Sunday, October 22, 2006

Broke the curse

I finally broke my Beck curse. I saw him at the Loews Theater in Jersey City last night on my third attempt in seeing him.

The first attempt was at the Free Tibet show in D.C. He was scheduled to perform on the first day, but a huge thunderstorm passed through and someone in the crowd actually got hit by lightning. They ended the first day early and Beck had to go on to another gig in NY.

The second attempt was at Field Day. That was supposed to be held over two days out on Long Island, but the locals kicked them out and the show was moved to Giants Stadium for a one-day show. It rained that day, heavily at times, and while dancing backstage to Underworld (I think), Beck slipped and hurt himself. He cancelled his appearance that night.

I was sure something would happen last night to make Beck cancel, but he didn't and he put on a good show.

This video (from a NY show) is of the marionettes he used in the show. Every band member had a marionette that mimicked what the person did on stage. They created on-the-fly music videos of the puppets and the puppets even had their own teeny tiny puppet theater for themselves.

For Jersey City, they roamed around town to the tune of Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer. The puppet band even stopped at White Castle for a meal.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Broke Beck? Isn't that a mountain? The puppet show was surprisingly entertaining. I am convinced that Beck was "inspired" by Wayne Coyne and the time he spent touring with the Flaming Lips as his backup band. Yet it was unique enough to not be a rip-off. After all, they were Marionettes instead of hand puppets.

Speechless said...

Yes, and I forgot to mention the people in teddy bear suits (like Flaming Lips's bunny suits) who danced around the stage and audience during the encore. (In the marionette theater, they used little teddy bears to mimic the action.)