Rise, Robots! Rise!

Last night Ex-Straight Boyfriend #2 [ExSBF #2], and fellow blogger Caffeinator X, and I went to go check out the Kraftwerk show at The Fillmore.

It was pretty cool.

Or at least as cool as it could be with four dudes standing behind computers in front of a screen of graphics.

Ha.

The sound was great though.

What wasn't great was that they decided to curtain off half the floor for the show.

So this left the masses all huddled up in front of the curtain and hanging off the side sections.

The floor Nazis kept telling us to move, or squish up against the other lemmings on the side areas.

Which of course made the place hotter than a Turkish bath.

It was an interesting mix of people.

You definitely had your older peeps, but also thrown in were some Goths, and younger kids who seemed to have no idea who Kraftwerk were.

At one point, I overheard a girl behind me go, 'it's like performance art!'

Ha.

Highlights of the set for me were:

'Tour De France'



'Vitamin'



'Trans-Europe Express'



'Autobahn'



and of course...

'Robots'



Like the above video, what was cool about 'Robots' was they actually had robots come down and take the place of the guys.

This was after the break for encore, mind you.

We got a good laugh that they had to take a break for an encore.

It's not like they were running around the stage performing acrobaticly choreographed dance numbers.

Heck, they were probably checking their email and surfing the 'nets on stage.

There was a brief period of darkness/silence which prompted us to think maybe their server had crashed.

Ha ha.

And once some of the crowd opened up that space-splitting curtain, people began to get their groove on.

All in all it was a good show.

What was interesting about this show was that this was the first time I had ever met Caffeinator X in person.

Actually, this was the first blogger I have met in person, that I didn't already know before they began blogging.

Having read his wife's posts about the goings-on of their family unit, it was a weird thing meeting someone for the first time, yet having known a bunch of stuff about them.

[Interesting side note: Thanks to Facebook, I found out the Caffeinator used to work with one of my BFF's, Helen. Small world I tells 'ya.]

But it was cool, and it felt like I had met and known Caffeinator for years.

Speaking of that, a funny thing happened when The Caff tagged along when I went for a smoke.

These two dudes who asked for a light inquired if we were a couple.

Ha ha.

One of them actually made a funny comment that the show was like The Blue Man Group 'minus the blue.'

Or was that The Caff?

I had to tell them that ironically, we just met that night, and he's married with children.

I got a chuckle out of that.

Back to Kraftwerk, since they didn't have an opening act, the show was over by 10.

Which kind of pissed off some of the people who showed up fashionably late.

I couldn't blame them; how often do shows start on time?

Those damn Germans and their efficiency!

We said goodbye to Caff and hopefully if I get my work in by deadline this weekend, I may hang out with The Caff and The Missus this weekend on Saturday.

They seem like a cool couple and would totes hang out with them.

Then, since it was a relatively early night, me and ExSBF #2 stopped off at Charlie Brown's for a nightcap which I was kind of dreading.

[We would have invited you 'Caff but we didn't decide to go until on the way home!]

Back around the Holidays, there was an incident that kind of soured our bromance.

Needless to say, I haven't hung out with him since and conversation has been pretty limited to stuff with The Magazine.

But it was for naught.

The incident has been resolved and we caught up and all, and hopefully things should be back to being copasetic.

Now the next test, is when ExSBF #2 and I hang out with our ex-BFF Friday night.



P.S. - Besides Coachella, they only played two other cities this stint in the USA.]

Deaf Punk

So finally got a chance to post about Daft Punk at Red Rocks.

One thing that hit me on the mountain climb in to the venue, is how seeing shows at the Rocks, is like an annual Summer ritual.

And Rocks is kind of like Denver's high school auditorium.

Anywho, while walking in, I was blown away how many people were tailgating.

I thought they prohibited open containers in the park.

All the way up to the entrance, people were trying to sell beer and booze to incoming concertgoers.

We get in, and it is only like a third of the way, full.

As for the crowd, a random mixture of ravers, college types, high school kids*, and the occasional yuppie.

We managed to get seats right smack dab in the middle of row 32.

Perfect view of the stage.

While we waited for the rest of our party to show up, it was nothing but people watching, and listening to the DJ [who wasn't bad, but played a lot of hard breaks].

Right in front of us were these five high school boys, who looked three sheets to the wind already.

The annoying part is when The Rapture came on, these guys started dancing like a bunch of wanna-be-funky jock white boys.

So annoying.

The Rapture was good, being that I only know a few songs of theirs.


'Whoo! Alright - Yeah... Uh Huh!'



Luckily they played all three.

I am going to have to get some of their stuff on CD.

They play for about an hour and a half, and make this big announcement that Daft Punk was up next.

Well, the crowd took it to mean that the show was starting, so the seat scrambling began.

Unfortunately for them, it was the second act, some DJ Sebastian, who took the deck.

His stuff kind of sounded like Daft Punk, but harder.

So it was just us and the crowd, being blinded by the house lights, waiting for Daft to actually start.

It was during this set where my fellow goer had to go meet the rest of our party at the gate so he could give them their tickets.

It took forever.

To make matters worse, the beers I had consumed were wanting me to 'break the seal'.

I couldn't go the restroom, because I was the only one there, and would most definitely lose our primo seats.

At one moment, whilst doing the pee-pee dance, I sent an angry text to hurry their asses up.

Finally they show up, after what felt like an eternity, and I hit the head.

I buy some more hooch on the way back, and settle in.

Sebastian is still spinning.

At this point most of the crowd's booze and drugs had kicked, in and people were dancing around like they just peaked, while at Burning Man.

White jock boys included.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, this girl who couldn't have been more than 17, stopped and asked if we needed pills.

We kindly declined.

At that point I had to ask my party, were we this obnoxious when we used to do drugs, at parties and concerts?

Seriously, everyone around me was FUGGED up, and acting obnoxious.

At least we were still approached as potential 'buyers' though, so I didn't feel that old and persnickety.

It was also during this point that the jock guys decide to take some e.

'Great,' I thought. 'Now they're going to be even messier.'





Finally Daft Punk starts and I had a horrible moment of realization.

I shouldn't have watched the Amsterdam concert on YouTube.


Opening Intro

I realized I was going to be seeing the exact same show[!].

That sucked.

But holy man, was it friggin' loud!

Even though it was outdoors, somehow they managed to get it so loud, and the bass so deep, that it sounded like I was at an old-skool rave, dancing right in front of the speaker.

My ears finally stopped ringing about 5 PM on Wedsneday.

I must say, the light show was amazing.





Probably the best light show I have ever seen at Red Rocks.




Basically the show was a DJ set of all of their songs mixed together.

'Technologic', 'Harder, Faster, Deeper, Stronger', and 'Around The World' showed up in multiple parts of the show, though reworked and in different contexts.

I didn't like 'Robot Rock' before, but the show made me like it.



'Robot Rock'

Throughout the first half of the show, everyone around me was smoking weed.

We were outside on the side of a mountain, yet it smelled like we were in the back of Jimmy's van doing bong hits.

[The next morning when I put the clothes I wore to the concert in the laundry bag, they wreaked of pot.]

About the time 'One More Time' came on, a blast from my past showed up.

It was my ex-roomie who we shall call 'Grace'.

I hadn't seen her since the after party of Bjork's concert a couple of years back.

Anywho, the significance of this is that she and the person I went to the concert, whom I shall call 'Nate', have a long, complicated, dramatic history.

After talking a mental flashback on the whole 'Jim' post, this was another case of total personal history rememberance in recent real time.

I will post on the whole Nate, Grace, and Big Daddy saga in an upcoming post.

We make plans to hang out soon, and Grace returns to her friends in a different section.

Overall, I say they played a little over an hour and a half.

Sadly, they didn't play 'Digital Love'.



As it worked out, by watching the video on YouTube, I knew what the final song was, which worked out great, as we were able to beat the crowds, and not have to spend two hours trying to get out of the parking lot.


Final Song

Great show, if a little loud, and if you get the chance to see them, definitely check it out.

* I was shocked to see high school aged kids at the show, because they haven't toured in nine years, and these kids were tweens, or younger, when Daft first came out.