Last night, the LA misinformants went to the Gorillaz concert at the Hollywood Palladium.
If last year's hottest animated band comes to your town, I highly recommend avoiding it like a Denny's restroom at quarter after three in the morning.
First of all, the tickets said that the show started at 6:30. Being the savvy, non-punctual losers that we are, we didn't actually show up until 9:30. But get this: the show was just starting when we got there. That's right, all of the KROQ listening 16 year olds in attendance had just been standing around in a fully lit auditorium listening to CDs on the PA system since their moms had dropped them off three hours before. Not even a shitty opening band or two. Bad form, people!
The show consisted of two giant screens, one above the other. Behind the bottom screen, you could make out shadows of the actual band that was playing the music. Like we care. I'm so sure that we're all here because we love you Oasis sounding mofos. The cartoon is your gimmick, and I admit, we all fell for it and bought the damn tickets. You win.
During the songs that have no music videos, the upper projection screen was all just flying clipart from the web page. Basically a Gorillaz screensaver. Which I suppose wouldn't have been so bad, if you could have actually watched the band performing. But since, of course, you couldn't, it was either stare at the cheeseball looping kaleidoscope effects, or stare at the back of the greasy head of the high school sophomore in the Misfits t-shirt in front of you.
For the songs that did have videos, they showed crappier versions of said videos. Like for their hit song "Theme from the Video with the Giant Moose", they showed the whole video cut together, but a really early 3-D version, with no textures or lighting, and none of the 2-D character elements put in yet. Basically it was an empty, gray, featureless car sliding around a blocky, gray, featureless race track. What the? Hello? When I'm paying for a concert I'd like to see something better than what was free on TV, not something stupider.
I admit, my brief flirtation with Gorillaz fandom waned rather quickly after I bought these tickets about a month and a half ago. Still, the whole show kind of blew ass, and it was only about 40 minutes long (Which, I know, is like saying, the food sucks and the portions are too small.).
I think SPUNKY put it best when he said, "Usually when I'm done watching something like this, I get to get on a ride."
