Tag: Girlfriend

Show Review: Matthew Sweet at Yoshi’s – SF, 12/27/11

Comedian Greg Behrendt does a bit about the “grown up rock show.” A show where everyone is over 25, the band only plays hits, and the show is over in time for you to get home and watch Law & Order. No openers, no new material. It seems that the trend that’s been brewing for the last 5 years or so of playing a classic album front to back was inspired by this concept. The Matthew Sweet show at Yoshi’s, featuring Girlfriend in it’s entirety, definitely felt like this. There were few people in the crowd under the age of 30. Everyone showed up on time, a show that started at 8 PM on the nose, and ended shortly after 9:30. And it was beautiful.

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Theatre Review: Girlfriend at Berkeley Rep, 4/24/10

I hear you need somebody, I hear your looking for someone to love...
I hear you need somebody, I hear you're looking for someone to love...

In the last decade or so, the musical theater world has been inundated with shows that use pre-existing popular music instead of original works. Well many of these have been very successful, such as Mamma Mia!, Jersey Boys and the recent American Idiot, others have been critical and commercial failures, like Footloose and a proposed Radiohead musical.

While the success rate may vary on these, the one thing that they all have in common is the fact that every one of these shows uses music that the masses are very familiar with. There is a built-in audience for the show because of the fans. This show is a little bit different, though. It shows that the good people at Berkeley Rep are willing to take a risk. They are brave enough to chance a musical based on a relatively obscure power-pop record from the early ’90s, Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend.

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