12 posts tagged “matt bellamy”
Muse at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
What an experiece. Wow. There is no concert better than a Muse concert! Matt Bellamy is a freakin god on the guitar!
We got to SF on Sunday, checked into our hotel, and had dim sum. Mmmmm, dim sum. ;)
We went to the DJ gig that night. Unfortunately, we had to leave before Dom did his thing because it was 1 am and Rico had to work the next morning. Oh well. From other reports, we didn't really miss that much. Also, apparently I was standing less than 5 ft away from judytuna and we didn't recognize each other. Oh well. We were totally going to hook up and chat, but we didn't organize it well enough.
Earlier that day, Carrie got out her tickets just to make sure they were there. I then realized that I had completely forgotten to bring my tickets! I freaked! Luckily I still had time. So on Monday morning I took Rico to work in San Carlos, and then drove down to SJ to get the tix. Got back by about 10:30, just in time to get ready and check out of the hotel. Whew. Crisis averted. Imagine if I hadn't realized until a few minutes before the show!!
The Line
As soon as we were checked out of the hotel, we went to go stand in line. Yep, at 11 am. We met some really cool people. Katie was there by herself, so we invited her to play cards with us and chat and such. She handpaints Vans shoes to make some extra cash. She had on Origin of Symmetry shoes, and showed us the pair she'd painted for Matt. Here are some of the shoes shes made:
Very cool. If she posts a picture of the ones she made for Matt, I'll post it here too. It was awesome. Black shoes that fade to green towards the front with a futuristic cityscape on the top, being flooded by water with red crashing waves at the toe. If she got them to him, I'm sure he loved them!
If you like her work, check out her site here. Help get her to Wembley!
The people in front of us were cool too. One was actually reading about classical history! Of course, what would you expect from hardcore Muse fans? Of course they're intelligent! Muse is "rock for clever people." ;)
They also really helped us out in the concert, but we'll get that later.
I went to go get my merchandise. I bought two tshirts, the grey one with the winged spaceman, and the green girly one. Unfortunately at some point during the concert these shirts got stolen, so I wasted my $60. :(
Immigrant
The openers were Immigrant, a crazy mustache-filled band that wasn't half bad. Click the link to hear their music. Not bad, and the keyboardist had an amazing mustache! ;)
I'd also seen them the previous night at the club, and they were much better at the concert. Probably had something to do with sound quality and the size of the stage/crowd.
Muse
I have to say: wow. I've seen Muse before. But this night, they were on fire! First of all, it was the longest setlist I've ever heard. I got a glimpse of it before the show from one of the staff. I knew the last two songs were Plug In Baby and Knights of Cydonia. I kept waiting for them to start, and they kept *not starting.* It was ridiculously awesome!
Here's the setlist:
Take A Bow
Hysteria
Supermassive Black Hole
Map Of The Problematique <~~~ from our show
Butterflies And Hurricanes
Assassin
Sing For Absolution
Citizen Erased
Hoodoo
Feeling Good
Sunburn
Starlight
Blues Jam <~~~ From LA show
Time Is Running Out
New Born
----- First Encore
Soldier's Poem <~~~ video thanks to judytuna
Invincible
Kaoss Jam <~~~ video thanks to judytuna (you MUST check this out)
Stockholm Syndrome
----- Second Encore
City Of Delusion <~~~ video thanks to judytuna
Plug In Baby
Knights Of Cydonia
Yes, that's right, TWENTY SONGS (22 if you count the Blues and Kaoss jams). They played for a full TWO HOURS. This is not heard of, especially in the States.
Fun Moments
Spinny circles during Plug In Baby and in a couple other songs!
The freaking Kaoss Jam! It was incredible. He did the whole thing on his guitar, and it sounded like some kick ass electronica music! Go look at Judy's video of it, it really was incredible!
As Judy also said, the vocals on Hoodoo were absolutely flooring. Haunting and beautiful and just...brilliant.
Not So Fun Moments
Having my tshirts stolen. :(
Some guy being a complete douche and provoking one of the guys I was with to the point that he earned himself a well earned death threat.
General pushiness. It was a *really* rough show, although it wasn't so bad for me because I'm am freaking lucky. Between my man, Carrie and her man, and the people we met in line, I was pretty well protected. There was just this skinny ass girl next to me with hipbones that dug into my thigh and hurt like hell. I got back at her by angling my leg so that my knee dug into her thigh for most of the concert. ;)
I can't tell you how much going to a concert like this makes me love my boyfriend to death. He works so hard to protect me, and I know he doesn't like it. But he definitely makes me feel safe, and it makes me feel incredibly loved. Thanks baby!
Picture Time!
I know I already posted the best pics, but there were some not so good ones that now look good thanks to some editing. Here are some of my favorites:
The Grunge Set:
This one came out really awesome. Only his hand and the guitar came out clearly, the rest was blurry, so I emphasized the blurry and softened it up. It came out really cool.
Some other nice touched up photos:
"Muse have picked up the award for Best British Band at this year's NME Awards. Matt Bellamy also won sexiest male. He'll be dining out on that for years."
Show us a burst of energy.
Sorry, more Muse. :)
From NME:
“Let’s Burn Down the Houses of Parliament!”
First Bono and friends saved the world, now Muse are ready to fire up the revolution.
Rock’s grand conspirator leans closer. “I see the only thing to do,” he mutters, in case any hidden microphones might catch them, “is to build some Molotov cocktails and start bunging them at fucking MPs. I’m not sure what else there is to do. It’s almost got to the point where it’s ‘Let’s just have a civil war.’”
Did I hear you right? You’re suggesting a full on revolution?
Scanning for governmental surveillance devices, The Grand Conspirator eyes the arena floor where a 100-strong crew, six hours later than planned, are racing to erect the band’s stage by door time.
“There’s not enough of that in music,” he continues. “We’re born into this bondage, this system. It’s pleasant, it’s a nice world, but put it this way: the vote we all get is useless. The concept of democracy is a fucking joke. Rock’s supposed to shake things up and say, ‘Fuck that, this is shit, man! Let’s burn down the Houses of Parliament!”
For too long now the Powers That Be have dismissed Matt Bellamy as ‘That crackpot little fella from Muse’, his gabbings about the Apocalypse, alien visitations from tenth planets and other such David Icke-isms disguising the full extent of his threat to the world order. But as he plots his band’s forthcoming infiltration of the UK’s entertainment complexes – in which Muse perform galactic future-rock epics like ‘Starlight’, ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ and ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ on a stage with mind-control machines, spy satellites and the mysterious HAARP installation in Alaska – his proclamations have become more politically focused and theoretically sound: the 9/11 conspiracies; the governmental mind control; the corruption of democracy; the, er, lizard people walking among us. Surveillance has also traced, on recent genre-crushing fourth album ‘Black Holes and Revelations’, a lyrical shift away from the biblical soothsaying towards firm revolutionary action: the anti-war coup inciting on ‘Assassin’ and ‘Soldier’s Poem’, the cries of “Destroy this city of delusion!”, the ‘Exo-Politics’ theory that politicians are using the threat of alien attack as an excuse to put weapons in space aimed at far more Earthbound enemies.
Notebooks out, anarchists: Matt Bellamy has some truths to impart. The Truths They Didn’t Want You To Read…
The HAARP Mystery
Originally, Muse had intended to use the same stage show for the current European tour as they had for their triumphant Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds Festival headline shows. Six weeks before the tour, however, set designers were presented with a new prototype: a series of pylons sending messages to a massive ‘fully loaded satellite’ which rises up to reveal drummer Dominic Howard playing inside. The design, Matt explains, is based on the American government’s High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Programme in Alaska – a million experiment that an assortment of critics (environmentalists, Native Americans and Alaskan citizens), believe could be used by the military for everything from weather control to mind control.
Matt: “No-one really knows what it is but modern warfare and modern weapons have moved into this next stage. There’s a big battle going on as to who’ll control the weather.”
I see. And how much hard fact do you have to support this theory?
Matt: (Laughs) “Not much! Bt it’s out there if you want to find it. This HAARP thing, the government are saying it’s for communications with submarines and their own spacecraft, but scientists have said that they’re really trying to tap into the ionosphere, where a lot of weather stuff takes place. Interfere with that and you can manipulate the weather.”
9/11
Matt has recently claimed that he believes the September 11 attacks have been a set-up. In what way?
Matt: “It’s a tough one. There’s never been any hard evidence that ties any of the usual suspects with this. In fact, the evidence they did use [to incriminate the alleged terrorists] was laughable. The plane’s black box that keeps all the information, that melted. But apparently a passport with one of the hijacker’s names flew out of the window and landed on the ground. That’s laughable. I’m not saying that it wasn’t an attack on the United States – it was, there’s no question about that. The question is who was the attack done by and for what reason? I think there’s far more to suggest that a select amount of people who are reaping vast benefits from the war that’s taking place at the moment… they’ve got the means and the motive to try to pull something like that off. We’ve got to be careful we don’t let these people make mugs of us. There was never an independent investigation into what took place yet we’ve waged wars in its name.”
What about North Korea – why aren’t we invading them? They’ve definitely tested nukes!
Matt: “Have they? I don’t know if they have. That’s what the news tells us, but I don’t know if that’s true or not. To what extent should you believe what you’re told? It’s all a big fucking set-up. They’re just trying to lead us all to believe that that’s the right thing to do so when they do it we all go, Yeah!’. What’s behind it all is keeping a population feeling under threat, all that does is give an excuse to increase control and take away the freedoms of individuals. You know you’re living in dangerous times when simply having a different opinion is dangerous. For people to stand up and say things that maybe I’m saying and get pointed at and ridiculed, that’s a sign that we live in extremely limited, narrow-minded times, far, far to the right , and it’s just getting worse.”
Knights of Cydonia
‘Knights of Cydonia’, the song, is Muse’s stonking great epic of a horse-snorting, fret-frotting majesty and easily the most prog single released since 1972. Cydonia the place, meanwhile, is a region of Mars which hides, Matt believes, the hidden secrets of human/alien evolution.
Matt: “Cydonia is a region where there’s various remains of what looks like pyramids. It’s got evidence of old ancient structures or civilisations even.. Where it gets interesting is that there are people out there now who are realising that the whole pyramid area in North Africa, not just the Giza area, in one enormous, very in-depth star map if you look at it from above. They’re trying to lay out some kind of message to someone who’s in the sky. The same layout has been found on Mars, on Cydonia, and someone has linked them all together. And if you look at Washington from above it’s exactly the same as the pyramids, the way they’re laid out. There’s a whole lot of secrecy out there about some of the monuments that are on Earth and also things that might be, which I hope will be, on Cydonia on Mars.
The Lizard People
Which brings us nicely to Matt’s recent revelations that he’s not entirely in disagreement with David Icke’s theory that we have already been invaded by alien lizard people disguised as human beings. Except Matt’s ideas are rather more scientifically grounded. Although still somewhat mental.
Matt: “I don’t think there are aliens with us now, but I certainly think part of our DNA at least is not from this Earth. There’s a massive void of fossil records – there should be billions of fossils and skeleton structures of all these different stages of Neanderthal, which there aren’t. There’s one or two. I think there was definitely Neanderthal man around but there was a cross pollination-type situation taking place.”
Could I be one of the lizard people? How would I know?
“There’s a rumour that there’s a certain bloodline that is susceptible to possession from this other entity which lives outside our realm of understanding of the three dimensions. It’s the royal bloodline obviously, which goes back a long, long way. Check out those bloodlines!”
So the Queen is a lizard person?
Matt: “She might be. Why are they all breeding with each other?”
To keep the money?
Matt: “To keep the money? Nah.”
Rumour, smokescreen, secrets and lies. If only our own eyes and ears are to be believed then we can be utterly certain that of only one thing: Muse live in 2006 is a sensory blitzkrieg of turbo-firing rock euphoria and synapse-dazzling electronic overload. Over a set of non-stop ultrahits – from the opening doomsday synth-metal crescendo of ‘Take A Bow’, through the pop opera of supernovas of ‘Hysteria’, ‘Starlight’ and ‘Butterflies and Hurricanes’ to the return of the bouncy weather balloons for a brain-mushing ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – this is a show, beamed direct from the Saturn ShockWaves Enormodrome, so breathtaking it rips your lungs out through your eyeballs. Matt plays a guitar that looks like it’s got HAL, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey, flashing different colours on it during ‘Invincible’; Dom plays a transparent drumkit in his 50-foot hydraulic satellite throughout; galaxies burst, suns explode; cities burn and evil warbot armies march on the screens above. Like some kind of thunder-speed Hitocalypse attraction at Alton Towers, their 90 minutes of space-punk brilliance leaves you dazed, dazzled and begging for one more ride. And thus, tonight in Madrid, another 9,000 Muse stormtroopers are readied for the final battle.
Post-show, we invade the dressing room celebrations and corner The Grand Conspirator again, ready for our orders. Which MPs shall we firebomb first, oh great leader?
Matt shakes his head. “The whole mind-manipulation thing, the whole control situation, it’s far more complex than people realise. A revolution of the mind needs to take place before there can be anything physical. You have to be at that point where you look at a newspaper and think, ‘It’s all just shit,’ before you can even begin to consider doing anything physical about it.”
He’s suddenly quiet, as if picking up a signal from a bugging antenna.
“I’m not going to lead a revolution,” he says, then whispers, “but I’m happy to join in on one.”
Wake up Britain: the revolution will be maxi-sized.
*****
As crazy as it seems, it also seems he might have a point. It would be foolish to dismiss everything he says as insane, just as it would be foolish to hang on every word. I respect him though, for daring to think outside of the information he's fed.
Show us a picture of someone or something jumping.
Submitted by Elizabeth Lee.
Yeah, Muse again. Sorry. :)
My local alternative station, LIVE 105, had a link posted to see the Starlight music video by Muse. Unfotunately they had a really crappy picture of Matt Bellamy posted next to it. It didn't even look like him!
So I emailed the web guy this picture (which you've seen a lot lately in my blog). And now, if you go to the website, you can see that this is the picture posted next to the link! Yay! The nerd in me almost feels like I'm famous now. Ha.
While you're there admiring it, click on the link and watch the video for Starlight.
ETA: If you right click on the photo at the website, and click on properties, you get this message: "Photo courtesy of listener Kristen"! That's me! :)
Pretty standard performance as far as Muse is concerned. That said, it was still epic and intense and almost literally swept you out of your chair and into the sky. Every time I see them live I'm blown away by their sheer brilliance.
They only sung ten songs. It was only and hour long set. It was over way before I was ready for it to be, and it left me feeling breathless and lightheaded.
They opened with Knights of Cydonia, which is a great opener. It gets the crowd excited and sets the tone of urgency and drama. Of course, the crowd wasn't all that into it, seeing as it was a pretty large venue full of people who didn't necessarily come to see Muse.
But for me in my little corner of heaven in the 7th row, it was empowering
and awesome. Not as awesome as the SF show though, because they didn't
have the words flashing on the screens. The stage was set was a bit simpler.
Other highlights included Plug In Baby, which is one of my favorite songs. I'd write down the entire setlist, but I honestly dont' remember it completely. For me, each song is perfect and unique while it's happening, but then once it's over it all blends together into one amazing event.
The closer was perfect. Strong, and finishes with such power that you can't do anything except be completely blown away by it. In fact, it's such a powerful song that I'm going to include it in this post right now. The video is actually from the Reading Festival, which I will go into later (since I plan on also posting Butterflies and Hurricanes for your enjoyment).
All in all, standard but short set for Muse, epic and powerful set for the Download Festival. No one can match their intensity and purpose.
This brings us to Beck. Ah, Beck, thank you for reminding me just how good you are. Beck is just a lot of fun. Before he came onto the stage, a bunch of puppets (one for each band member), came on started to sing Loser. Yes, that is an actual clip from our show, and no I didn't make it, and sorry for the bad quality.
He had a fun, gimmicky, entertaining set. The puppets were filmed on their tiny stage throughout the performance and that was the image that was shown on the giant screens behind them.
Also, at one point, when he started playing some older, folkier stuff, the rest of the band sat down at a dinner table right on stage. Crazy tambourine guy acted as the waiter, and he brought them menus and salads. Loads of fun! Then at some point they all picked up their silverware and started banging on the plates and cups to create a rythym for the song! One guy even was doing that
Then they had a little skit that they'd performed and recorded earlier that day with the puppets. They did things like film them fighting and then rolling down the grass hill at the venue. They did a Snakes on a Plane parody where the puppets got attacked by a giant rubber snake while in the safety of their tour bus (the real one, quite intriguing to watch a puppet open a full sized bus door).
At one point, one of the puppets kneeled in front of the 49ers logo (football team). He said "Please God, let the 49ers with the World Series this year!" Ha ha, right? Not that funny, but chuckle. Next you have the Beck puppet kneeling before the Raiders logo (other football team). "Please Raider God, give me the power to rock harder than Muse!"
Ha! Even Beck knew what he was up against! How can you even hope to match the intensity of performance of a band like Muse? The only option? Comedy and entertainment. And Beck sure did deliver. Well done, Beck, well done.
*****
Okay, back to Muse. They headlined the Reading Festival in the UK this year. This is the biggest music festival pretty much in the world. People as far as the eye can see. Every band dreams of headlining it. Muse used to go to it when they were boys and dreamed of being on that stage one day. This year, they did it. And it was the *best* live performance they'd ever done, and perhaps one of the best live performances done by anyone ever. You can watch all the videos from it if you click on the collection to the left.
However, for your convenience, I'm going to post two of them large size so that you don't have to go anywhere to see them. First Butterflies and Hurricanes. If you've never seen/heard Muse, this is the song to test them out on. Watch Matt's fingers on guitar and on the piano, and listen to his voice as it sweeps you away. Brilliant. Second comes Take a Bow, the awesome closer that I told you about earlier. They used it to close Reading too. Watch the drama and the intensity, and try to imagine yourself there and how it would feel.
Okay, I'll shut up now. Thanks for listening. Hope you can enjoy the genius of Matt Bellamy and Muse as much as I do! If you want to see more pics, there are more in my photo album. Take a look!
From the article in the San Jose Mercury News on the show I went to Saturday:
*****
Muse and marionettes were the big stars Saturday at the nine-hour Download Festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre.
The British band Muse commanded the crowd's attention with a powerful, focused set of arena rock as the sun set, and Beck's puppets stole the show from the festival's headliner with some truly inspired shtick.
...
As good as some of the performances earlier in the day had been, it was as if Download's slate had been wiped clean the minute Muse took the stage.
Perhaps somebody forgot to tell Muse that it wasn't the headliner, because the band ripped through its anthemic set like U2's evil twin. Working a stark white stage, the vocalist Matthew Bellamy channeled the drama of Queen's Freddie Mercury and the intensity of Radiohead's Thom Yorke as he led his band through epic renditions of tracks from Muse's fifth album, ``Black Holes and Revelations.''
Indeed, the set was a revelation. Muse has been shrugging off Radiohead comparisons for years. Yet, delivering intoxicating, powerful gigs like this will keep those comparisons right on coming.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs really had no business following Muse. The buzz on this New York art-punk band has grown so quiet that you can hear crickets chirping. Not surprisingly, the group, which is led by the overly hyper vocalist Karen O, simply couldn't match the heights achieved by Muse as it ran through its increasingly tired blend of glitz and garage.
Thankfully, Beck and his puppets closed out the night with a hilarious show that appealed to all the interest groups in the alt-rock nation. Actually, the puppets came out first -- brilliant 2-foot-tall replicas of Beck and his band -- performing ``Loser'' on a red-curtained stage beside the drum riser before the real musicians kicked in on the second verse.
*****
More personal recaps and pics to follow either later today or tomorrow.
The best cover ever is:
There were a couple others I was thinking about posting...but this one is definitely their most famous cover. So good that I forget who did the original! They also did a great cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "House of the Rising Sun." Good stuff.
Have a listen. :)
