The Boys Are Back

My favorite Kiwis have returned with another music video after winning a Grammy earlier this year. I dig the mustache.

Beatles for Sale

It was Christmas with the Beatles, as I snagged the last two tickets to Cirque du Soleil’s LOVE at the Mirage. That’s 26 Beatles hits mashed up a bit and set to fantastical 360-degree theatrics from the air, below ground, and in one number—covering you with a great white sheet in what must be the largest slumber party in Vegas.

The album begins with the twittering of birds from “Across the Universe” (Past Masters, Vol. 2 version) which then gives way to the a cappella “Because.” We hear the opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night” followed by Ringo’s drum solo in “The End” which leads into “Get Back.” Critics and fans alike have already roasted the album, released last month, calling it a marketing gimmick for a bland album.

But I appreciate the details. That is, I think I disagree. Here’s what I like:

• The end of “Eleanor Rigby” fading into a beautiful “Julia” transition.
• “Gnik Nus” is the cymbal portion of “Sun King” played backwards; I can’t think of a finer set up for “Something,” one of my favorites. More on this later.
• “Strawberry Fields Forever” begins with inverted lyrics: “No one, I think, is in my tree/I mean it must be high or low.” This changes everything. (I confess that for many years, I misunderstood these lyrics to be: “No one, I think, is in matry. I mean it must be higher love.”—with “matry” being Brit slang for “matrimony.”)
• The George Harrison “Within You Without You” mashed with “Tomorrow Never Knows,” the bed sheet number; if you see the show, you will never forget this song. And you will want to get up and dance.
• The start of “Octopus’s Garden” has the comfort of childhood or freshly baked bread.
• The new recording of strings for “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

The album splices and dices; it rearranges; it speeds things up; it slows things down; it reverses tracks and doubles back; it mixes disparate elements and creates something new. It’s not a Revolution, but it follows the Beatles tradition. And frankly, I don’t care to have Dangermouse or the like mucking things up.

The strip

Entrance to the theater

Footsteps in the hallway (lifted from Flickr)

Now, about the show. I struck up a conversation with the Ukrainian man to my left. He rattled off half a dozen Cirque shows he had seen. I raised an eyebrow in the artificial twilight, but continued to ask questions, fascinated by people with a passion for anything. Soon I had a rough sketch of his life story: he resides in the San Francisco Bay area; he works in a military capacity and is thus a global trekker; he became a U.S. citizen about 15 years ago and has raised his children to speak Ukrainian and English fluently; he was born in 1959 and knows all the Beatles songs; he can say five phrases in Japanese proudly, although not well.

He offered me a swig of scotch from his flask. I laughed with heartfelt amusement and almost accepted. When one looks broadly—especially in Vegas, with its penchant for debauchery and idiocy—he or she often walks away disappointed. But on a micro level, people are grand on the most unimaginable scales.

The lights dimmed. The show starts off with four semi-transparent screens dividing the circular theater into sections and showing projections of clouds against blue sky.

The wall screens then show a Mary Poppins-like rooftop silhouette of London with a caption that reads “Beatles Performance: London Rooftop, 1969” synchronized with the familiar “Hard Day’s Night” opening chord. The four screens project silhouettes of each member of the Fab Four and suddenly drop to the floor. All lights fall onto center stage, where there’s a concert scene happening on a rooftop that emerges from the floor.

I won’t give you the play-by-play, but imagine lots of shifting stage parts, things falling from the sky and sinking into the floor, bendy people on ropes, and colorful costumes.

Their interpretation of “Something” was very simple. A shirtless man flounced around on center stage as four women in white glided through the air on wires, producing a multi-dimensional ballet. A dizzying Twilight Zone black-and-white lined pattern moved on the screens. I don’t think it worked.

Many Beatles songs seem so simple and straightforward, but interpretations change as life moves forward. I used to focus on the song’s romantic notion of a singular experience, the mythical “One.” But it’s the refrain that has the emphasis, and rightly so. The lines “You’re asking me will my love grow/I don’t know, I don’t know/You stick around now, it may show/I don’t know, I don’t know” add complexity. Amongst these bald declarations of love, it’s the uncertainty and the impossibility of ever getting to truly know someone that offer balance and frisson to any union. The words are lucid, inscrutable, and poignant all at once.

By the time “Strawberry Fields Forever” took the stage in the form of a piano containing liquid soap, I found myself confusedly wiping away a tear. But it wasn’t for long, because the bed sheet number was about to begin. A child on a bed appears on stage, and several friends join him. The bed begins to rise in the air as a sheet underneath descends. As the sitar rock music crescendos, the sheet grows exponentially until the entire audience on the lower floor is covered by a rippling white mass. The bed rises to the ceiling showered in blue lights as acrobats dangle in the air, evoking an Arabian Nights suspense. As the song ends, the bed floats back down to earth and disappears into an abyss. The sheet follows in a swirling whirlpool of liquid white, revealing a stunned audience—row by row—until it, too, follows the bed into the netherworld.

One of the most powerful performances accompanies “A Day in the Life” near the end of the show. Its placement after the gentle strings of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” provides brilliant build up to the haunting soundscape that is the hallmark of this song. (To this day, the only song that comes close to this beautiful confusion is Radiohead’s “How to Disappear Completely.”) A woman in red, who made a brief appearance earlier, returns. We see a pieced-together Volkswagen Beetle enter from the side. The woman glides through the air in its direction and the Beetle’s discrete parts separate as if in a car crash shown in slow motion. The lights flicker, the music surrounds us through the speakers in the seats, and we’re left with a spectacle on stage that must be witnessed in person.

The show is called “Love,” and it ends on that theme. The screens flashed clips of the Beatles in their different phases: the mod haircuts, the shaggy anti-war postures, the colorful Sgt. Pepper’s days. The huge cast, decked out in full regalia, danced on stage, but everyone watched the screens in quiet rapture. The album ends as unassumingly as it begins, with the sounds of a show wrapping up, and the words “This is Johnny Rhythm, saying goodnight to ye’s all and God bless ye’s.”

A show like this is ultimately doomed, though. If it fails, it angers loyal fans and makes no money. And if it succeeds, the best it can do is leave you wanting the real thing.

"Shut up and dance!"

I put World Cup blogging on hold for a Radiohead break, although the Brasil match with Kaka's winning goal and the fan taking the field (must-see video clip) provided more comedy riches ("Kaka in the hole!" or, what if Kaka had hit the fan? It never ends).

VHM got us last-minute box tickets in the Theater at Madison Square Garden. I surveyed the audience after the Black Keys finished their set. It is a portrait of hipsters with money; click to enlarge and see scenes from the hottest ticket in town:

A Portrait of Hipsters with Money

The set list featured many new songs, one of which sounded New Order-esque:

1. "You And Whose Army?"
2. "The National Anthem"
3. "2+2=5"
4. "15 Step"
5. "Morning Bell"
6. "Arpeggi"
7. "Videotape"
8. "Kid A"
9. "Fake Plastic Trees"
10. "Climbing Up The Walls"
11. "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)" a.k.a. "Nude"
12. "Bangers 'n Mash"
13. "Idioteque"
14. "There There"
15. "Street Spirit"
16. "Bodysnatchers"
17. "Lucky"

Encore 1
18. "I Might Be Wrong"
19. "Down Is The New Up"
20. "The Bends"
21. "Silent Night" > "Everything In Its Right Place"

Encore 2
22. "House of Cards"
23. "How to Disappear Completely"

You bet I danced. I say with absolute certainty that I danced more than anyone in that pathetic audience. The pit looked listless, like a group surveying a series of Rembrandts. I discussed the World Cup with one of the drunk guys in our box before the show started; he was from Mexico. But he tried to chitchat throughout the show until I finally shouted, "Shut up and dance!"

Thom's masterful voice lilts unexpectedly, especially during one part of "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)." My video clip is messy but illustrates the point:

So don't get any big ideas, they're not going to happen.

Thom rocks it out at MSG (photo by the talented VHM)

We sang along to many of the songs, placing emphasis on choice lines:

• Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there
• We are accidents/waiting to happen
• It wears me out, it wears me out
• And if I could be who you wanted/If I could be who you wanted/All the time, all the time
• I feel my luck could change
• It's gonna be a glorious day!
• I wanna live, breathe/I wanna be part of the human race

Tom bangs the drums

The climax was definitely "The Bends." The crowd went wild; everyone sang along and danced; we put our arms around strangers and sang to one another. We felt euphoric—indeed, at ease.