Tuesday, April 28, 2009

My Bloody Valentine, Live at Wamu Theater in Seattle, April 27, 2009

Since my husband felt obliged to write about the My Bloody Valentine concert we saw last night, I thought I should chip in with my own observations.

I feel bad trying to review this concert since we didn’t get to stay until the end (we needed to be home by 11pm to relieve the babysitter. This the second time we’ve had to leave a concert before the end for this reason. I’m getting a little tired of this, but the only other option is to not go to concerts together anymore. Or try to convince bands to go on earlier (hopeless). I mean, when it says “doors at 6:30pm, show at 8pm” I still naively expect that the band I paid to see might actually start around 8pm. Not 9:45pm which was the case last night. Such is life.)

For the hour of the show I did manage to see, I would say it was great, because I love their songs. But for me, the show was not as great as the CDs. Primarily because MBV play so freakin’ loud that some the subtle nuances of the songs are lost in waves of distortion. You have to wear earplugs to protect your ears (earplugs are distributed at every MBV show) and so right there you are missing out on something: perhaps about 32db worth of sound that might contain subtle nuances.

It’s clear to me that you go to an MBV show for the experience, as much as anything else. By combining the wall of sound with repetitive visuals and flashing lights in your eyes, they seemed to determined to assist the audience in entering some kind of hypnotized state. That was nice, but part of me would have preferred to see close ups of the band so I could see their faces and how they played their instruments. I guess I’ve been spoiled by watching Sigur Rós live videos from Victory Rose on my computer.  (BTW I wrote the Mac portion of the Help & FAQ file on the Victory Rose sites). That way could have perhaps finally figured out how MBV are making some of those cool sounds. Oh well.

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