May | 2011 | mostly music

(originally written 5.25.05)

Ticket stub, Peter Murphy at The Fillmore in San Francisco, 2005

Peter Murphy in San Francisco, 2005

We went to see Peter Murphy at The Fillmore last night; there were issues with the sound and Peter’s in-ears – he introduced us to Sascha, his tech, as Sascha spent more of the night than he should have running around the stage adjusting things and trying to put the in-ears back in the middle of songs while PM was singing.

Most of it was either new material or stuff from Holy Smoke and later; 4 songs from deep, if i recall correctly, two of which were in the encore: “Cuts You Up” and “Marlena Dietrich’s Favorite Poem” (which was great to hear, one of my favorites); he also did “A strange kind of love” and “deep ocean, vast sea”….The new stuff sounds like Deep II; I was hoping that he had continued down the turkish-influenced path, but apparently not. I’m a big fan of his first two solo albums and was slightly disappointed but unsurprised to not hear any songs from that era.

I don’t think I heard any Bauhaus songs, but I wasn’t expecting to.

quote of the night:

“You know, 3/4ths of that band [Bauhaus] were total primadonnas, and Peter was the QUEEN BITCH.”

(originally written 8.9.03)

Bjork in San Francisco, 2003

so…
we just got back from the afterparty for the Bjork show 🙂

The show itself was fantastic, there were *fireworks* that went off during a few of the songs. We sat in the bleacher area, it was a strange venue (Piers 30/32), but once the fireworks went off, it was like “oh, maybe that’s why” — her ‘backing band’ consisted of the “Icelandic String Octet”, a harp player, who also played a bunch of stuff (like accordian, harpsichord, etc) and Matmos, a blip pop duo (which is a genre I’ve never even heard of! K just informed me of it, and a quick search on google confirms it. My god! *marvels*) They played with Bjork on Vespertine.

There was pyro, there were fireworks, there were pyro(!) and fireworks at the same time! It was off the hook. She sounds as good live as she does on the albums – her voice is amazing. I have a whole new level of esteem for her- it’s rare these days to hear that level of expertise.

She played a lot of songs that are on her greatest hits album that recently came out. K’s a much bigger fan than I am, he really enjoyed it. It was a really good show.

Our friend Wobbly was dj’ing the afterparty, and he told us about it and where it was going to be. It was all very hush hush, even though, in his email he said she almost never shows up at them. So, we got there early, we actually found parking right away in North Beach at 10:30 on a Friday night (which is virtually *unheard* of, incidentally) we showed up just as Matmos showed up with Wobbly (they’re friends). So, we met the Matmos guys and chatted with them for a minute while they got the place opened up. Big white space, they threw on a vintage golf instructional video up and set up the drinks table. K and I talked with W. while he got set up.

We’re all hanging out, people start showing up, a very hip and arty crowd. Everyone’s got their own vibe going, it’s fascinating to just sit in the corner and watch. There’s this interesting woman who looks an awful lot like Bjork; I say to K “look at that girl…she looks like Bjork” – he looks and says “it *is* her”. So, there you have it. We were all dancing in a circle on the dance floor, a bunch of girls. I haven’t danced in a long time, and I danced my ass off. It was great. We got home at 2; it was such a fun, random evening. The rock gods were with us, we had a really wonderful time. We need to go out more, definitely.