logic being that nobody has time to hear 60 songs during a set. He went on to do five second samples of the opening riffs to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and “Stairway To Heaven”. Before they did “South Side”, Moby commented that this was the first song of his that he had ever seen available on karaoke. Afterwards, he moved over to a keyboard and played the beginning of “House Of The Rising Sun”, adding that he had a compulsion to start a wedding band. He then introduced his new single “We Are All Made Of Stars” as the only song he had written after 9/11 and rejected the notion that it was a patriotic song and actually “has more to deal with quantum physics”.

Afterwards, Moby put an afro wig on his shiny, bald head claiming, “I need this afro to challenge RJ to a DJ battle in a fit of hubris” though he was “just a skinny twerp from New England… I’m not even skinny anymore” and complained about his slowing metabolism, eating too many carbs, and that even his crack addiction wasn’t helping anymore. He finished his set with “Honey”, giving a shout out to his back up singer, “This song is a sexy song enhanced by the presence of Diane Charlemagne… Diane Charlemagne, the alchemist of love, the seething cauldron of pure carnal sexuality over here, Diane Charlemagne. There are men that she has ravaged that have been never heard from again. You’ll see her disappear with some poor unsuspecting man. All that’s left in the morning are some shoelaces, a couple of credit cards, and fingernail claw marks on the wall. OK, I’ll shut now and we’ll play this dirty, sexy song”.

Moby came back out for his encore and graciously thanked the other acts, “I am going to try to use my diminishing mental powers to remember every single person on this bill. We have Dieselboy, The Avalanches, DJ Dan, Tiesto, unfortunately Carl Cox couldn’t be here, John Digweed, Ash, the Blue Man Group, and Busta Rhymes and I think that’s everybody… I think, no, that’s everybody. Far as I know, that’s everybody who’s on the bill. Oh wait, no… Wait, but I do have three simple words I would like to say on a completely unrelated subject and those words are David Fuckin’ Bowie. If you were to talk to me when I was 15 years old and obsessed with David Bowie and listening to “Heroes” and “Station To Station” and “Low” and “Scary Monsters” obsessively and talked to me and said at some point that I would be sharing the stage with David Bowie, I never in a million years would have believed you.”

He introduced his band, saving his string section for last and joked, “They’ve written a song as big fans of industrial music and death metal. They’ve written a piece of music that they say is utterly terrifying. I haven’t heard it yet. They want to debut it right now. If by some lucky twist of fate you brought Depends with you, you might want to wear them because apparently this is such a terrifying piece of music, that it will make you lose control of your bladder and your bowels”. Naturally, that wasn’t the case and the string section played the first few bars of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” by Mozart. Moby then had the lights turned up and pointed a pocket camera at the audience and said, “But now because of my pathological low self esteem, on the count of three, will you all give me the finger and yell out ‘Fuck you, Moby’?” We obliged him, he took the picture and said, “Thank you. I needed that. That was some sweet deprecation.”

He finished this long marathon of music with “Feeling So Real” which he described, “In my humble opinion, one of the most beautiful disco songs ever made”. Matt and I joined those who remained to the bitter end, shuffling wearily back to the parking lot having enjoyed a long day of quality live music. Suffice to say, we definitely got our money’s worth at that show, especially since I got the ticket for free. I would see Moby one more time three years later at The Warfield, but I haven’t seen him since then. Thankfully, he was able to clean himself up and got sober again in 2008. In a semi-related topic to drugs in one’s blood stream, Barry Bonds had just hit his 600th home run just five days before this show. Anyway, the Area 2 tour would continue up north to its final show at The Gorge in Washington, ending the short but sweet tenure of this festival. It’s our loss really and I hope that Moby brings this tour back from the dead someday.

https://archive.org/details/moby-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/john-digweed-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/david-bowie-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/dj-tiesto-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/busta-rhymes-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/dj-dan-shoreline-81402

https://archive.org/details/blue-man-group-shoreline-81402_202604

https://archive.org/details/ash-shoreline-81402

Mystik Journeymen & The Living Legends Crew – Fillmore, SF, Sat., August 3

I’m fairly certain that this was the first time I was seeing any of these east bay hip guys since the sinking of the Maritime Hall the year before this. I have plenty of history with these fine artists from previous entries, so feel free to go back to those for more backstory, but for now we’ll stick to their present, or at least the present that was 2002. Productive as always, the Journeymen had put out their “Almost Famous” album the year before and were about to release a new one called “Magic”. It has always been a sore spot for me whenever a group, especially one like this that I recorded on three separate occasions at the Maritime, gets a live album dropped by the Hall that I didn’t record and this was one of those, “Live In San Francisco” released also in 2002. It still stings and part of me knows Boots the owner did it out of spite to me and my partner Pete. He had plenty of material to choose from and didn’t use a single song we did together, opting to use material from a show they did there after we had parted ways. Still, as years pass, the butt hurt is more tolerable and in the end, I’m just glad that ANY live stuff they did at the Hall got out officially. And if Bob Dylan, who had just returned that day in 2002 for the first time to the Newport Folk Festival since his infamous electric performance in 1965, could find it in his soul to move on, I too could also find the strength to do so.

This was a home town gig for them and the task of keeping track who was coming and going on that stage was an exercise in folly, so forgive me that I didn’t even try, much less figure out what songs were played. Rest assured all them were there and then some including Murs, The Grouch, Scarub, Eligh, Luckyiam, Sunspot Jonz, and Aesop, just to name a handful. It was a long night, exhausting as it was thrilling, clocking in at well over three hours of non stop, hip hop fun and games. Apart from the usual suspects between The Journeymen and the Living Legends crew, there were however a few oddballs on the bill. There was an emcee for the night who came up to introduce people and crack jokes, warning one heckler early on, “You don’t want to dis me when I’m on the mic, I-ight, cus’ I got the mic and I’ll be Def Comedy Jam up in this motherfucker”. He brought up a couple members of Felonious : One Love Hip Hop, who I had just seen open up for LL Cool J less than two weeks before this on that very stage. Their human beatbox guy did quite a solo and the crowd loved him again.

They were followed by the Rebels Of Rhythm from Sacramento who had a very talented female rapper in their crew. Another unexpected guest was Morganics all the way from down under, Sydney, Australia. He was funny guy claiming he was “representing for all the crocodile hunters” in the house. One of the DJs from the Hieroglyphics was there backing him and another female rapper and they were also both quite skilled in the arts of the human beatbox. They did a clever bit vocalizing the “March Of The Empire” from “Star Wars”. Afterwards, M.O.S. or the Misfits Of Styles came up led by a rapper named Doug Esquire. The emcee kept true to his warning earlier of going all “Def Comedy Jam” on one guy up front, urging the crowd to “boo this motherfucker in the blue shirt!”

The Living Legends crew came out afterwards, promoting their new album, “Fallen Angels”, and goaded the crowd, offering a free copy to whichever side was the loudest. At one point one of the members had the lights dimmed and said, “September 11th was fucked up. A lot of people died. People die all the fuckin’ time and I’ve come to realize that whatever you believe in, this house is filled with people that are alive… This ain’t no bullshit. I know motherfuckers that ain’t got no legs. I know motherfuckers that can’t see. I know people that ain’t got no money. I know people that are alive, right? So, if you feel like being alive and being on the planet Earth right now, it’s a pleasure, it’s a privilege. I want everybody in this mother to say, ‘Yeah!’” Later, they brought up Jay Emcee for a few songs, cracking jokes with the audience like, “Front row motherfuckers who haven’t even had a chance to piss, what’s up?!?”

The Journeymen came on stage to the sounds of a sample of a droning voice saying, “Mystik Journeymen-dot-com” over and over, scratched by the DJ a little. Among the many jams they dropped that night, one couldn’t help but recall the one where they proclaimed that “mean bitches suck and the nice girls swallow”. Interpret that as you will. A long and comprehensive night of rap and DJ skill that it was, alas, there was no poster at the end. I’m not sure I ever saw The Journeymen again live, at least not at a show they were headlining, though I’m sure I’ve seen some individuals from their ranks showing up at shows with other bay area crews like the Hieroglyphics and such. Their members went their separate ways over the years as people do, Murs and Luckyiam quitting the band ten years after this show. Aesop passed away just last year, I’m afraid. But I’m proud to have spent so much time with these genuine DIY underground hip hop pioneers during that brief time and their legacy continues.

https://archive.org/details/mystik-journeymen-fillmore-8302

Femi Kuti, Hamsa Lila – Fillmore, SF, Sat., July 27

SETLISTS :

(HAMSA LILA) : Invocation, Hey Mustapha, Patchamaina, Were, Oshun, Om Tara, Illumane, Turka Lila

It had been 7 years since I’d seen Femi Kuti on that stage and I was eager again to hear the joyful sounds from the Nigerian afro-pop star and his Positive Force Band. Femi was continuing the family business, the son of the legendary Fela Kuti, and likewise had been fighting for political reforms in his native country. Nigeria was in the middle of an election that year and there would be later accusations of rigging… sounds familiar. Anyway, Femi had just put out his “Fight To Win” album which featured Mos Def and Common and had contributed his father’s song “Water No Get Enemy” to Fela’s tribute album, “Red Hot & Riot”. This music would be a definite stylistic departure from the band I saw the night before on that stage, the bombastic, post-punk Mission Of Burma from Boston.

Opening that night was Hamsa Lila, a local world music jam band who I’d seen earlier that year also opening at The Fillmore for Sound Tribe Sector Nine. They began their set very gradually and gently with an extended flute intro. They played for a full hour too, long for an opening act, but I got their whole set. It did however cut into the time of Femi’s set, so I sadly got little over an hour of it, but it came out great. Dumbe Djengue playing on bass that night is one of the best I’ve ever heard on that instrument. It was a sizable band too, having three female back up singers, a horn section, and four percussion players. Between songs, Femi talked about how his songs were political, to make the world better for the next generation, and that he had “no apologies whatsoever” for his lyrics.

He livened things up after, getting the crowd to do the usual call and response chanting and there were a lot of talented dancers on and off the stage. Halfway through the set, Femi got us all to step together, “To the right, the the left, to the right, to the right” and later dance low to the ground. There was no poster that night, but I would see Mr. Kuti again on that stage two years later, though I wouldn’t see him again until 2018 at Stern Grove. I am happy to say that the Kuti musical line is in good hands with Femi’s son, Seun Kuti, who had been performing with his dad since he was nine years old, singing and playing sax. He has since grown into an extremely talented headliner of his own who I’ve seen a couple times playing alongside his father’s old band, Egypt 80.

https://archive.org/details/femi-kuti-fillmore-72702

https://archive.org/details/hamsa-lila-fillmore-72702

Mission Of Burma, Silkworm, Mike Watt & The Secondmen – Fillmore, SF, Fri., July 26

SETLISTS :

(MIKE WATT & THE SECONDMEN) : Boilin’ Blazes, Puked To High Heaven, Burstedman, Bedtime Story, Forever… One Reporter’s Opinion, Sweet Honey Pie, The Big Bang Theory, The Red & The Black

(SILKWORM) : Treat The New Guy Right, Bourbon Beard, The Third, Contempt, (I Hope U) Don’t Survive, (unknown), The Old You, Plain, A Cockfight Of Feelings, Couldn’t You Wait?, LR72, The Brain, Is She A Sign, Severance Pay, Slave Wages

(MISSION OF BURMA) : Red, Peking Spring, Dumbells, (unknown), Max Ernst, Secrets, Dirt, This Is Not A Photograph, Forget, Mica, The Enthusiast, Einstein’s Day, That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate, The Setup, Fame & Fortune, That’s When I Reach For My Revolver, Dead Pool, The Ballad Of Johnny Burma, Class War, (encore), Fun World

I know it might sound cliched and reductive, but as time went on, I discovered that the more I knew about music, the more I realized that I didn’t know. Though I had been educated by this time by hundreds of shows, I was barely scratching the surface of the deep well that the popular music of my time had nourished itself on from the past. That being said, it was yet forgivable that I was unfamiliar with the works of Mission Of Burma at the time, especially since they had disbanded in 1983, when I was a wee lad of 11 years old. Yes, after 19 long years, this post-punk band from Boston got back together for a reunion tour and their stop at The Fillmore would obviously be the first time back in San Francisco since then. Like I said, I knew nothing of them before, though I was familiar with their song, “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”, which had been covered by Moby and the Foo Fighters before. I had been of course oblivious to its origin. But with this show, their return to The Fillmore in 2004, and my research for this entry, I have established a foothold with them.

Another reason I knew little about Mission Of Burma before is that prior to their disbanding, they were only together for a short time, just four years, and had in that brief period only released 2 singles, an EP, and an LP called “Vs”. Their singer and guitarist, Roger Miller, originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where my wife grew up, had studied music composition at U of M before emigrating to Boston and originally formed the band as a a trio. Incidentally, Michigan just won the NCAA Basketball Championship just before I wrote this. Go Blue! Anyway, they then added Martin Swope to be their audio engineer who added effects and tape loops to their songs, creating a sound that was truly original. The notoriously temperamental frontman of The Fall, Mark E. Smith, once said that Mission Of Burma was the only band he could tolerate. I recently asked my friend and mentor Frank Gallagher, a veteran soundman who had worked with many of the bands on the east coast back in those days like The Ramones and the Talking Heads, if he ever did any work with them. He said no, but he believed he once “made them lunch” at Irving Plaza.

Like many musicians broaching a new musical style, Mission Of Burma’s shows were hit and miss and they had difficulties on the road. In fact, at their final show in 1983 on Staten Island, Public Image, Ltd. refused to let them use their PA and rushed them off the stage when they were done, a truly unsanctimonious end to their short tenure as a band. But the ear splitting volume at which they played soon took its toll on Roger as well who developed a serious case of tinnitus and the members moved on to other projects. Roger founded the much quieter band, Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic and drummer Peter Prescott joined the Volcano Suns. But the legacy of their music which influenced many notable artists like Sonic Youth and R.E.M. and the reissues of their recordings lit the spark that grew into the fire underneath the former members to reunite. First, there were only two gigs, one in New York City and the other in Boston, but they both sold out and the response was so positive, that they added another New York City gig and then later organized this tour.

One artist on the bill I was quite familiar with though was Mr. Mike Watt, the venerable bass player of The Minutemen and Firehose, who I had seen on several occasions before this show. He had been out of commission since 2000, recovering from an infection that he contracted in his perineum. For those who don’t know what a perineum is, let’s just say it’s a place you don’t want to have an infection and leave it at that. But Mike was back and had a new band he playfully called The Secondmen and had a bunch of new songs at the ready that he would eventually release two years later on “The Secondman’s Middle Stand” album. He would in fact perform that album’s first three songs in order at the beginning of his set. The new stuff was sophisticated and I had never heard Mike perform alongside a keyboard player before this. They dusted off a golden oldie from The Minutemen called “Forever… One Reporter’s Opinion” and did a couple unexpected covers, “Bedtime” by Madonna and “The Red & Black” a real oldie from Blue Oyster Cult. It was gratifying to see Mike back on stage again and on the mend with his joyful grin, playing his heart out as always.

Next up was Silkworm, a band from Seattle by way of Missoula, Montana. They had been together since the late 80’s, though I hadn’t heard them before, and had just released their 8th album, “Italian Platinum”, produced by grunge pioneer Steve Albini. They kind of reminded me of Pavement and I liked them. The members cracked jokes between songs, one of them saying “I’m too depressed to do the next song” before they did “Is She A Sign”. One of them thought their set was over and started to leave the stage before their last song when another harkened him back joking, “No, you’re in prison! You have to stay. Have you ever seen such cowardice? This man is a worm!” This was be the only time I’d see Silkworm though, since they disbanded only three years later after their drummer Michael Dahlquist was tragically killed in a car accident. They did have a brief reunion in 2024 for a show at Steve Albini’s memorial and then toured the following year.

Mission Of Burma maintained their reputation of being an extremely loud band, but Roger was prepared this time, donning a pair of earphone cans normally used by folks at a rifle range. Martin Swope wasn’t along for the tour this time, but was replaced by Bob Weston, the bass player of Shellac, who handled the duties of tape manipulation and live engineering. Roger looked happy, saying between songs, “Stick around! We’ll play four hours at least… Believe me, I’m lying”. He kept the gallows humor flowing, as he described the song “The Enthusiast” saying it was about when you “like something so much that it makes you die” and introduced another one, “Keeping to our tradition, we’re going to do something really depressing”. Considering the historic nature of this reunion tour, I was relieved that The Fillmore had a poster at the end of the show. I would return the following night to see a very different act altogether, Femi Kuti from Nigeria, on that same stage.