Red Hot Chili Peppers / Weezer

live in Las Vegas (2005)

SteveJonesTheRealBones

# 4.2 Why do you cover Weezer?

Yes, the staff likes Weezer, that's why we have a topic devoted to them. Weezer is one of the bands that got the three of us into music and both the Blue Album and Pinkerton were very important to us in our younger years. Punk-related bands like The Pixies and Elvis Costello among others heavily influenced Weezer. They also tour with a lot of great punk bands. So no, we don't think they're too far outside our scope.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way, I will continue with the review. On this past July 4th weekend, Las Vegas celebrated their 100th birthday by putting on this free show. All you had to do was be lucky enough to get tickets through Ticketmaster before they were all accounted for. Also, hookers were two-for-one the whole weekend; what a great city.

The show was outside on a field with 50,000 people. It was hot, beer was too expensive, and I was very far away from the stage.

This was my first time seeing Weezer, and I have generally enjoyed all of their albums (although I only really liked half of Make Believe). So I thought I would enjoy watching them perform their songs live. I was horribly wrong. They played their songs, did not interact with the crowd at all, and walked off the stage. There was no emotion of any kind. The band just went through the motions for about 40 minutes, then set down their instruments and walked off. It also didn't help that I was about 100 yards from the stage. Weezer's set consisted of a mix of their hits from all the albums except for Pinkerton. If they played anything from Pinkerton, it was within the first couple of songs that I missed. I would have had a better time listening to Weezer in my hotel room with my friends.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers came on stage and rocked. I am not too familiar with their songs, so I can't tell you really what kind of set they played, but I recognized many of the songs from the radio, and they played "Can't Stop," which is a favorite of mine. The band was full of energy and the sound was great; girls all around were creaming in their pants over the singer and how "ridiculous" Flea is on bass. I swear the hippie girl standing behind me used the word "ridiculous" whenever the camera focused on his bass; so, about 20 times. They also debuted a couple of songs that basically sounded like average Chili Pepper songs; you know the kind, songs with "ridiculous" bass lines and a sexy singer. My only real complaint is that I basically had to watch this on the jumbo screens, and I wish one of the three at least were reserved for just showing the band. No psychedelic shots, no closeups, no shaky camera angles, no crotch shots…just a plain shot of all the members of the band. I didn't come to watch an MTV video; I came to see a concert.

The night ended with perhaps the best fireworks show I have ever seen.

I found out afterwards that the Adolescents opened the show. That means it was a punk show, right? Anyway, if you only get three things from reading this review, take any of these: