Living in the 80s

Well, naturally that's a great way to describe me.

I went with my brother and my mother to the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night to see three 80s bands perform. I'm surprised my mother wanted to go because she had never heard of any of the bands, but I suppose she figured that was one of the events that would make it more likely that I'd actually be willing to deal with her. (Nobody will ever accuse me of not calling things as I see them.) My sister was apparently originally going to go as well but decided not to. There was a question of what to do with the extra ticket, so apparently my mother saw someone who might have needed one more ticket, struck up a conversation with that person, and then rescinded the opportunity after finding out that that person was only willing to take the ticket for free rather than pay for it. (This is what I think happened. Thankfully, I wasn't in on the conversation and was instead standing like an idiot in front of security because none of the tickets were actually in my possession. Anyway, this is what I would call "classy." I'm mentioning this in case you were wondering where I got all my charm. I'm actually one of the most charismatic members of my immediate family. We're really a great bunch.)

Adventures while entering the venue notwithstanding (the only thing I can really do is shake my head and wonder for the N billionth time if I was adopted and just never told about it), I had a fun time at the concert.

There were three 80s bands: ABC, Psychadelic Furs, and Human League. I went because of The Human League, the creators of one of my favorite songs of all time ("Don't You Want Me"), two other awesome songs (the especially incredible "Tell Me When" and the merely awesome "Human"), and several other good songs. The evening's hostess was Jane Weidlan from The Go Go's, who some of you may also recognize as the telegram singer from the movie Clue (especially after I pointed it out to at least some subset of you on both Friday and Saturday). Actually, Weidlan is extremely charismatic; her repartee with Belinda Carlisle (with constant snide remarks exchanged back and forth during the entire concert!) when I saw the Go Go's in Atlanta was highly amusing.

ABC has two songs I like a lot, but they're a little more laid back than the other two groups. (Yes, they're actually more laid back than Psych Furs.) Their other songs are pleasant but mostly blah. (I recognize them, like a couple of them a little bit, and the band did a good job performing them, but they don't really do it for me.) My brother enjoyed this group's performance the best, but he was only familiar with something like 5 songs from the whole evening and I decided to go specifically because of Human League.

Psych Furs have a few songs I like, but I'm not huge fans of any of them. Unfortunately, the acoustics made it hard to make out their lyrics at all, so while I like their studio work better than ABC's, I enjoyed ABC's performance more on Saturday. (However, the songs which are saxophone heavy were very nice, as the saxophones sounded sweet.)

When Human League came on the stage, it looked like that had beamed down. I wish I had a camera with me, because the lead singer had a huge (much too big for him) overcoat and sunglasses (and under that he was actually dressed in a suit, whereas the other bands dressed far more casually) and sun glasses and the two female singers were in full matrix mode. It was also great when the lead singer stated that he was truly honored to be on the same stage where Bugs Bunny had performed. I approve! Hearing "Don't You Want Me" performed live for the first time ever was the highlight of my evening, although Human League's in general gave me synth-pop awesomeness! They sounded really good live, so I am very happy that I went to this concert.

In between the bands, we had to put up with some very painful karaoke performed by 15000 people, each in their own key. The first break actually included the culmination of KBIG 104's Karaoke contest by two individuals on stage and a judging by the audience bas on applause. (There were a number of people booing very loudly near where I was sitting.) The first song was "We Got the Beat," which they should have just let Weidlan judge. It's a Go Go's song, after all. The second was "I Love Rock & Roll." Both were completely butchered, and the hammy "performances" by the contestants were pukeworthy. The second break included an attempt to get the audience to sing karaoke, which didn't work at all until a "special guest" from Bow Wow Wow (who was highlighted because her group will be performing in LA soon) performed Karaoke to her own song. (They pointed her out and tried to get the audience to do it on their own, but eventually they convinced her to help out.) I was amused and she did sing it quite well (no surprise), but what they could have done is have some nice inter-group performances that also included Weidlan and her. (When I saw Sting and Annie Lennox in concert, they performed a couple duets, and something along those lines would have been much better than the fruitless attempt at karaoke. Actually, silence would have been preferable to the karaoke. I would have, er, enjoyed it.)

OK, so the night wasn't perfect but it was fun, and The Human League was awesome! Synth pop forever!