Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Download Festival 2006

In a musical feast, Muse and Beck were best dishes

Muse and marionettes were the big stars Saturday at the nine-hour Download Festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre.
Megan and I weren't there for the whole nine hours (more like eight) and only saw 4-1/2 bands, but we had a good time. This review is spot-on, even though it doesn't mention the overwhelming advertising for Volkswagen, Napster and SanDisk.
Perhaps somebody forgot to tell Muse that it wasn't the headliner, because the band ripped through its anthemic set like U2's evil twin.
Wow, their set was scorching. The metal of AC/DC meets the vocal stylistics of Thom Yorke meets the bombast of Queen. I didn't even recognize them before their set began, but during it was surprised at how many songs I recognized.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs really had no business following Muse. The buzz on this New York art-punk band has grown so quiet that you can hear crickets chirping. Not surprisingly, the group, which is led by the overly hyper vocalist Karen O, simply couldn't match the heights achieved by Muse as it ran through its increasingly tired blend of glitz and garage.
I really could not have said it better. I was almost entirely disappointed with their set.
Thankfully, Beck and his puppets closed out the night with a hilarious show that appealed to all the interest groups in the alt-rock nation.
I had read about the puppets, but couldn't quite understand how they would work. They're simple, yet impressively detailed and totally hilarious.
Throughout, everything the real musicians did on stage was echoed by their marionette doppelgangers, whose every movement was displayed on the giant video screens, using cheap visual effects from early '80s MTV.
Megan even noticed that the puppet stage had its own miniature puppet stage.

We heard a number of tracks from his new CD, including "The Information," "1000BPM," "Think I'm In Love" (my favorite) and "Nausea," which you can watch the puppets perform here.

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