Black Eyed Peas, White Stripes, Snoop Dog Rock a San Diego Weekend

Drive south on Pacific Coast Hwy to the next huge mega-city after Los Angeles that used to be the epitome of a sleepy beach town, and you get San Diego. The San Diego Street Scene festival has evolved in much the same way as the city.

The festival once known for it’s local quaintness held amidst a series of historic pubs - now is literally a giant parking lot packed with about 40 of the biggest names in music on the last weekend of July. So the question as we skeptically wind our way through traffic to this year’s version is: Can the new Street Scene hold up based solely upon the power of it’s bands?

We arrive by trolley overlooking the festival from an aerial view. Bands and stages as far as the eyes can see, carnival rides lit up, scores of people, much like the scene in Pinocchio of the land of fun and games where all the naughty boys go before they turn into donkeys. Just in time to see a huge screen with the lead singer of Louis XIV’s face soundlessly (from our vantage) bellowing out to his sickeningly adoring fans in their home town of San Diego!

Insisting I would never listen to a band so mainstream as Black Eyed Peas, I find myself waiting by the stage to catch them live! They are almost an hour late, with rumors flying about drugs and mayhem holding them up. I tend to believe Fergie, the lead singer’s story that they were caught in traffic like the rest of us. As soon as they get on stage she cusses out the city for holding them up and her expression looks just like I feel after being stuck in the bottle-necked traffic for over two hours. When they hit the stage with “Let’s Get this Started”, it’s one of the most heart-stopping moments I have experienced at a concert, in an explosion of hip-hop and rock n’ roll colliding.

We hang out back stage and chat with Jose, who heads a crew of 25 who built the entire glittering temporary city the size of four football fields and will tear the whole thing down in 48 hours. He has been doing this for years, and miraculously makes sure everything runs perfectly for all the drunken louts who assume it’s all done by magic!

Then it’s off to the White Stripes stage. Jack White and Meg somehow fill the huge stage with the two of them. The crowd cheers maniacally. My mind starts to wander as I muse how did Jack White become more Johnny Depp than Johnny Depp?... and the set is over.

The next day it’s time for Flaming Lips. Their show is an indescribable multimedia extravaganza! Wayne Coyne, the lead singer comes in a giant white bubble over the stage. Audience members have been chosen to be on stage in giant animal outfits. Lights, smoke, glitter over all of us, and next thing we know we are all singing along with the strangely appropriate Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

A few songs, and we have to pull ourselves away and run across a half mile to get the stage bombarded by The Used. For the first time during this festival, the whole crowd is a swarming mosh pit. I am home at last!

Topping that could only be Snoop Dogg. As he sauntered onto the stage, he and his band get the ‘for ol’ time sake’ salute. Mellowed and old school sounding now, but musically irresistible. After one song the security guards inappropriately start pushing all the photographers, saying “gotta move, gotta get out, someone might get hurt!”

So, does the new Street Scene hold up now that it’s a ‘parking lot scene’? Answer: I’ll be back next year – for a wicked sweet show!