Hollywood Bowl

Have you ever been to the Hollywood Bowl?  I thought I'd share some pictures.

We went there last night for a KCRW (Santa Monica Community College-affiliated Public Radio Station that has a music reputation that ranges far beyond Los Angeles) World Music lineup

(yes you can even be served dinner there with white tablecloths!)

starting with Afro-beat influenced Tune-Yard (a single young woman with  BIG VOICE and some serious percussion going on), continuing with the 2010 lineup of the Buena Vista Social Club, and closing with Goldfrapp out of England.

Well these were my favorites by a long shot, the Buena Vista Social Club with Omara Portuondo.  I have loved them desperately since 1998 when the movie first came out and I was lucky enough to see them at the Beacon Theater in NYC on a freezing cold night when they TO' IT UP!!!!!  The whole auditorium was on it's feet for most of the night through like three encores.  Not bad for a bunch of mostly old geezers.  (Wonderful wonderful old geezers.)  The new team was good, but a little jazzier, a little brasher, definitely younger and maybe thinking they don't need to try so hard.

This is the stage being set for Goldfrapp.  A nice blonde, not-so-young English woman in a mirrored dress who looks like Courtney Love if she were a glam-rocker instead of a Seattle grunge-monster.  Lots of wavy blonde hair at the relentless mercy of a wind machine,  non-stop electric organ, kind of Cirque de Soleil high-drama music.  With a pounding drum machine beat.  Also relentless.  The rave crowd loved it.  This last picture says it for me, all staging, but at the heart, emptiness. But it is summer, and at the Hollywood Bowl,  just BEING THERE is enough.