Hollywood Undead
So I don't suppose I could very well blog about seeing my second favourite band in the universe without doing one for my very favourite the next night. (Though, honestly, if Starset keeps producing material of this amazing quality something I'm in a position to say is nothing like guaranteed they're on track to overtake the #1 spot…)
“California Dreaming” HU have a few sort of recurring themes they do, and the Paean to LA or CA is definitely one of them…
Another is the Club Anthem, which typically features conspicuous substance abuse and rather regrettable objectification of women: “Comin’ in Hot” (this was also the number where they do their regular gracious maneuver of inviting a random musician from the crowd to come up and play with them)
The seamy-underside version of the Paean to LA: “Been To Hell” (also if you follow the link to the video, you'll get them in what used to be their trademark masks, before they ditched them; also, God I love this song, and have done a whole awful lot of writing to it…)
A sort of mash-up of those two themes the Sunset Strip Anthem: “Usual Suspects” and one I love even more than the last one, a lot more.
Just by the bye, and regarding these themes of theirs, they're really not being done justice here. For instance, my favourite is probably the Existential Lament, e.g. “Hear Me Now”:
Where's your home?
How'd you end up all alone?
Can you hear me now?
There's no light, there's no sound
Hard to breathe, when you're underground
Can you hear me now?
(that one has made me sob live, and more than once hearing it on runs); and for another e.g. “I'll Be There”:
When waves come crashing at your door
I've been down, been down before
And I have faith but I need more
We're specks of dust caught in a whirlwind
Nothingness behind the curtain
Life is short but death is certain
That will always be our burden
I mean, seriously? you can keep your Sartre and Kierkegaard; or, Oh, my god, “Your Life” (did I mention how much I love this band!?):
The sun may never rise again, so be the light, the vision
This is your life, it's slipping by
You try to run but fall again, you get back up, that's living
Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled show we actually saw… concluding with their ULTIMATE club anthem and one guaranteed to bring down the house live: “Warchild” (did I mention that in addition to being super-smart, these guys have an AWESOME sense of humour?)
Finally, hilariously enough, two nights later we were watching whatever we were watching over dinner, then flipped to YouTube for our regularly scheduled hedgehog videos. And YouTube of course served the following up, so of course we we watched it. Then when the camera snaked down the queue outside we were like, Hey, that's our show from two nights ago!
Then of course when they had crowd shots, our eyes went to the spot we were in. Then Ness hit pause – and, Boom: us. I'm reasonably recognisable (click the image for larger version)…
…and you can also just make Ness out to, to my right blue hair, and top of her eyeglass frames.