Sunday, May 21, 2006

Footstock

Show: Bay To Breakers Footstock
Headliner: Better Than Ezra
Openers: Finding Mercury
Location: Polo Field in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, CA
Date: Sunday, May 21, 2006
2006 Show #: 8

Bay to Breakers is a 12K foot race across the San Francisco peninsula from the Embarcadero to Ocean beach. After the race, the post-race festivities are called Footstock, and usually a couple of bands play while other sorts of "entertainment" goes on. Though this is the 4th time I've done the race, it's the first time I've stayed for the bands. The reason is solely for the 90s Alt. Rockers Better Than Ezra.

The concert is open air and this year was free to the public. The acoustics are bad and the crowd barely interested. Not really the place for a rocking experience, but not a bad way to enjoy some music. The weather that day was overcast with occasional bouts of rainyness.

I didn't pay too much attention to Finding Mercury. They're that sort of whinny, blah, alt. rock nowadays that does nothing to make itself stand out. And from what I was able to hear, I was right.

As Better Than Ezra came on, the weather was getting worse and my wariness from the race was starting to get the best of me. As a result, after I heard "Good" off Deluxe and "King of New Orleans" off Friction Baby, I left. The rendition of "Good" was modernized, not much to my liking but not too detrimental. "King of New Orleans" was done more faithfully to the album version. Before those two songs, they mixed in other songs from across their catalog, with some new stuff and some old stuff. Enjoyable to listen to and the band did some enjoyable banter between songs. They talked about how the race had a Mardi-Gras feel, which is a fair assessment. Overall enjoyable, and I think I'll have to give Better Than Ezra's new stuff a more thorough listen.

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