While I'm waiting for Ubuntu to download so I can install it on my new EeePC, why not post some recent events news? Una and I have both liked Björk for awhile - I like her electronic experimentation and her raw punk energy, and Una appreciates how her song structures and instrumentations seem more classical than pop. We both wish we could incorporate something of her music into our own. Anyway, Björk was in town Wednesday night, and we got to go see her. <!-- SUMMARY_END -->
The show was at the Nokia Live (used to be the Staples Center?) in downtown LA. That night there was some kind of protest going on in front of city hall, so it took me longer to get across downtown from Little Tokyo than it took Una to drive from Pasadena. Sometimes the grid just shuts down...
Since Little Tokyo was so locked up, we ended up meeting at Mr. Sippee, a weird little broasted-chicken joint in a gas station that made a brief cameo in William Gibson's latest novel. It's funny how Gibson's otherworldly spot in a bad part of town turned out to be a place that Una often stopped at for dinner when she was going to law school downtown.
At the Nokia, the crowd was great - very multiethnic, with lots of interracial couples so we felt like we were right at home in some alternate universe. We even ran into some friends from the Westside there. Lots of unusual clothing ranging from punk to hip-hop to a guy wearing an orange tiger suit from some costume store. Björk seems to give people license to just do whatever they want - in a good way, mostly.
The concert was great, everything we'd hoped for. Björk had on one of her trademark difficult-to-describe outfits (yellow, lots of floppy cloth...?) and danced around on the stage like a mad pixie.
Her band consisted of two electronics guys, a drummer, a classically-trained keyboard guy who played on a huge keyboard and what looked like an electronic harpsichord, and a brass group wearing outfits that were like day-glo-colored marching-band uniforms with Japanese soldier flags sticking up from their backs. The stage was covered with flags that lit up in different colors depending on the lights, and the stage got progressively messier as confetti and other stuff was scattered everywhere during the songs.
Being a music tech and general gadget freak, I spent a lot of the concert looking at the odd collection of musicians in her band. I won't try to go into too much detail - you can find lots of that (and pictures) elsewhere. What I kept thinking was that the laptops, samplers, synthesizers on one side, and the brass, piano, and harpsichord on the other seemed to embody a lot of dichotomies or contradictions:
- machines vs humans
- modern vs traditional/premodern
- scripted/sequenced vs spontaneous
- hip (grungy laptop guys) vs outlandish and theatrical (the brass choir and the tuxedo-ed pianist)
There were some moments where Björk sang surrounded by a soft brass chorale (french horns and tuba, with flugelhorns or cornets instead of trumpets), others where she danced to a solo piano, others where she grooved to the otherworldly reactable, and several awesome moments where the electronics went off full-tilt and the house was more like a slammin' dance club. There was an incredible range of emotion and timbre.
The only regret I had about the concert, other than the railing that blocked my view of the electronics unless I craned my neck, was that we didn't leap to our feet and scream when Björk closed the concert with "Declare Independence" (!!!), probably the most intense song she's ever done, one that (if I really listen to it) causes my blood to boil and makes me want to run out into the street and yell for the impeachment of the goons that currently rule us, or at least to write an angry screed to my congressman. Which is probably how Björk's homeland got its independence.
When the concert was done, we lingered for awhile watching the confetti settle to the stage under the simulated moonlight, then filed out and walked past the after-concert streetside taco vendors to our car.