05-09-2009, 10:42 AM
At the Castro Theater on May 5th. I've never been to the Castro theater before. Someone gave me the tip of coming down 280, then cutting across on San Jose Ave. Cool shortcut. Takes you right to the Castro. I've never been through that part of SF before. I found parking, got my ticket from will call, then went inside to grab some seats for friends. It was packed and apparently sold out. I grabbed a few seats by the soundboard in the back. The theater is beautiful. I was about a half hour early. People were milling about trying to find empty seats next to or even near each other. They started showing a promo slide show for the San Francisco Film Festival events. About 15 minutes into that, the organ rose up from the middle of the stage and played some music to get everyone excited. Then a festival rep came out and talked about other events, thanked the sponsors, talked a bit about the film which is a restored version of the 1925 silent movie. Then he introduced the band who came out and walked down into the orchestra pit. The lights dimmed and the movie started.
The first Dengue Fever song I'd heard was a cover of instrumental "Ethanopium" in the movie Broken Flowers.
[youtube]m5vJ0Dld5tY[/youtube]
Almost everything else I've heard by them has vocals, mostly in Cambodian. For this score, they played more on the instrumental side which was really cool: echoey, rhythmic, dark...bass sax, muted horns, kinda like in this version of Sleepwalking:
[youtube]Gty6a6_kO-0[/youtube]
Can't really describe it better. It went pretty well with the movie - South America, Amazon, tropic themes. With the lights dimmed and the band in the orchestra pit, you couldn't see them at all. So the focus was on the movie which was dated and a little silly in places.
DF snuck in a couple of their "hits" into the performance, but it was mostly all new music. I would have picked up a CD, but this stuff hasn't been recorded yet.
I have to agree with ED:
--tg
The first Dengue Fever song I'd heard was a cover of instrumental "Ethanopium" in the movie Broken Flowers.
[youtube]m5vJ0Dld5tY[/youtube]
Almost everything else I've heard by them has vocals, mostly in Cambodian. For this score, they played more on the instrumental side which was really cool: echoey, rhythmic, dark...bass sax, muted horns, kinda like in this version of Sleepwalking:
[youtube]Gty6a6_kO-0[/youtube]
Can't really describe it better. It went pretty well with the movie - South America, Amazon, tropic themes. With the lights dimmed and the band in the orchestra pit, you couldn't see them at all. So the focus was on the movie which was dated and a little silly in places.
DF snuck in a couple of their "hits" into the performance, but it was mostly all new music. I would have picked up a CD, but this stuff hasn't been recorded yet.
I have to agree with ED:
El Dingo Wrote:Live music + movies = awesome.
--tg
