Ladytron and More Terrible Music at San Francisco's Esurance Icer Air 2006

Hi All. The above video window is something called VEEKER (veeker.com). It's a cool thing where I can take video from my mobile phone and text it to my account and it shows up on my player here at Top 40 Sucks! Mobile Phones kinda have crappy resolution and a limited record time, but I thought I'd try it out at the esurance ICER AIR 2006 competition. Ya know, big air ski jumps, skate demos, and live music.

It was a really cool time except for the music part. Sometimes I wonder how bands get these sweet gigs in front of a great audience and they just suck to the point of wanting to run up to the sound board and cut the power. You know what they say, it's not how good you are...it's who you know. And I have a sneaky feeling that San Francisco's Live 105 was behind booking this act. (Another reason for this blog - to expose the crappy listeners as well as the crappy bands).

Anyway, I LOVE loud music. But it's got to be GOOD music. This was incredibly loud BAD 80's "Look ma, I can press a button on a keyboard and it plays all by itself" type dance music (and I use the term "dance" loosely) The band all wore black, what looked like high school graduation gowns, had black hair, and stood motionless behind their keyboards twisting the "cool noise" knobs. All the while the guitar player held his E-Bow over the same chord for 5 minutes while the familiar dance club thump, thump, thump, thump came from the speakers (which is a standard to get some people going). Lastly, you had the Siouxsie and the Banshees look a like mumbling something like "take me to the movies" into the microphone. This was a really lucky gig handed to them if you asked me. I love to see live music, but I can't help ripping on this band because everyone around me had the same look of disgust I had.

Also, I thought these extreme sports events were supposed to have punk, emo, metal, and hardcore bands playing? Check out this crappy music line up:
DJ Morse Code
Live 105's DJ Omar (of course the radio station guy gets a slot)
DJ Steve 1DER (1DER...get it! get it!? 1-der! I bet that's on his license plate)
Blipsync
Jurassic 5
Ladytron
DJ Spider
Chain Garden

Chain Garden!!! CHAIN GARDEN!!!!? (like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden put together). A 90's GRUNDGE COVER BAND CLOSES THE ICER AIR SHOW!!!!? What in THEE hell is this world coming too? Sigh. Double Sigh.

What happened to all the great music that used to come out of San Francisco? Some say the music scene here is dying...and some say it's already dead.

Blah.