Portishead ~ Live at the Greek Theatre ~ 10/21/11

I'm beginning to feel like all my concert reviews sound alike.... because I love the music SO MUCH! But whatever. I go to concerts because it IS like a religious experience for me (I guess! lol ~ not being much of a traditionally religious sort of person, generally...)

Friday night was Portishead. After hanging out at the Yahoo!Answers website for several years and making lots of friends with lots of different tastes in rock music, Portishead had made it's way onto my radar a few years ago. I liked what I heard, but hadn't bothered to pursue it or get any of their albums or anything... but then a few months ago I saw that they were coming to the Greek Theatre. One of my favorite venues ever~ easy to get to & just an all around beautiful place to go to enjoy some music. So I bought two tickets.

I'm going to have to check my "Mo Music" database to see how many times I've been there, because it's a LOT. Before I was married with children, I was living in south Berkeley and then north Oakland (one and two miles from the campus, respectively) and volunteer ushering several shows per year, seeing tons of concerts, many of groups I'd only heard of and knew none of their music. So with that as my background, now, years later, I'm willing to occasionally take a chance on buying a couple of tickets to see a band that I don't know much about. And Friday night turned into one of those wonderful discoveries ~ a night filled with the kind of music that touches my soul. And it always does my heart good to see that I am not the only one! It was obviously a sold-out show ~ filled with like-minded people.

I went with my friend Gina. She drove (yay and thank you for that, Gina!). The two of us have been to several concerts together and we've sorta got it down. I don't like to spend good money on food that I don't like, so we've learned to get there early and tailgate. We make 'picnic' type food, snacks, munchies, beer and often something stronger, and when we get to where we're going, I'll jump into the back seat with my own center 'table' and drink holder and Gina will stay in the drivers' seat with her own center 'station', and we'll have a little car party. We parked a block away from the Greek, and actually had a 'view' from where we were parked. So kicking it in the car until pretty much the last minute was very nice and relaxing. Plus we got a nice little buzz on ;-)

When we walked into the venue it was only about 5 or 10 minutes until showtime. So we got another beer and found a great place to sit in the 7th row! A bit off to the side, but great seats nonetheless. Nice, friendly people around us ~ and the girls we sat beside said they'd been saving those seats (altho there was no jacket or blanket or anything on them ~ just two empty seats that we'd espied from above) but they said that their friends were late so they snoozed and loozed. No hard feelings.

The warm up band was named Thought Forms. Happy the guy sitting beside me knew who they were because there was no introduction for either band we saw that night... the musicians for both Thought Forms and Portishead would simply walk on stage, pick up their instruments, and begin playing.

About two minutes into Thought Forms' first song I had this overwhelming feeling that "these are my people". Very spacey, ambient but heavy music ~ with moaning rather than words (at least as far as I could tell) ~ but beautiful, beautiful, deep and sonic sounds. Two guitarists / vocalists and a drummer~ and I'll admit that I got a little mind-wandering when focusing on the guitarists/vocalists... but then, I started watching the drummer, and it was so reminiscent of Pink Floyd "Live at Pompeii", with the drummer ~ usually the guy just keeping the beat ~ as a full-fledged partner / an equal to the guitarists/vocalists. He was wonderful and gave the other two a framework to work within. *They* were wonderful. They made me think of a Pink Floyd / Tool / Cowboy Junkies sound. All favorites in my book. The drummer would eventually stop playing, and then the other two would sort of wind it down, and then the songs would be over. It was fun, different, and very enjoyable.

Then it was time for Portishead. Did I mention that I knew *none* of their songs? lol And here is where my music reviews all start sounding alike, because they were ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. There, I'll type in caps so that I REALLY make my point. It felt as close as anyone has come to seeing Pink Floyd in the however many years it's been since they broke up. Except with a single female voice on vocals ~ and a heavier, occasionally industrial sound coming from the "percussionist" who played drums, scratched on turntables, and more. So hearing Portishead put me into a 'Pink Floyd meets Tool and NIN' mindset, but with a Christine McVie-esq vocalist. She reminded me of a thirtysomething Christine physically, with her classic British looks and hair, but also reminded me of her because of the amount of heart and soul that she put into her singing. Every song had the emotional timbre of "Songbird"* ... but different. Original. Unique. Fabulous.

Six people on stage. Drummer, bassist, guitarist, keyboardist, percussionist, and vocalist.

I came away from the show *in love* with them, and am now, finally, in the market for some Portishead CDs and/or DVDs.


*Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird" was likewise recorded at one of UC Berkeley's concert venues, Zellerbach Hall, as shown in the video.