I went to my first Placebo concert last night
Posted by
JD (aka Jason Dean)
May 12 '23, 10:21
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It's daylight here so that's actually a statement for fact and not a set up for a Dad joke but I'd love to hear ST's punchlines
But one of FH's friends was part of a group that had an extra ticket and it was determined that I would probably the better concert goer for a show out of the blue as well it would have meant that FH would have to had leave her stepson's playoff game early.
I've at least heard of Placebo and I've got some vague idea in my head of what I'm getting myself into and let's face it, it's a concert for an act that I'm not opposed to, so sure.
Being at the Greek Theater doesn't hurt and as it turns out, there's actually two pairs of tickets so FH's friend and I are at one place and her sister and boyfriend are at another.
The opening act is Cold Cave which upon later discussion, the group decides can be summarized as a Vampire doing vaguely dance type tracks. I heard New Order in at least a couple of the songs so I'm on board with that description.
On the walk into the venue, there's these signs posted about Placebo would appreciate not using phones during the show so as to not be distracted by flashes and more importantly not to distract fellow concert goers. Be present, not watch the show through a screen and so on. I'm definitely on board for this and to greater extent the crowd follows the request.
So about five minutes before their set, there's this cool pre-recorded presentation by the lead singer in kind of talking head, almost Max Headroom type of blurred visual reciting the sign so that's promising.
Then there was the set. For those of you who are fans of Placebo or at least familiar with their music as well as my stated musical preferences....you kind of know where this is going.
Keep in mind that there the majority of the crowd loved the show but for me...whoa boy, that was alot
I kept trying to draw analogs to music I do like. Like the lead singer is 'singing' in kind of almost spoken word rhythmic, vaguely melodic style but Bernard Summner and Neil Tennant aren't exactly traditional singers either. A bunch of the songs have repeated lyric runs of like the same 3-5 word phrase used 6 times in a row...but a bunch of Savages songs use that construction. I also realized that their music is kind of almost a background type of sound that may or may not fill out or increase in volume depending on the song but at least it's not a completely meandering, solo filled type of sound.
It was one of those moments where I just didn't get it and had it been a festival, I would've taken off. Given that I was tagging along, I did my best to try to feed off the crowd and there were highlights but hey, I was there for the set as opposed to FH's friend who admitted on the ride home that she took an extended bathroom break.
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