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Echo & The Bunnymen, Every Move A Picture, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs After a morning of World Cup soccer, i finally relented to being drawn away from the television by Vroo and Jenz. They had backstage passes for BFD, and despite the unavailability of one for little old me, V wanted me to accompany them nonetheless. After parking out in the boonies of rural Mountain View, we got a pleasant surprise in the appearance of a Sleep Train-sponsored shuttle that drove us up to the ticket booths. Veronica secured an extra lawn ticket for me, and in we went. The first twenty minutes were spent in the ATM line, followed by another ten in the beer line. Our party then made its way over to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the Bud Light stage in the parking lot, but found that the beers we'd just bought were not allowed out there. So we spent another ten minutes trying to chug a couple of Sierra Nevadas (not an easy task with a beer that hoppy), then finally saw our first act of the afternoon. The YYY put on their usual strong performance, with excellent renditions of personal favorite "Cheated Hearts" as well as "Y-Control" and "Maps". I was slightly annoyed that Karen O gave the exact same "this is a Yeah Yeah Yeahs love song" extended intro for "Maps" that she'd done in her last Bay Area appearance, but oh well. We then meandered back to the main venue, where Jenz ran into a few friends and invited them for a drink at the bar. V and i decided to make use of the backstage passes, with me temporarily borrowing the one assigned to Jenz. We got back no problem, but were constantly antsy while exploring the backstage area, thinking "can we go in here?" Turns out we had access to the hang-out areas, but not the true backstage area, which required an additional artist pass. Oh well. While there we met up with Jeremy Popscene and his girlfriend Jen, allowing the two of us to recap the World Cup action to that point. We also had a look at local indie rockers Every Move A Picture, performing on the main stage. For better or worse, during their first two songs i was under the impression Echo & The Bunnymen were performing early. We convened on the lawn for the actual E&tB set. Geez, Ian McCulloch is looking olllllllld. With those silly rectangular sunglasses, he's looking more like the frontman of World Party with each passing year. Their performance included standards like "the Back of Love", "the Cutter", "Rescue", "Never Stop", "Bring on the Dancing Horses", and "Do It Clean", as well as a smattering of material from their 2005 album Siberia. Unfortunately, by the end of their set the allergies that had reared their head at home earlier in the day had kicked in in full force, and i decided to head home and return to fetch the girls at the end of the night. Given that of the remaining acts only Franz Ferdinand bore interest while horrors like HIM and A.F.I. loomed, i'm confident that i made the right choice.
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