I'm Back From San Francisco

And life returns to normal. Not necessarily a good or bad thing. I had one of the best times of my life there this past weekend though. I visited my friend Allison and she showed me around a little bit. We went to Berkley and went to the music store around there. Nice college town. We also went to Alcatraz and took the audio tour. Besides the music festival, that was my absolute favorite thing because when I was growing up I really loved that old Clint Eastwood movie Escape From Alcatraz. The audio tour talked about the islands history from way back in the colonial days before the gold rush all the way up until it was shut down in the 60's (I think it was the 60's). Here are some pictures:




Every cell was presented like this to arriving prisoners.


Outside the door where the inmates tried to escape during the gun fight. That leads to the courtyard. I just like the composition of this picture.


The notorious dummy head


Alcatraz from where we were having fish and chips at Bubba Gump.

And now of course the music festival. It was a lot of fun. As expected. The acts that we saw were Beck, Radiohead, Dredg, Liars, Regina Spektor, and Primus. All of them were great. Beck surprised me by playing Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack and Loser. I didn't get any pictures of him because there was a sound board tent right in front of our view. Lame. But I did get a far off picture of Radiohead and Primus, great pictures of the Liars and Dredg (who's bassist looks like my friend Jon), and a few semi-far off ones of Regina Spektor. Observe:


Radiohead. Their fiber optic light show is incredible. Also worth noting, as they were playing the fog and mist started to roll in real heavy, so it kind of made it real atmospheric and surreal to watch and listen to them play their songs. The sound cut off twice when they were playing which was kind of lame, but they were still on the top of their form. It felt like they were having as much of a good time (if not more than) as the many fans watching them.


Dredg. They were pretty good. They mostly played new material which no one knew, with a few fan favorites.


Dredg's bassist that looks like my friend Jon!


We also decided their singer looked a bit like Mark Ruffalo. A bit.


Liars were my second favorite act after Radiohead. Watching Angus Andrew (pictured here) march and strut around the stage while doing whatever he does into the microphone is just so much fun. Their performance here was absolutely incredible.


Liars.


Haha


He also wore a weird shirt.


After they had played their set, Allison and I were walking around and saw two of them just walking around. So I got my picture taken with them and my CD signed.


Regina Spektor. Despite my not liking her album too much, she was very good live! Hhhhhhmmmm......


Primus! They were very good. They played all the good ones. Opening with the beginning riff of Rush's YYZ and going into Here Come the Bastards. They also played Jerry Was A Racecar Driver, My Name is Mud, John The Fisherman, among many other fan favorites.

Well that's about it for my pictures. I really liked San Francisco. It was a very nice clean city and pretty much everyone was friendly.