“We Are The Champon!”
Rain in Los Angeles, for a supposed plethora of reasons, is like a mini apocalypse. Angelinos just can’t seem to handle it and, more often than not, will stay in during “weather events” instead of going to the movies or grabbing dinner somewhere. It’s just too much of a hassle to brave the weather because everyone on the road is a goddamn idiot. In the case of Otoboke Beaver’s Sold Out show at the Belasco, however, 1,500 people decided to say, “Fuck the rain.” I can’t blame them; I said the same thing. That said, the weather wasn’t particularly awful, in my opinion, as a NorCal-raised aging punk rock metalhead, and god dammit if we weren’t going to enjoy a night of femme-driven rock and roll from across the Pacific.
In 2008, the Dresden Dolls would play Los Angeles for, seemingly, the last time. In 2008, I was 23 years old, still in college in the rural North of California, fairly isolated from the meccas of civilization and regular concerts of better-known bands. I missed it. After moving to Los Angeles the following year to attempt and fail at breaking into the film industry, I had all but lost hope of ever seeing the Dresden Dolls perform.
Anyone following Steven Wilson’s career, either via his work with Porcupine Tree or solo, has at least a tertiary understanding of his work as a remixer. He has done remixes of back catalogs for absolute legends like King Crimson, YES, XTC, ELP, and Jethro Tull, not to mention one-offs of bands like Black Sabbath, Opeth, Caravan, Chicago; the list goes on. He has spoken in interviews stressing the difference between a remix and a remaster and how much more work goes into remixing. Surround sound is nothing exactly new in this day and age. Still, technology has advanced over the years since 5.1 gave way to 7.1, which gave way to Dolby Atmos – the current standard for theatrical surround sound – allowing for all sorts of experimentation as home sound systems have been catching up.