What an amazing year it has been so far for music. I've been to Coachella. I've seen Tool live three times! I've found a bunch of new amazing CDs (that I have yet to review, but will soon). And after not playing a single show in the United States for over 8 years, I have seen Massive Attack twice this year! They played in Berkeley California, at the Greek Theatre on Friday night, and Bill and I went up there to check it out:
I had never been up to the Greek before, and it is a pretty neat place to see a concert. It's open air, and every seat has a great view of the stage. Massive Attack managed to absolutely fill the arena with sound (I wonder if any of the earthquake sensors caught it?) as they vibrated the Greek by playing:
- Live With Me
- Risingson
- Black Milk
- Man Next Door
- Butterfly Caught
- Hymn Of The Big Wheel
- Mezzanine
- Teardrop
- Angel
- Futureproof
- Safe From Harm
- Inertia Creeps
- Unfinished Sympathy
- Group Four
Particular highlights for me were the first song - "Live With Me" and "Safe From Harm". "Live With Me" is Massive Attack's "new" song, and it appears on their greatest hits album, "Collected". It was written by Robert del Naja, and as such, continues with the more guitar-focused vibe of more recent Massive Attack songs. That being said, I really like this song, and am considering buying "Collected" just for it.
"Safe From Harm" was really one of the key songs for me, however, because I never-in-a-million years thought that I would hear Massive Attack play this song live. When they played it at Coachella, I was stunned. So, I was sortof expecting them to play it again tonight, and I wasn't disappointed. Not only do I really like this song, but it is one of the few off of Massive Attack's first album, "Blue Lines", that I still listen to. What is a amazing about how the band performs it now, is that the song has morphed into a treatise against Bush and the Iraq war.
All throughout the show, Massive Attack was displaying text and statistics on several LED-style video displays. In fact, before the band took the stage, they spent several minutes displaying fun facts about Berkeley (that the climate is considered to be Mediterranean, that 90% of the population voted for Kerry in 2004, about the Marijuana ordinance, etc.). During "Safe From Harm", Massive Attack's statisticians were at it again, but this time with statistics from the Iraq war.
I wish I had brought a better camera, because I would like to present some decent shots of what this was like (you can try Flickr for some decent in-concert photos, but I didn't see any that captured the text). It all made for an incredibly powerful experience - I have been thinking for awhile now that this Iraq stuff is a mess, but that really drove it home.
Along with Robert del Naja (3D), Massive Attack had Mr. Horace Andy, Deborah Miller, and Elizabeth Frazer on vocals:
If you squint, you can make out Elizabeth Frazer dressed in white.
While I'm not usually a big fan of the Horace Andy songs on the albums, he is great live. So is Deborah Miller - her strong voice made the best of "Safe From Harm", and really blew away "Unfinished Sympathy". Unfortunately, while Elizabeth Frazer's delicate voice makes for a great contrast on Mezzanine, she just gets blown away by the band live. I think they mic'd her up a bit more last night, which made for a better performance than Coachella, but it's unfortunate that her voice doesn't do as well in a live setting.
All in all, it was an amazing show. Massive Attack is (to quote Patrick) insane live - at any given time, they had at least two drummers, a guitarist, a bassist, someone on keyboard, and sometimes 3D working other machines and gadgets. This all combined to produce a truly massive wall of sound, that surprisingly sounded great.
If you get a chance to see Massive Attack live, I truly recommend it.
-Andy.
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