Angelenos can go a long time without visiting the Hollywood Bowl. My attendance was sporadic through childhood. When I was 12, we went to the Bowl to see our neighbor, an opera singer, in a musical rendition of Julius Caesar. After what seemed like hours, a baritone guard sang out one line and my dad shouted and pointed, "That's him!" Then nothing until 1968, when my friend and I watched Janice Joplin rampage across the stage.
And then a long absence, over 30 years, until last year we got season tickets for a box in the frontish section ( one section behind the elite boxes abutting the stage). Most of the time we attended with our two boys, Andrew, 21, and Connor, 11. The box is compact, to put it diplomatically. It's hard to manipulate the fold-up tables and sit and eat in a space the size of a large closet, but you are outside surrounded by happy people and once you're settled with your wine it's not bad at all.
What I want to write about are the performances. To start with: "Electronica." One night last year was devoted to it; and now I know what it is. It's this: some guys go up on the stage with laptops. No musical instruments are apparent. There is also a bank of technicians with elaborate consoles (no musical instruments there either). The technicians push levers and a backbeat loop begins. The guys on stage, the headline group, listen thoughtfully to the backbeat for a few moments, then they type in some stuff on their laptops which results in lots of synthesized sounds blaring out of giant speakers. The guys then watch the monitors of their laptops, every now and then typing something new, which, one gathers, changes the nature of the music. The sounds are not unlike the "synthetic" music of the last half century; the innovation is that they're attached to a rock beat and are blasted into your ears at deafening decibels. I was thankful I had brought my earplugs. This is not a confession of dotage. I walked out of a Cream gig at the Whiskey in 1969 because of the idiotic volume- and they were my favorite group. But I must say, some of the Electronica was pleasant. At one point, I felt I was being mesmerized. Susan and the boys were happy, and the big crowd around us was definitely happy. A thick smog of pot smoke hung everywhere. Hundreds of people, including ushers, were dancing in solitary joy.
It was fun, but I do need to ask this question: How is a guy typing commands on a laptop a musician? If the music was composed previously, fine, but then you might as well have a composer/musician come on stage and put on a CD of his work. Just asking. Another night we heard Wycleff Jean, well known singer in the Rastafarian tradition. Very musical and talented, though it gave me pause during a song extolling pot smoking when he stopped to address the young kids specifically. This would include Connor, who was definitely paying attention. Jean said that the kids in the audience were too young to understand the wonders of marijuana, but in a few years they would be old enough, and then they should "smoke dee mari-uaanaa!" It's a free country, right? I suppose someone like me who sees continual signs of erosion of our freedoms should be grateful that I can still pay money to hear a famous role-model tell my son to smoke dope. I will let the righteous and ascended souls among us figure this one out.
Anyway, I want to conclude with a description of last night's Yo-Yo Ma concert. Because it was Ma it was sold out, which in itself nuanced the experience. The traffic on the east-bound 101 was quite light, no doubt due to the ongoing heat-wave, but this ended at the Highland offramp, where we came to a miserable crawl. It took almost 30 minutes to travel from the offramp to the Bowl parking lot, where we were informed that the lot was full and given a map to another lot three blocks down at Highland and Hollywood, behind the Kodak center. I let my family out with their tickets and continued, still at a snail's pace, towards Hollywood. At the Franklin Avenue turnoff there were prominent signs reading "Bowl Parking Here!" I foolishly turned in and beheld a vacant lot, vacant that is except for two hundred cars squished bumper to bumper, at a price of $15 each. This was not, in fact, the lot indicated on the map. In high dudgeon I backed out, maneuvered madly back onto Highland southbound, and made my way at last into the Kodak parking lot. No attendants were at the entrance when I pushed the button for my ticket, so I rushed through the lengthy description of charges and determined that though the Bowl was not among the listed validators, the max was $10. Not expecting anything better than this, I started my spiraling descent into the structure, parking finally on the fourth floor below street level. It was at this point, as I dragged myself out of the car and contemplated the stretch remaining between me and my plastic cup of wine, that it began.
You know how it is. You go day after day a good citizen, loving your country, honoring your leaders, and then one day, after one dumb vicissitude too many, you crack. I focused my fury on President Bush. What are the chances he would enter the Hollywood Bowl in such an ignominious fashion? He would be escorted via limo through an underground tunnel that led directly to the VIP elevator, which would ascend to a spot located five feet from his box next to the stage. If he was late, the show would be delayed. Why is this the case? Why does he get his own jet plane? Why, when he gets a check-up, does he need no appointment, and is attended by 10 doctors? It's because he's the president. What does that mean? It means he's in the ruling class. My brain became overheated as I rummaged through the car for a pen or pencil to write the location of my parking spot. Yes, we have a ruling class, a privileged class, just like those from which came the monarchies so despised by our founding fathers. We've been lulled into thinking it's a necessity, I fulminated as I searched up and down the lane for a sign indicating an elevator. We've forgotten, if we ever knew, that a competent national manager could do a decent job with just the basic comforts and amenities, and never miss the giant entourage, the mansion, the cooks and maids and drivers and personal jet planes. Then I found the escalator and had a chance to stand and fume. Yes, I realized, by lulling us into seeing this pomp and waste as natural, we had been tricked into having a...a king!
Granted a king for no more than two four year stretches, but a king nevertheless who, with the other royal families, perpetuates a system of rotating monarchs while we dumbly scrabble in the ruins looking for parking spaces at the Yo-Yo Ma concert. I emerged then onto Highland, where a fresh breeze took me by surpise. As I walked northward, I started to feel better. This isn't so bad, I thought. It's kind of fun to be walking up Highland in Hollywood, Calif. The people in the cars are glancing at me. I could be in a movie about a middle aged guy having one stupid crisis after another. Ok, George W., you can be a king. Just don't take away my right to revel in myself.
Fast forward to me, seated in my box, rapidly pouring my cup of wine. On the stage was Yo-Yo with his "Silk Road Ensemble," an assemblage of "World Music" performers. "World Music" can be defined as music from anyplace on earth except Europe and Russia (at least in their classical forms- exceptions can be made for folkish music). This means that while Zithian Nimble-Squeak played on a stringed miniature bat-gourd is World Music, Bach is not. Be that as it may, the music was nice. An array of World Music instruments- sitar, tabla, santur, ney, kamanche, sanxian, pipa, and shen- and a tolerant mix of Western- guitar, violin, viola, and of course Ma's cello- produced pleasant sounds. Certainly an enjoyable concert. Though I must ask this: Why couldn't Yo-Yo have played just a little Bach? Stretched the rules a bit. After all, Bach's music is better than anything anyone is writing now. Uh-oh, now I've done it! Anyway, I..er...I like the Hollywood Bowl a lot, in spite of the logistical agonies associated with going there. You really should go to the Hollywood Bowl.
