Review: Suzanne Vega @ Villa Montalvo

I'm a bigger fan of concert venues than I am of individual performance artists. My list of great venues in the Bay Area include:

• The Mountain Winery in Saratoga
• Villa Montalvo's Carriage House and Theater
• The Warfield in  San Francisco
• The Oprheum in San Francisco
• The Greek Theatre in Berkeley

All of these theaters, unlike the larger venues, offer close intimate seating where you can see the performer, rather than stadium seating where you have to see the performer on a big screen. My view on those is you might as well stay home and watch YouTube.

When I saw that Suzanne Vega was going to be live at the Carriage House in February 9th, I made it a point to bring my wife to it. I'd never seen her live before, but I liked her introverted lyrics and my wife thought she was good after watching some videos on YouTube.

Vega did not disappoint. Her second song on the set, Small  Blue Thing, blew me away. I had heard  the song on CD before, but it did not had the impact the live performance had. I said "wow, that's beautiful to my wife" and then heard someone else in the audience say loudly, "Wow!" The rest of the concert went by in a trance, with Vega playing some new songs mixed in with some old favorites.

It did not come off without a hitch. In particular, my favorite song of hers, The Queen and the Soldier was marred by her coughing in the middle and then having to regain her place with the help of the audience. I also felt the non-a capella version of Tom's Diner was too distracted by the electric guitar. Nevertheless, most arrangements were just her accompanied by an electric guitarist, so you couldn't accuse the concert of being overly elaborated or over-produced.

I had a great time, and if you get a chance to see her in an intimate venue while she's on tour, I highly recommend doing so.

Weird Al at the Mountain Winery

Weird Al at the Mountain Winery

Xiaoqin told me that she'd never been to the mountain winery for a concert, so I resolved to take her, as it's one of my favorite venues in the Bay Area for one. (The other nice places are Villa Montalvo, the Warfield Theater, the Orpheum, and the Greek Theater) When I looked at the concert schedule, I saw that Weird Al was playing. How could any self-respecting geek not take his wife to a Weird Al concert?!

Attendance was surprisingly light, with only about 75% of the theater filled. But the show far exceeded my expectations. Weird Al has got to be the most hardworking performer I've ever seen on stage: nearly every song had its own stage setup, its own costume(s), and an accompanying video. The stage setup between songs would have been boring to sit through, except that he also had videos designed to entertain you between songs, as well as videos that would introduce the song or set it up for the audience.

I'm not up to date with all his song parodies, but highlights were: "Smells like Nirvana", "I bought it on Ebay", "Eat it", "Amish Paradise", "Craigslist", "I'm Fat", and the encore was the Star Wars themed, "The Saga Begins", and "Yoda."

It was a lot of fun, and I laughed hard throughout the show. Highly Recommended