We were lucky enough to see Beck play at Element, a small club in Hollywood on Tuesday night. On Monday morning we got an email telling us about the last minute show, and we were lucky enough to snag a couple of tickets.
Element is a small venue, it probably holds a few hundred people. This is great because on Beck’s current tour he is playing places that hold thousands of people. He recently played two shows in Los Angeles at the Wiltern theatre. We got there fairly early and picked out a great place to stand, on a raised platform about 30 feet from the stage. Both Michele and I were able to see the whole stage with no problems.
The show was really good, but for different reason than I thought it would be. Beck, unlike most solo artists, was not the whole show, it was the entire band that had a great performance. There were six people, including Beck, on stage for the whole concert. The other five musicians played really well and seemed really into the music. They constantly switched and changed the instruments they were playing. There were two drum kits on stage, a few keyboards, bongo drums, and they kept bringing various other instruments like guitars, basses, a recorder, a harmonica, even what looked like a big, empty bashed up tin can that someone hit with a drumstick. Beck himself had a guitar strapped on for most of the show.
Even though I’m not a huge Beck fan, and was not familiar with most of the songs (I only have one CD), I really enjoyed the show. It was cool to be able to see him in such a small club.
