Am I slowly turning into a grumpy old man or is the service at the San Francisco concert venues getting worse? I arrived at the Great American Music Hall a block behind the AMC Theaters on Van Ness Street last week to pick up my Handsome Furs tickets at will call, only to have some greasy white guy with the same dirty goatee and oily hair Sean Penn wore in “Dead Man Walking” not say “hello” or even “thank you” to me as I stood at the box office window. After getting my tickets, I had to go through not one, but two giant bouncers wearing the same faux-gang member outfits as Nicky Katt’s “The Limey.” Once again, my presence wasn’t acknowledged by either of the bouncers with “dirt staches” and what appeared to be XXL Fubu clothes. I mean, okay, people are coming to see coked out rock bands, not to gauge the customer service, but do I really want to start off a show I’m looking forward to by dealing with unfriendly and grouchy employees who look like they just got out of a prison? No thanks. Besides the awful service displayed by the employees at the Great American Music Hall, the Handsome Furs show that I went to see was spectacular. The opening bands were basically non-entities. I don’t even know the order of the opening bands, Rail Cars and Cinnamon Band were their names I think. One band was trying to do some pathetic “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” projection show, thinking their abrasively loud sound would make up for their lack of skills. The other band was a two-piece act with a guitarist and drummer that seemed to have heard a few early Springsteen records and thought they could do some E Street moves…they thought wrong.
After a long wait, the Furs hit the stage in one of the best two-band member concerts I’ve ever seen. Guitarist and singer Dan Boeckner yelped and howled like a neurotic Siberian Husky as he furiously thrashed his electric guitar with the impeccable technical skills. Boeckner’s wife, Alexei Perry, alternated between making keyboard sounds and drum machine beats on her MicroKorg as the married couple went through a fast-paced set of songs off their albums “Plague Park” and “Face Control”.
The Furs were fascinating to watch as well. Boeckner resembles a shorter and even thinner version of Iggy Pop, and he was constantly yelling, shaking, shivering, and sweating like a young David Byrne or the late Ian Curtis. Perry is a pretty and curvy young woman, and she was throwing her footless zebra-print tight clad legs in the air as well as shaking her bleached sandy blonde hair as she played her MicroKorg. It was just an all-around fantastic show.
This was my fourth time seeing the Furs. After seeing them open twice for Modest Mouse at both the Wiltern in L.A. and the Grove in Orange County as well as a solo show at San Francisco’s Rickshaw Stop, it’s fascinating to chart how much their stage presence and technical skills have progressed in the span of three years. When Perry first started playing shows, she could barely keep up with Boeckner and he’d often have to stop near the beginning of songs to show Perry which keys to start off with. That didn’t happen once at last week’s show, and even more impressive is how courteous and grateful the Furs are to their fans. They must have thanked everyone who showed up at least fifty times during the course of their fifty-minute set, and Dan gave a sincere and non-humorous dedication of one of the songs to the recently passed David Carradine to which the audience kindly responded with cheering applause. As I stood in rapt amazement at the show unfolding in front of my eyes, I thought that this is what it must have felt like for fans to see bands like The Cure or Wire for the first time (both bands are still rocking to this day). The applause rightfully continued for the rest of the night, and this critic’s disappointment with the lousy service at the venue was almost forgotten thanks to a spectacular show.
Handsome Furs: A+
The Service at the Great American Music Hall: F
–Aden Jordan
This is the first of Mr. Jordan's exclusive pieces. Expect more views on San Francisco concerts, his netflix, and why camels to the back are to be feared. Check out his blog at adendreamsofpavement.blogspot.com
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