88boadrum in the Sun
Posted on August 26, 2008
On 08/08/08 the Boredoms and their friends put on a concert in the La Brea Tar Pits. The day was beautiful and the night was full of magic space music. I flew out from my DC area home allll the way to LA to see a free concert. So it ended up being pretty expensive when you take everything into consideration. Musically it was fairly similar to last year’s 77boadrum, but not identical. Things weren’t QUITE as tight as they were with the 77, but it was still impressive. I got to hang around in the tar pit park for all of the dress rehearsal, which was pretty interesting. I’m not sure how much they all practiced together beforehand, (probably not at all, it must be hard to organize that many people) so watching things come together made the final product even more interesting.
There wasn’t any of the nonsense from last year with thousands of people getting turned away at the gate, thanks to the actual ticket system employed, but there was quite a line for the custom screened t-shirts. Actually there were two, one to get the shirt itself and one to get it screened. Things just seemed to run smoother this year, which was nice after the confusing frenzy in New York.
Some things were strange though. Right before everyone was supposed to line up to get in to the actual concert there was a traffic…incident. Since there were a lot of extra cars parked on the street for the event it created some slightly different driving conditions. A little old lady got confused, clipped a parked car and smashed into a tree, right in front of the metal security gate for the concert entrance line. We had to wait a while longer than expected to get in, but the human traffic drama unfolding made it interesting. During the concert itself, the drummer right in front of me just got up from his kit and left for a few minutes, and an audience member replaced him. It was actually a smooth transition because the audience guy had some skills. Never a dull moment!
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