Muse Live at the Greek Theater...Caught Eating in the Commissary!

MUSE LIVE AT THE GREEK THEATER IN LOS ANGELES July 19, 2006

We had waited patiently for two years to see Muse, our favorite band, live again... AT LAST!! Maybe just to see if the experience of seeing them live was as much of a, well, ‘muse’ as we remembered. As in the Greek definition of an inspiration, or “muse as eloquence and epic or heroic poetry”.

Muse makes a perfect ‘favorite band’ for an American! Massively successful and popular in the UK, they have been just scratching the surface in the US. On all shores, they have an air of mystery. In the US, they have been around enough so people have heard their name, but for the last few years, few really were quite sure who they were. As a ‘Muse fan’ one had the vaguely European coolness of someone who gets what the normal listener doesn’t. Their songs are so passionate and personal, they are so withdrawing in person, that their fans are known to think of them as their personal – oh here we go again – Muse!

Compared endlessly and inaccurately to Radiohead, they are finally hitting their stride in the US. Radiohead music is dark, depressing and pretentiously artsy, while Muse songs have deliberate majestic, political and melodic craftsmanship as well as reflecting the elegant overtones of Matt Bellamy’s extensive classical piano background. They couldn’t be more different. People will hear the vocals, and not really bother to listen to the music, and say, OK, I get it, like Radiohead! I repeat, Muse is not Radiohead!!! They are much more like Emerson Lake and Palmer or Yes with the danceable beat of the Killers.

On stage, their taut compact countenance seems to grow to larger than life, as if they are transformed into the enlarged shadow of any mere human being. The sound of their latest album, ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ perhaps more than their few previous albums is so huge and ambitious as to be accused of being ‘overblown’. Er, overblown..but compared to what? They have fewer guys and basically the same instruments as say, The Arctic Monkeys, but their sound hales back to the progressive rock of the Who, The Beatles, Queen, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and all those other ‘overblown’ bands. They incorporate influences from the taut rhythmic simplistic eighties, but have decided not to be another eighties retro clone.

We were interviewing The Cloud Room, the refreshing as a cloudburst band from New York in the Greek Theater commissary minutes before their show about what it was like to have 4 days to prepare for a national tour with Muse. The Cloud Room was energetic and full of humor and positive sparkle. At the end of the interview, they pointed to the table in the corner and mentioned, ‘those guys over there are pretty good too!’

We noticed for the first time the legendary Muse sitting eating alone in the room with us. Even a legendary Greek Muse gotta eat sometime! The room went into slow motion as the helmsman of the band, Matt got up and walked past us through the door, escaping our fan inspired fawning. But not so swift was Dom the drummer! I had read how they are overwhelmed by stalking fans, and didn’t want to bother them while they have a few minutes to eat. So I casually walked over and did the only correct thing to do in Los Angeles. I solemnly handed Dom and the roadies there each a pair of bright pink rainbow glasses, the kind where you look at lights and they break into a spectrum of rainbow colors, and uttered ‘welcome to La-La Land!’ They all laughed appreciatively and Dom tried the glasses on and grinned and nodded (appropriate since his mouth was full). I smiled back and skipped off back to our table, knowing my life was now complete!!

The time came for them to finally hit the stage. Having shoved our way to the front of the pit, I noticed that large black structure in front of us was actually the hugest pile of speakers I had ever seen. We would be deaf but happy, and damn well weren’t about to move!

They broke right into ‘Take a Bow’ the first song from their new album. Stunning on it’s own, danceable, full mysterious and melodic and all the more so when you realize the lyrics are about Bush and end in the chorus of ‘you will burn in hell’. ‘Hysteria’ followed, from their previous album, with guitar and bass leads that make Ozzfest look like dancing tinkerbells – good old fashioned searing wall of power wanting it now, and giving it all at once.

Supermassive Black Hole’ their Britney Spears/ Prince reminiscent first single from their new album that gave fans whiplash from its barebones funk pop roots came up. But thundering through the Greek Theater nobody there could resist the dance power of it!

Starlight’, their upcoming single, that Rodney Bingenheimer was spinning that same week on the Supermassive KROQ, is a little more sparse and melodic than the huge full sound of the rest of the album, and people clearly got it at first hearing.

The sold out Greek Theater audience was in fact well versed in Muse by the time of this show. The last time they played in Southern California was at a big KROQ festival, and I remember dancing wildly in almost empty bleachers. This time WB has been giving them the royal push and they are in fact #9 on Billboard to line up nicely with their #1 slot in the UK.

By encore time, the inevitable ‘Time is Running Out’, their previous hit in the US brought on a feverish sing-along from the audience. ‘Knights of Cydonia’ with Tex Mex flamenco overtones mixes with waves of sweeping walls of sound complete with visuals of galloping horses in the back and huge letters with the lyrics ‘No one’s gonna take me alive’ in case anyone at that point was capable of resisting joining the joyous thundering revelry and singing along with the rest of us at the top of our lungs! Fittingly so, since Muse made it clear during this triumphant return to LA that indeed no one’s gonna take them alive or otherwise… that they will be rockin us and causing controversy and – most of all – out and out ‘overblown’ hysteria for many years to come. Amen.