I am from San Diego. Del Mar, to be exact. It is a beautiful place to call home and a great place to grow up, but home is home no matter where you live if you get what I'm saying. Anyways, during the summer it becomes a huge tourist destination. The Del Mar Racetrack is one of the main attractions, and in exchange for making our town overrun with tourists in ridiculous hats and creating large amounts of traffic, the racetrack offers 4 O' Clock Fridays, a free-ish summer concert series (free with $6 racetrack admission). Whoever the concert promoter is, he or she always brings in some pretty good bands. This summer includes G.Love & Special Sauce, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Flaming Lips, Pinback, and Pete Yorn. I'll be back at school for some of these, but I did get to see G.Love last friday.
I was skeptical at first when G.Love & Special Sauce took the stage, but once they started a shout and response with the audience during "Can't Go Back to Jersey", they got the crowd moving and kept the momentum going for the rest of their set. They're music is pretty funky, a mix of r&b, blues, rock, and rap. Eventually I found myself grooving and dancing amongst a sea of drunken and sunburnt adults. They ran through their popular songs (My Baby's Got Sauce, Peace, Love, and Happiness, Milk and Cereal) and ended with a surprisingly good cover of The Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" They came back onstage for a long encore that included a duet with singer/song-writer and Del Mar local Tristan Prettyman. Overall, it was a show that was well worth my $6.
Also, I saw Jack's Mannequin on Tuesday at a local arena venue with my sister and one of my best friends. YES I like Jack's Mannequin. They are the ultimate guilty pleasure, fulfilling my girly and sometimes emo musical needs. They destroyed the stage with their emotional piano pop rock. Andrew McMahon is a talented pianist/frontman and their music is a lot more rocking live than on the album. An advantage of huge expensive arena tours is that the lights are usually incredible, which they most definitely were. The band went through a short set of the popular songs from their two albums and ended with an epic cover of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' "American Girl". A side note to male bloggers and readers: if you are looking to pick up girls, go to a Jack's Mannequin concert.
Jack's Mannequin was opening for The Fray. I stayed for one song. If you're into the prime time Grey's Anatomy soundtrack I guess they would be good, but I personally felt that their light show was far more exciting than their music. As I made my way out of the amphitheater the scent of weed hung fresh in the air. Who would smoke weed at a Fray concert? To each his own I suppose.
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