September 10th 2012 Devo and Blondie played a show at the Warfield in San Francisco. I make it no secret that music is my passion and I do my best to go to as many shows as I can. Everyone who knows me knows this and is thankfully kind enough to pass on show information to me. I am networked with some awesome folks, and I heard about this concert practically the moment the dates were announced. Both Blondie AND Devo were coming to my area. How could I miss this? I couldn't, so I didn't!
Devo The show started on time which was wild. It being my first time seeing both of these bands; I didn't know what to expect. Devo did a lot of costume changes which was cool. They would either take off a layer or disappear off stage looking like they were done playing. They'd come back after what seemed like a short encore, but it wasn't. It was how Devo was working the audience, it was quite clever. It felt like "concert blue balls" as I called it. I said that tonight to some Devo fan I was standing next to, he laughed and agreed. They tease you a bit, put on different costumes, and then they give it to you. The stage lights up and the background turns into sound waves, psychedelic colors, and flying radiation hats. Its typical for the band to throw out radiation hats to the audience, these ones were blue. The band was also wearing blue ones instead of the classic red (See: "Whip it" music video). They had great infectious make-you-move energy. The audience chanted all the words like some cool rock and roll cult I'd actually like to belong to. They did "Whip it", "Mongoloid", "Girl u want", "Secret agent man", "Uncontrollable Urge", "Here to go, "That's good", "Gut Feeling", "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA", "Gates of steel", "(I can't get no) Satisfaction", "Jocko Homo" and "Secret agent man".
A bunch of little floating radiation helmets.
Blondie The stage was set up with about 4 large vases filled with large pink and yellow roses before Blondie hit the stage. This made me curious, and pretty sure I'm going to want one of these. The band entered the stage together with big smiles and waves. Debbie was wearing a golden super glittery jacket and pants combo and broke into "Dreamin".She also had a matching hat and sunglasses. She gradually took off the hat, sunglasses and jacket. For a few songs she handed out roses to audience members, quite a few got mangled by over eager fans. I only recognized Debbie Harry, Clem Burke and Chris Stein, the rest looked like new blood. The young blond guitarist had some seriously ripping muscles, and through lots of guitar pics into the audience. No wonder they wanted that guy up in front. Clem through out a few pairs of drum sticks, which my friend Emily Jayne was able to score. Lucky! Fights started to break out towards the end of their set...you can't have a concert without them. They included "Rapture", "Call me", "Hanging on the telephone", and a cover of "Relax" by Frankie goes to Hollywood and closed with "Heart of Glass". Surprisingly about 40% of the set was newer Blondie music. And the end, Debbie tossed out the roses into the audience with a splash from the vase water.
If you look really closely, you will notice drummer Clem Burke is wearing a David Bowie shirt.
My favorite picture, if the quality was good this would be a great picture.
My goodies from the concert! I made sure to get a radiation helmet (hat?) and a tour shirt. They had separate Devo and Blondie shirts but I knew I wanted a tour shirt with the both of them. Why split up a good thing?
Comments