Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus
After mostly everyone who was going to go, decided not to (lack of good transportation) I met up with Hamlet in Irvine for this show. Right off the bat it was an interesting night, we got off the freeway at almost the exact same moment. I was coming from the South, turned to go over the overpass and saw Hamlet getting off coming from the North. We then went to the Spectrum mall to take one car to the show. After almost getting sideswiped a few times, we made it into the Irvine Ampitheatre parking lot, what a large parking lot that was. We then proceeded to walk towards the entrance, seeing a bunch of gothic men and women all ready to see the show. Additionally there were a lot of regular looking people and some really good looking blonde chicks. In any event, I was trying to give away the extra ticket I had, when I finally entered I began asking random people and one of them actually needed one for their friend! So I had helped someone get into the concert for free, which was a nice change. None of my tickets went to waste thankfully. After getting through that debacle (it was, I swear) we proceeded to walk about a half mile to the actual location and up a giant hill to the grass. With a lot of Bauhaus ripping it up on stage, making my hair stand on end with the sound of live music (and good music at that). We finally made it to the top and just stood on the lawn at the top of the verizon wireless ampitheatre, a gigantic venue (too large for my tastes). Catching a few glances of some other people and enjoying the sounds of Bauhaus, trying to remember the names of the songs. Then waiting a half hour for the real show to start.
Oddly, they lowered this gate looking thing onto the stage… Why would they do that? Afraid of things flying? The lights dim and suddenly, Trent Reznor appears on the stage and the show begins. And what a show it was. I won’t go into the details, I wish I recorded it is all I will say. (It was fucking awesome). Including the gate thing they lowered in front of the band. It turned out to be a screen with a bunch of lights on it. You could see through it and it provided an awesome light show to go along with the music. Full motion video would play on it, including a 60′x10′ display of water falling slowly and filling up the bottom of this square on red. It sounds cornish but it was really well done. In the end Trent stood in front of it and provided an awesome sillouette. And on some songs it would slowly fill with leaves, stars, lines, clouds, you name it and draw away around the band members, making for an awesome visual experience with the awesome musical experience. In the end, Peter Murphy from Bauhaus and Trent did two duets on stage which were outstanding. They never did Bela Lugosi’s dead though, for shame.
Show rating: 9/10 (its not the white stripes!)
Pictures not mine.
