Back in the spring, I had the pleasure of meeting Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. He was in town for Sunset Sessions and after delivering a really interesting keynote, he hung around and chatted with anyone who wanted to talk to him. I didn't really have anything profound to ask him or to say to him, but I asked about Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and he lit up. Even though there was a whole lot that still needed to be worked out, you could tell he was really excited by the endeavor.
Fast forward to November, and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is finally ready for the public.
Yoshimi must choose between two boyfriends, but first she’s got to take down an army of pink robots. This magical tale of love and the struggle for survival is a poignant and humanistic story set to the music of The Flaming Lips.
Featuring a 14-foot robot puppet, dancers in “glowing” LED costumes and stunning projections — - this is another world premiere musical from Playhouse Director Emeritus and Tony Award winner Des McAnuff (The Who's Tommy, Jersey Boys, Jesus Christ Superstar) that you just cannot miss!
The musical is the collaboration of Wayne Coyne and Des McAnuff and is a must-see for any fans of the Lips, fans of musicals, and anyone interested in the arts but might be put off by the snooty perception of the theatre world.
La Jolla Playhouse has generously given FOUR pairs of tickets to opening week shows. To enter, leave a comment on this post with a Flaming Lips memory and the day you would like to attend (Tuesday 11/6, Wednesday 11/7, or Thursday 11/8). Make sure your comment links to a valid email. I will select four winners over the weekend and you will be notified no later than Monday morning.
If you would like to purchase tickets, you can do so here. The La Jolla Playhouse has a 20 under 30 program, offering $20 tickets for people under 30 years old (ID required), and they also ran a text promo for $30 discount tickets, just text "YOSHIMI" to 56654.
(update: I have to moderate all comments, so you only have to submit once. I know the captcha can be annoying, but I promise I see them all, and post them sporadically over the weekend, so your comment won't necessarily appear right away.)
Sunset Sessions 2012 is underway at the Rancho Bernardo Inn. The mostly private event is the annual get together for music supervisors and radio program directors in the AAA format (also known as "Triple A" for Adult Album Alternative. Think KPRI, and about a third of the playlist of Radio Sophie...). I've been fortunate to come to the event for a few years now and it is an interesting education into the music business...how radio stations come to play the songs they do, how songs get placed on your favorite TV shows or movies or commercials...and seeing the inner workings of the relationships between bands, labels, artists, publicists, and supervisors. At times it is quite inspiring and makes me think that if I just keep working my ass off in the numerous ways I'm involved in music, one of these days something will stick. And to be completely honest, sometimes it is completely frustrating, with a distinct insider's club feeling and the impression that you have to have money to make money. I can easily name a dozen San Diego independent acts who deserve the eyeballs and earholes of this elite group of music gatekeepers if they only had the financial backing that is required to perform here.
All of that said, besides Everest, the first day of music left a whole lot to be desired so I didn't really shoot video or photos, though I have been representing SoundDiego around the panels and such. I did however take full advantage of the open bar (which is only open for a small window of time throughout the night.), and I also took the time to reconnect with familiar faces like Incan Abraham and The Makepeace Brothers. You can see some performances and photos from throughout this weekend over at SoundDiego or Radio Sophie.
Today has been really beautiful up at the Inn and there was a really cool keynote/interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, as well as a great afternoon panel with the dream team of today's most important music gatekeepers, like Kevin Lyman (Warped Tour) and Alex Patsavas (Chop Shop Records and holder of my dream job). Since The Heavy Guilt has a show tonight and Jesse LaMonaca and the Dime Novels have their CD release show tomorrow (which is close to selling out so you should buy tickets in advance if you're planning on going), I'm gonna have to miss the night sessions with performances by the likes of Jimmy Cliff, fun., Gary Clark Jr., and The Parlotones, but I'm still hoping to close out the weekend with more informative panels and some of the daytime music sessions. Happy hour is about to start and Audra Mae is performing, so I better scoot. xoxo
Did ya catch The Flaming Lips on Friday on KCRW? It was a helluva session and now that Ray's tour with The Killers is done, he's been hanging with Wayne and is all over the place.(When I asked if he can resume blogging here again to keep us abreast of his crazy music adventures, his response was "from today onward, it's my hot body, i do what i want." Hopefully that was a "yes".
Did ya all see Ray Suen on Conan O'Brien last night with The Flaming Lips? Yeah, that's him banging that gong (apparently in an American Apparel headband according to his tweets.) You might recall he was blogging for us for a while until that huge band he's been on tour with told him all his blogs had to go through their fan boards. Bummer because we loved those posts. According to Twitter, his next stop is Yo Gabba Gabba, so I'll keep an eye out for video.
Sasquatch 5.24-25.08 (from super secret correspondent Ray Suen)
One of the best things to come out of the Louis XIV tours was meeting Chris Chandler. As tour manager and front of house man, he had to put up with a lot of shit that a man with a lesser patience would surely have collapsed under the weight of. Seeing his work with the Flaming Lips though, made me realize that our experience with Louis was child's play compared to what we did at the Gorge in Washington for two days.
I had been looking forward to working with the Lips ever since the end of the Louis tour. The anticipation had been building and building until the Killers called a few weeks ago and my world became about learning how to play keyboards. After that situation finally settled, nothing was more of a relief than getting to fly out to Seattle and see how the Lips do things. They had just finished playing two festivals in Chicago and Philadelphia, running on almost zero sleep for the two days previous. We went straight from the airport in Seattle to the Gorge in Washington.
The two big things about this particular show for the Lips were the return of the giant UFO show, and the world premiere of the Flaming Lips movie, "Christmas on Mars." Wayne bought a revivalist tent to screen the movie, and as soon as we stepped off the bus, we set to work building the theater. There was a lot of work to be done between driving four foot stakes into rock hard dirt, setting up the lighting and PA, and figuring out how to make the damned popcorn machine pop.
Nothing builds a sense of team like uniforms. The Lips crew all had matching orange suits and hard hats that made people stop and move out of the way when we would walk to lunch. There was no place in the entire festival that was off limits to us and people knew we meant business. I made the mistake of walking around alone a few times. You can be badass in a team of orange suits or a freak just wandering around. The tripped out masses were less reticent about poking and hitting my hard hat when I was by myself.
read the rest by clicking the jump.
After the tent was built, I checked out Mates of State, the Kooks, and Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks. The Jicks were solid, Stephen being a surprisingly virtuoso guitar player, and I finally got to fulfill my dream of watching Janet Weiss play drums.
Hundreds of people had been waiting to see the movie all day, we were busy doling out popcorn, and unfortunately we had to turn most people who wanted to see the movie away. I got to see the first screening at 10 PM (as the Cure played at the main stage, apparently with a new drag queen Liza Minelli as their frontman), and I'll say this. It's loud, it's crazy, and there's a lot of vagina in it. Highly recommend it.
The crew got a few hours of much needed sleep before the 3 AM load in at the mainstage for the UFO. The main stage at Sasquatch is massive, and I learned later, it requires a massive stage to support the giant UFO show. It was made more epic by its backdrop, the great Gorge whose magic I was too unskilled to capture in my pictures. Imagine the Grand Canyon but greener and full of water. The UFO took five hours to build and we worked as the sun was coming up. Most everyone's coffee jolt had worn off at this point (even though it was damn good coffee the Portlanders brought, Stumptown, check it out) and we were all getting a little loopy. I, doing this all for the first time, put my head down and tried to do as much as I could without breaking anything. The end result was this massive, metal, orange jellyfish that would loom silently over the acts on the mainstage, forewarning the festival goers of the jubilee to take place later. Again, highly recommend any chance to see the UFO show.
Wayne Coyne is an amazing human being. He is genuinely curious about people and their stories and spent limitless amounts of time talking to fans and signing things while supervising the stage setup. He and his wife Michelle are one of the loveliest, most sophisticated, well-dressed couples I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. There is no other crew or band in the business that is so interlinked. You'll see Michael Ivins in a few of these pictures setting up as if he was merely a part of the crew. There was no sense of ego with these guys, everyone just wanted to do good work from the band on down.
After all the building was done, I got to watch the Hives, Built to Spill, Rodrigo y Gabriella, The Flight of the Conchords, and the Mars Volta all on the main stage. The Hives were so much fun, and their schticky power pop and ribald Swedish energy really should have earned them a spot playing later in the day. Built to Spill played a pretty low-key, low-energy set which lulled me into watching Rodrigo y Gabriella instead of going to watch Battles, my one regret for the weekend. If you've not seen them, Rodrigo Y Gabriella are two flamenco guitar players who play well intentioned covers of Metallica and other rock groups with gusto and great skill. But, in my opinion, that kind of material needs to be kept strictly to college quads and youtube. I had been looking forward to the Mars Volta all day and was disappointed as I was smacked in the face by in an incomprehensible wall of prog-noise that sent not a few folks in the crowd to find dinner. I love the Mars Volta, don't get me wrong, I love their recordings and have been to a few live shows that were brilliant. But the manic energy of Cedric combined with the growth of the ensemble and penchant for free jazz breakdowns and schizophrenic solos really turned a lot of people off. For a whole 90 minutes. Cedric came out and threw a cymbal stand into the audience as soon as he stepped on stage later proceeding to fuck with the camera guys almost throwing a few cameras on the ground. This from a man who refuses to play if his audience is moshing. I don't get it.
Time for the Lips! It was damn near the closest thing I've had to a religious experience at a rock and roll show or in my life, even. The band descended from the giant UFO and Wayne did his famous ball routine over the audience. Balloons, confetti, teletubbies, smoke, lasers, and general fun and mayhem made for an audience response I've never seen before. Everyone, from the kids in the front, to the people on the hill in the back had their hands up singing along and rocking out. It was near impossible not to, with the show the Lips put on. Wayne has said, "rock bands just don't try anymore and it's a shame. We should be trying our hardest to put on a show for these people." Words to live by. The highlights of the show were the Lips' rendition of Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same" when we recruited five girls to come up and dance naked and, as it was Memorial Day, played Taps through Wayne's horn speaker. The entire audience held up peace signs, the reverence was deafening.
I've never had this much fun busting my ass for 48 hours. Even during teardown I couldn't help thinking that this was the way to live, to be rock and roll, to do good work and love every minute of it. In any case, I'll hopefully be going back out to do a few more Lips shows this summer. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time before going on tour with the Killers in August. That tour will have a lot to live up to.
I just spent the last 4 hours uploading all my photos from the Southern Comfort Music Festival. Normally I take a ton of pics and only put a few on my photobucket site, but I had such amazing access that I wanted to take as many pics as I could and thought I would make them all available for viewing.
I was a little bummed out that I hadn't heard back about my media request, but at 10:30 on Friday night, I got an e-mail letting me know I would have a media pass for the SCMX. Golden ticket. I've mentioned before that my friend was drumming for Z-Trip, too, so it was cool to hang out with him for the first time since December when he was in town with Mike Doughty. He called me around noon from Long Beach but he hit a ton of traffic, so I scrapped my plan to drive downtown, and instead took the bus to meet Pete at his favorite spot here, El Zarape. We drove to the venue and he had band parking right in front of Petco. He took off with the tour manager and I headed to the media table and grabbed my pass, bumping into Andrea as I walked through the gates.
Delta Spirit had already started and I missed the first three song photo op, so I just hung back bumping into plenty of friends. Delta Spirit translated well on the large stage and the sound was perfect. There weren't a lot of people there that early in the day, but it was good to see a lot of the people who are fans of DS there to show their love.
We were told by various people that there might be some VIP passes floating around, so after Delta Spirit and while Stranger played on the other stage, we tried to track some down. I thought I would point out that the program guide for the show listed the band as The Stranger's Six, though the pic and bio was for Stranger, the band that played. The Stranger's Six is a very different band than Stranger. just a note. We hung out at the CityBeat booth for a while, and M-Theory, too, then Galactic came on the big stage so I was off to take some pics.
Boots Riley of the Coup performed a few songs with Galactic and got the crowd riled up.
Mr. Lif also sang a couple tracks with the band and it was pretty great to see the New Orleans sounds of Galactic in the SoCo vibe of the event. (yes, beads everywhere.)
That was probably the hottest point of the day, so it was nice to get reprieve from the heat in shaded areas.
Natalie and I tracked down Marco Collins who was acting as MC for the event to thank him for getting us the media passes.
The Knee Highs played on the local stage and we were behind the stage as the theme from Growing Pains came on and the guys danced around to it in their backstage warmup.
The are hip hop act and they had great flow and onstage.
But we were on a mission, so we wandered around a bit more. I noticed that both gates seemed to have a lot more people pouring in and I heard the process was long and time consuming, but that was really the only complaint I heard about the event.
At that point in the day, the VIP area opened up. I was told that my media pass gave me access, but not the wristband that got three free drinks, so I finally got my hands on a VIP pass and got a wristband. It was a day full of text messaging and hunting people down, taking pictures and actually trying to enjoy the event.
I was running all over the place, but managed to get set up in time to take some pics of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.
Pete messaged me that he was going to his car, so I met him out there and we listened to BRMC with the A/C on and just took some time to slow things down a bit. It was nice to sit still for a moment and be able to absorb the day for a minute.
We went back in through the VIP gate and I met up with Nat and Andrea and he took off to the backstage area. The VIP had catered food- some grilled veggies and chicken skewers, but those went quick, but I was happy with the mashed potato bar. Smart thinking there. Nothing better to soak up the liquor than some potatoes.
Z-Trip came on as the sun was finally setting. We were a little bummed because of the 3 song photo rule because Pete told me he wouldn't be on until the second half of the set. We tried to get special permission for photos when he came on but it "wouldn't be fair", so instead we had to find our way into the crowd, but people were surprisingly cool about letting us merge in with them. Z-Trip's set was amazing, mixing up classic tracks with modern stuff and getting the crowd nuts, particularly when he gave a big middle finger while slamming George Bush and a mosh pit broke out behind us while Z played Rage Against the Machine. Yes, a pit. During a DJ set. Who knew?
We were kinda anxious, wanting a drink in such a bad way but the set was long.
The crowd went nuts when various guests came out with Z-Trip and then finally Pete made his way onto the stage.
He has always been an amazing drummer and in this outlet could really shine with long solos while Z was offstage.
After catching him for a bit, we went back to the VIP, actually exiting through the main gate and reentering through the VIP area to avoid the crowds. Some friends were near the front of the booze line, so I got a couple drinks and chilled out for a bit. We ran into Marco who got us the VVIP wristbands that allowed people on the side platform during the band, but we were just happy to have more drink tickets since the bartenders were demanding them. We ladies love our free bevvies.
That's me and Marco. It was my first time meeting him in person, but definitely not the last. He was so cool and appreciative of our blogging thing and just a happy guy despite how much work he had to do to coordinate his portion of the event.
After having our drinks, Natalie and I made our way back to the photo pit where the Flaming Lips were already onstage getting all their equipment set up, so we missed Scarlet Symphony on the local stage. There was just no way to be everywhere.
I got all giddy getting to be so close to the action for the Lips.
Halloran and Boomer from FM 94/9 finally made their way out to introduce the Flaming Lips. I noticed the deflated plastic bubble on the side of the stage, so I called Natalie over to post up for the grand bubble entrance.
The bubble passed right over my head as Wayne made his way back onstage.
The show was amazing, though typical Flaming lips fare... dancing santas and aliens, the go-go academy girls onstage, confetti and fog machines...
Wayne is such a sexy man, I couldn't stop taking pics. Eventually, though, our three songs were up, so we went out the front gate where another couple hundred people were still trying to get into the event.
We finished up the night in the VIP area, where I felt bad for the bartender who was still busting his ass. They ran out of everything except Jack and SoCo, so I ordered to double Jack n cokes, though actually had to get two singles and two shots and then dump the shots in.
There were a lot of people behind the scenes who made the event possible, so credit to CityBeat, SoCo, the promoters, FM 94/9 and all the other people who made the day happen without a glitch.
I had the pass for the platform, but it was at capacity, so I just hung out as the night wrapped up. Pete had left, but called to find out if I knew of any vegetarian places where he could grab food, so I left before the show ended to meet him and we headed to La Posta for some quesadillas then he drove me home. He got a really cool poster from the show and gave me a smaller version of it that I will proudly hang in my home when I can get it properly framed.
Pete had a flight today out of LA, so after we ate, he took off and I couldn't believe it was still not even 11 o'clock. I met some friends over the Ken Club and closed out the night at the bar, then my neighbors came over again and again stayed up till the sun was coming up. Needless to say I was beat today and have been on this computer for the last 8 hours getting all my pics posted up. Now I'm beat once again and have to spend tomorrow getting serious about my job hunt, so if anyone has any leads, send them my way. My Things to Do list will be posted tomorrow afternoon. Hope everyone had as great a weekend as I did.
Back in the spring, I had the pleasure of meeting Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. He was in town for Sunset Sessions and after delivering a really interesting keynote, he hung around and chatted with anyone who wanted to talk to him. I didn't really have anything profound to ask him or to say to him, but I asked about Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and he lit up. Even though there was a whole lot that still needed to be worked out, you could tell he was really excited by the endeavor. 
The musical is the collaboration of Wayne Coyne and Des McAnuff and is a must-see for any fans of the Lips, fans of musicals, and anyone interested in the arts but might be put off by the snooty perception of the theatre world. 
