Moon Patrol

On Monday, Dave P was giving high accolades to the Roger Waters show he attended at the Hollywood Bowl. I wasn’t even thinking about going, but his praise gave me pause to reconsider. Enough pause that I packed up my work backpack on Tuesday with all the extra clothes I would need IF I decided to head down to Shoreline. The show was sold out, but I figure its never too difficult to get a scalped ticket to an amphitheater show. I sent an off chance email to Brian who works at Google (conviently located right next to shoreline) to see if he was going. It turns out he was, and he even had a spare ticket.

Well, that was clearly the universe telling me to go. Whom am I to disobey the universe?

So I cruised down after work to find a nice stealthy side street parking spot. People were getting their tailgate on. I hike down to Google to meet up with BryGuy for the ticket. Then I needed to get some grub. I convinced Brian to take me into the Google cafeteria. Now, I saunter in, sans ID, but immediately recognize it’ll be fine. While I look sorta like the anti-christ at Oracle, I look exactly like a Google employee.

I have to say that Google’s food is far superior to Oracle’s, and its free to boot! I had a burrito that rivals many a burrito joint. They even had handy non-styrofoam take away boxes. I stash some little pizzas and a bunch of cookies for some post show munch down. They even hooked me up with a couple waters to bring into the show. The only weird thing was how crowded it got by the time I left at 7:15. Why are there that many employees still at work?

I left Brian there, since he’s having dinner with a friend and her parents, and mentally prepare myself for my first solo amphitheater show. I happen upon a secret entrance – they don’t even check my bag. Its starting to get full up on the lawn, but since I’m just one person, I easily find a choice spot, settle in, and make some show friends. I love me some show friends. Wasn’t sure if this was the type of show where it would happen – but hey, I was definitely on a roll.

The set for this show was AMAZING. I’ve been seeing successions of high profile bands bring in crazy screens, l.e.d. boards/ping pongs, tubes of lights, but nothing like what Roger Water brought – it was a GIANT super hi-resolution screen. It looked like there was a set on stage, but as soon as the giant hand swooped in to switch the radio dial and smoke a cigarette, it was clear how amazing this screen was. It was as if he was able to take an IMAX screen with him.

First set was solid. Roger Waters brought a huge band with him: 3 guitarists, 2 keyboardist, 3 lady gospel choir, percussionist and a drummer. Lots of stuff off the Wall and other popular Pink Floyd songs. I’m not so up on my Floyd, so I can’t tell you names or any of that shit. The first half of the set was much stronger then the second. At one point a giant pig balloon cruised around the amphitheater with anti bush logos scrawled all over it. It was eventually released into the sky. I thought it was have been ironic if someone had written “Save the Environment” on the giant balloon.

During “Wish you were here”, my friend Simone randomly bumped into me. It was super awesome. Lots of hugging and joy. Just when I thought life couldn’t get any better, it started to fall apart. I guess with Simone was a crew of like 10 people, who totally crammed into our space. They seemed to like our good vantage point. Suddenly we were totally cramped, and I felt really shitty about what was happening to my neighbors. Then the couple to the left started getting into a heated argument. It was all bad. But somehow by end of song, the fight had ended, and the people were eventually convinced to find their original spot on the lawn. Big sigh of relief.

Second set = Dark Side of the Moon. That was a REAL good time. My only complaint is that they really didn’t open up the songs very much – I felt there was lots of room to go OFF on some sections. Earlier, I said that Massive Attack opened up some of their sections for a Floyd like sections – in retrospect, Massive Attack did a much better job of taking their studio music to new exciting places. On the other hand, how do you improve upon Dark Side of the Moon with clear 3/4 full waning moon high in the sky?

And to celebrate Google’s big dinner hook up and the purchase of YouTube, I’ll leave you with this: