By Andrew Bansal
Day 1, August 1st 2013:
House of Blues, West Hollywood CA: The annual Sunset Strip Music Festival kicked off its 2013 edition last evening at the House of Blues, with a short presentation ceremony for this year’s honoree, the one and only Joan Jett, and for the first time ever, a SSMF honoree performed a full set on the Thursday of the festival as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts took the House of Blues stage much to the delight of the crowd gathered here.
The festivities began in full earnest at around 6 PM as the red carpet rolled down and various music and non-music personalities started walking on it to make an appearance for the press. Soon after, everybody headed in and waited for the event to begin. There were no individual tickets sold for this event. The crowd was made up of the SSMF 3-day pass holders and invited guests only, and the venue dished out a complimentary buffet and open bar for the attendees as per the annual tradition.
The show started at 8 PM with the hour-long presentation ceremony wherein a series of people came up on stage to talk about their association and history with Joan Jett. The list of guest speakers included Carmen Electra and Margaret Cho, the owners of the Whisky A Go Go and the Roxy Theatre, the mayor of West Hollywood Abbey Land who declared the day as Joan Jett Day in West Hollywood and presented Joan with the Elmer Valentine award, and the mayor of the Sunset Strip who gifted Joan a Gibson guitar. Joan came up on stage to accept these awards and say a few words. It was generally a smooth ceremony even though it was funny to note that Joan Jett herself actually gave the most concise speech as compared to some of the other speakers who just rambled on.
The ceremony ended at 9 and according to the schedule, the Blackhearts set was supposed to begin straight after, but instead we were shown Joan Jett music videos on the projection screen for an hour. Even though everybody was in high spirits it still felt like a long wait and was perhaps the only negative aspect of this entire evening. Finally at 10 PM, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts appeared on stage and began the set with ‘Bad Reputation’. From then on a great time was had by each and every person in attendance as the band rocked this venue in the truest sense of the word. Joan sounded surprisingly fantastic on vocals and had such a gracious stage presence, it’s hard to believe her age. She most certainly put girls less than half her age to complete shame with the way she looked and performed last night. She hadn’t played a proper Sunset Strip show in a long time, and the quality of this show made it totally worth the wait for all longtime Joan Jett fans in the audience.
Besides the much-demanded classics, they also played a couple of new songs that will be released on the next album ‘Unvarnished’, which is slated for release this fall. These new tunes weren’t bad at all and blended well with the older ones. Overall, it was a memorable evening capped off by an incredible performance by this year’s honoree. Joan Jett proved that she’s still very much a rocker. She carried herself excellently through her monologues between the songs as well. When you talk about ‘girl power’ in rock, based on last night’s show I can’t think of anyone more legit than Joan Jett. Her SSMF honor is indeed well deserved.
Set List:
1. Bad Reputation
2. Cherry Bomb
3. Do You Wanna Touch Me
4. Make It Back
5. Soulmates to Strangers
6. You Drive Me Wild
7. Fragile
8. Love Is Pain
9. TMI
10.Hard To Grow Up
11.French Song
12.Any Weather
13.I Love Rock N’ Roll
14.Crimson & Clover
15.I Hate Myself For Loving You
Encore:
16.Reality Mentality
17.A.C.D.C.
18.Bad Reputation (w/ Pat Smear)
19.Everyday People
Day 2, August 2nd 2013:
For a Friday night, there was a surprising lack of concert activity around the Strip on day 2 of the festival. Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts played the Viper Room, but even though the show was advertised as part of the festival, the venue had its individual tickets for the show and people with the 3-day festival passes were told to be in the ‘waiting line’ to allow the ticket holders to go in first. The same policy was imposed on media wristband holders as well, which is why we didn’t even get in. Not that I’m upset about missing Scott Weiland’s band, but it was definitely strange for the festival pass holders to be denied entry to a show that’s supposed to be part of the package.
Day 3, August 3rd 2013:
And finally, it was time for the third and final day of SSMF, with the street fest creating the vibe that SSMF has been known for over the past five years. As per the tradition, Sunset Boulevard was blocked between the Whisky and the Roxy with two outdoor main stages occupying each end of that piece of road, an outdoor side stage somewhere in a parking lot within that space, indoor shows going on at the Whisky and Roxy, beer gardens, various merch stalls and most importantly, people everywhere. Despite the fact that this year’s actual artist lineup for Day 3 did not induce any pre-show excitement in me, it still felt good to experience the festival and absorb its atmosphere. In terms of the live music, I had zero expectations but I was primed and ready to be surprised and blown away by any of the extremely small number of ‘rock’ artists in the lineup.
The first band I properly watched was San Francisco-based blues/hard rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who began their set at 6 PM. They’ve been around for more than 15 years and headline venues like the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Having never seen them before, I was curious to see what they’re like on stage. I was generally disappointed by their performance. It seriously lacked energy and enthusiasm. When a group of musicians looks and sounds as bored as BRMC did yesterday, it’s hard to even imagine a whole crowd of people feel any surge of excitement. Having said that, I thought the usage of Americana/folk elements in the music was quite interesting and their guitar sound was great. Based on this show, I would classify this band as one with good music but not as good of a live show. They would perhaps do well in hipster-centric gigs and venues, but they weren’t the right fit for this fest and despite the large majority of people being stoned, drunk and generally in high spirits even at this early point in the evening, no one was really enjoying BRMC’s set.
BRMC ended at 6:45 and I felt this huge void as there was nothing worth checking out for a while after that. So I simply walked around and noted some of the finer details and nuances associated with the show. I appreciated the fact that they don’t allow people to take their drinks outside the beer gardens and onto the street. I couldn’t imagine the mess Sunset Boulevard would be if they weren’t employing that rule. The 3rd outdoor stage, called ‘The Viper Room’s Guitar Center Stage’ was weirdly located behind one of the beer gardens and a bunch of food trucks, on a bare, dusty piece of parking space. It wasn’t exactly convenient to get there from the other stages and the set times clashed pretty much exactly with those of the West Stage bands, which didn’t help. As for indoor stages at the Whisky and Roxy, people had to queue up to get in and it seemed like a giant waste of time to stand in line while there was live music going on inside those venues. There is certainly room for improvement in this aspect of SSMF. Perhaps the whole fest should be played on outdoor stages only, or there needs to be a better system in place for the indoor venues to make sure people actually get to see the bands advertised on the lineup.
But these few shortcomings didn’t bother me nearly as much as the glaring lack of rock music did. I remember the 2009 edition having Ozzy as the headliner with Korn as support act (when they were still a decent band), and a multitude of local talent including The Donnas, The Binges and Hillbilly Herald. This used to be the festival that opened up my eyes and ears to great local hard rock bands such as these. Even the 2010 edition with Slash, Volbeat and others was largely a rock event. 2011 had Motley Crue and Manazrek-Krieger of The Doors as two of the main acts, while 2012 included Marilyn Manson, The Offspring, Bad Religion, Black Label Society, Quiet Riot and Jack Russell’s Great White as the rock artists. Sadly, SSMF 2013 was very sparse in its rock supplies and some of the essence of the Sunset Strip, known for its rock, was lost to a large extent. It would have helped if Joan Jett was the main stage headliner instead of playing the House of Blues on day 1. Yesterday, the rockers were nowhere to be seen in this crowd, and I felt like I out of place in a Guns N’ Roses shirt. On the Sunset Strip.
But in all honesty, one band that did surprise me with the quality of their performance was the headliner Linkin Park. For me, this band was an important gateway into the world of rock and metal back when I first started listening to heavy music, and I still remember enjoying their Hybrid Theory and Meteora albums in those days. Once they did the Jay-Z collaboration album in 2004, I stopped following them and haven’t even heard any of their subsequent albums. But I’d never had a chance to see them live, and to be perfectly honest I totally expected them to sound horrible. I was happy to be proven wrong because they put on a killer show for this Sunset Strip crowd which was packed to capacity by the time they started their set, at around 9:40.
Their set was a weird mix of music and I obviously found it hard to grasp the newer tunes but the ones off of Hybrid Theory and Meteora were great to hear. More than anything else, for a person like me it was a matter of experiencing some sweet nostalgia by being in the audience for their gig last night. From a reviewer’s point of view, I can’t fault anything in their performance whatsoever. They really put in more than their 100 per cent and showed that the gig meant a lot to them, interacting with the fans in almost the exact same way they would have done when they were starting out as a new band on the Sunset Strip back in their early days.
Overall, SSMF 2013 was largely a disappointment for rock fans but still an enjoyable time for most people in attendance.
Linkin Park set list:
1. A Place for My Head
2. Papercut
3. Given Up
4. New Divide
5. With You
6. Somewhere I Belong
7. Lies Greed Misery
8. Points of Authority
9. Waiting for the End (‘Until it Breaks’ intro)
10.Breaking the Habit
11.Castle of Glass
12.Lost in the Echo
13.Numb (‘Numb/Encore’ outro)
14.What I’ve Done
15.Burn It Down
16.In the End
17.Bleed It Out (extended bridge w/ ‘Reading My Eyes’)
18.Faint
19.One Step Closer