Monday, April 24, 2006

Thomas Dolby at the Fenix


For me, Thomas Dolby will forever be one of the biggest icons of New Wave. And so, imagine my disgust at seeing him in such an awful venue as the Fenix last Saturday night.

The Fenix, in it's former location, was once a great place to see shows. The intimate yet wide open space made it easy to wiggle my way up to the front to see some great performers, including Marc Almond, John Taylor--hell, even Buckethead was mildly amusing if not terrifyingly loud.

But the new space is cramped, flanked by a wide staircase and low hanging balcony with barely enough room on the main floor to accomodate concert attendees, much less TMDR fans who've waited 15 years to see him again.

TMDR did put on a wonderful show, though I was pinned between DJ Trent's table and the fire door door and couldn't hear a damn word he said to the audience, nor see his fabulously elaborate video production. It made me pine for the experience I had seeing him at the Wiltern Theatre during the Lost Toy People tour.

I might've scored a better spot in the venue if I had camped out starting at 8 when the doors opened, but that would have meant standing in one place until 10:45 and suffering through the opening act, Basic Pleasure Model, which Pa renamed Amalgam since they basically sounded like anybody else.

But we meandered through the other levels of the club, since there were plenty of wide open spaces OUTSIDE of the room with the stage and listened to DJ Trent's 80s playlist and even tried our luck in scoring a highly-coveted "purple stamp" that appeared on random receipts for TMDR merch-purchases, which qualified lucky recipients to meet him 15 minutes after the show. I struck out.

And so, my excitement was quelled by a lackluster evening. I was so looking forward to seeing Thomas Dolby, I had dusted off all my records, including one of the first 12" singles I bought--"Hyperactive!" and played them ad nauseum weeks before the concert.

So much for great expectations!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I will continue the Quest here for the purple stamp. He is playing a smaller venue here too so I will take a cue from you and get in better position!!