A Tale of Two Shows
Realizing it would only make us crazy to attempt to create a playlist of both bands for the day, we went with the "prepare for the first" approach. Doors for the Rentals were at 8pm with only one opener, while Boot Camp Clik had about a slew of openers and a later door, so it was a safe (and correct) assumption that the Rentals would start first (and there was no way we were going to miss that). The hours before the show were spent getting into rock-out mode, with a soundtrack consisting of old Weezer (Blue Album for life!), Dalmations (we certainly had our awesome on), and on the walk to Neumos, Daft Punk's Coachella set (Technologic indeed). We arrived just in time to see frontman Matt Sharp take the stage.
The Rentals were truly sublime. There were technical difficulties, but none of that dulled the enthusiasm of the crowd, who bounced along to the more upbeat tracks and sang along to the slower ones. From the start it was easy to tell that the band was truly having a good time, putting off a vibe that was infectiously happy despite the heat (Sharp managed to sweat through two shirts). A Seattle crowd not only had a good time, but didn't mind showing it, laughing at the band's horrible pirate jokes and generally dropping the too cool for school facade that plagues most shows. Seattlest was initially impressed by Matt Sharp's charisma, but our attention was drawn to and held by violist Lauren Chipman. Those glasses... Umm yeah. But back to the show. The band played for over an hour, starting with more poppy material, before slowing things down a bit in the middle of their set. They saved the band's biggest hit ("Friends of P") for the encore, smoothly seguing into the song from Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," cleverly exchanging "doo doo doo"s for "ooh woo hoo hoo"s. Absolutely great.
It's too bad the same can't be said for Boot Camp Clik. While all very capable MCs, the show couldn't overcome the same problems that plague hip-hop shows in general. The backing tracks tended to dominate on the low end, forcing the MC to yell, and in doing so they lost the ability to have any sort of inflection. It doesn't matter how much stage presence an MC has, listening to someone yell for an hour gets old. So very very old. What makes it worse is that the low-end dominance also removed any bit of nuance from the backing track, so you couldn't even recognize what most tracks were through the bass boom. The one highlight of the show was Buckshot, who came closest to being able to overcome the sound issues through the sheer strength of his personality. The crowd was visibly pumped during his verses during which time he reduced his Boot Camp Clik cohorts to being just "those other guys on the stage." There was a time when New York were all but invincible ("unfuckwitable" is the technical term). This show was just more evidence that those days are long past.
But enough dwelling on that not entirely stellar show. It's time for some happy fun time with The Rentals discography.
Image from Flickr / user Rigmarole, who has plenty of great pics from the San Francisco show.
