So here’s a little backstory on this band. I’ve known Mary Chartkoff (formerly Ver Plank) for about nine years, dating back to when we were working together at a website. I even remember coming back from a trip with her on a night that she had a date with this guy named Eli — who would later turn out to be her husband. Crazy!

Anyway, a little while after they got married, they started a band called The Monolators, which initially was a trio with Eli and Mary, along with Mike Dennis, a guy we both worked with before. This was about 2002 and we saw the band’s first gig at Zen Sushi in Silverlake. It was great — but that was still back when Mary and I were working together at a later version of the website…

So fast-forward to 2007: I keep in touch with Mary and we still work on projects together as it comes up, but my Mary and I haven’t seen The Monolators in years having lived outside of Cali for almost two years. Finally the time is right when Mary tells me about this show The Monolators are doing at The Echo in Echo Park — not only is it free, but The Monolators are the first show on the bill — meaning it’s going to be an early night (which is a consideration for us on a work night, unfortunately!).

The day rolls around and unfortunately my wife is out of town until a little late so she’ll end up missing it, but I can still make the show.

Okay, so that’s it for the backstory — I just like to set things up sometimes.
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So while this site may be more about the actual concert experience, buying tickets can sometimes be as much a part of that as anything. Case in point, my experience today in buying tickets for The Police, coming back to Los Angeles for their first tour in a zillion years…

So I got an email yesterday from Best Buy telling me I was special and that I could buy tickets using my special Reward Zone code. Wow — cool! Plus, The Police were actually going to be playing in Staples Center — a much more intimate and cool venue than Dodger Stadium, where they were already previously announced. And mind you all of this is for June shows, still a few months away. But still — it’s The Police. Sting has always been pretty cool in concert — The Police has got to be even better, right?

I prepared for the on-sale time of 10 a.m. this morning carefully, making sure I was logged in and had credit card in hand. Then at 9:58 or so I click to the special “Police on Ticketmaster” site and scan for Los Angeles and see that “Find Tickets” link already up. Wheee!
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Since this is brand-new site, there are bound to be tweaks, suggestions and bugs that will need to be reported. You can always send me an email at Greg@La8.com but it might be better to add a comment at the bottom of this post so they’re all in one place and so you can see what has already been reported.

Otherwise, I will add bugs/suggestions/etc that are reported to me by email as comments and note here when they’re fixed.

Hopefully this system works — and even more, hopefully there aren’t many problems to deal with.

Thanks!

Greg

Welcome to La8.com — a site dedicated to tracking people’s concert experiences.

I initially thought up this site as I was looking through all the concert stubs I have saved up through the years. As time goes by, I remember less and less about shows that were once so important to me. It’s a bit of a shame, really — why do they have to go to waste?

The first idea was to tie each stub to a concert and tell the tale — I think that’s still the ultimate goal, though I don’t want to limit this site and its use to people fortunate to have kept their stubs (of course, a stub does usually count as the all-important proof that YES, you were there!).

There have been other sites that have tried to do this — there’s even another blog started last month that is showing archives of ticket stubs (which is pretty cool). I hope there’s enough room for all of us. The one site that seemed to have grand ambitions was Stubstories.org, which apparently stopped working a year or so ago.

I figure the biggest challenge about any site is just keeping it updated. I will do my best with all the shows I have seen (probably 100 or more) and hopefully get some friends involved as well. I also run a fan site for The Bolshoi, and will invite fans from that band and related ones to come here to post their experiences.

As it grows, it would be great to have live video and audio available as well. Copyrights may be a concern for some bands, but others may be happy to share their music (especially if it’s an act long out of rotation). For the Bolshoi I have a bunch of live recordings that I am happy to post, along with the stories I can tell from them (from other people’s experiences, since I haven’t seen them live).

Anyway, thanks for coming. I will add more info about the site in the FAQ. Check it out and let me know if I’m missing anything! Otherwise, keep going out, keep watching bands live, then come back to La8.com to tell your story!

More about me:
- My MySpace Page
- TheBolshoi.co.uk - Officially Sanctioned Fan Site!

Like many of us Thirtysomethings, “She Blinded Me With Science” was in many ways the soundtrack of my “tween” years. But as I grew up and began to find music on my own, I quickly realized that Thomas Dolby was not simply another new wave throwaway but a real innovator and emotional musician. He had a lot to say, and a unique way of saying it. I had also fallen in love with 90s techno-innovator BT, another emotional musician who was his own one man show. So it was with great excitement that I went to see Thomas Dolby open for BT at the House of Blues in Anaheim, CA last night. It was not sold out, so the crowd was sparce, but there was a lot of energy and anticipation, especially considering BT had an entire surround system installed for his “This Binary Universe” show.

I’d never seen Thomas Dolby before, and I was not disappointed. He was absolutely charming, chatting with the audience between tracks, getting the audience involved in the songs, and so on. The sound was rather good, although a bit boomy at times.

He did his expected chart topping numbers—to be honest, I had a secret wish that he would refuse to play “Science,” even though no doubt so many would want to hear it, just because he was so much more than that—as well as obscure songs that I’d never heard before. He even played a new-ish song, “Your Karma Hit My Dogma” which was rather good!
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KMFDM…better than the best…megalomaniacal and harder than the rest…

KMFDM is one of my favorite bands, a real industrial/metal pioneer, and I try and catch them every time I can. The first time I saw them was at The Galaxy in Santa Ana, and I’ve seen them a number of times at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney. I always get a kick out of mom, dad, and the kids from Iowa visiting Disneyland walking past all the rivetheads and goths going to the show…

The opening band, Combi Christ, AKA “the second coming of Nitzer Ebb,” were very energetic, and a crowd favorite. I can’t say they bowled me over (mostly because I couldn’t get the Nitzer Ebb comparison out of my head), but they sure had the look and the beat and the energy down—hopefully they’ll find a more unique way to express themselves soon.

This was actually one of the best sounding KMFDM shows I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a fair number of them over the last decade! The guitars, drums, and synths all sounded punchy and distinct. The vocals could have been louder, but it got better as the show went on. The band was in good spirits, prowling all of the stage and working up the crowd. Capt’n K was playing to the crowd, energetic, and sounding great. Lucia was both fierce and feminine looking beautiful and sounding great (especially when they turned up her mic finally).
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If there is band that’s fun to watch live it’s Nine Inch Nails — maybe it’s because the songs are so wild and raw. Or maybe it’s because you know it will be a great show. Regardless, I was lucky enough to see Nine Inch Nails playing with Bauhaus (missed Peaches) in the summer of 2006.

The show was in Orange County and I was coming from LA with my sister, Robin, to check it out. A great friend, Orren, and his wife, Michelle, were also going, though we were not sitting together. Again, I found tickets on Ebay and ended up with a pretty good spot. But the drive down from LA wasn’t going to be fun.

Got there a little late — traffic on the 405 from LA is never fun in the afternoon and an accident doesn’t help. So as a result we ended up missing about 3/4 of Bauahus (though we heard some in the parking lot during the LONG wait to get in). Surprisingly the band didn’t play too many of their big hits (like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”) but Peter Murphy looked good and pretty healthy. The band sounded good, too.Nine Inch Nails came on around 9:20 and definitely rocked the house. There were a bunch of songs from The Fragile and only a few from With Teeth. Throw in some standards like “Closer,” “Hurt,” Terrible Lie” and “Down in It” and you have a show. Two of my favorite moments came at the end, as Trent Reznor invited Peter Murphy on to sing “Final Solution.” The band closed with a huge version of “Head Like a Hole” — amazing.
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Mary and I had seen INXS before — in fact, we saw them play at the Mayan Theater in L.A. on 4/24/97 — nine years ago — during their last show in the United States (part of the reason the show “Rock Star” was held at the Mayan). A few short months later Michael Hutchence was dead…

So we weren’t sure what we were going to see when the band came to town. But it ended up being pretty cool.

First off, the theater was really nice — it’s used for all sorts of performances so it looked great and we were only about 18 rows from the stage. Beauty! It allowed me to get a few nice photos with my camera phone.

It was interesting to see the crowd — a lot of people our age — it was a real trip. Plus being in the midwest the crowd was a lot different than an LA crowd we might expect.
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So Beck — I had never seen him live, but heard he was a great show. I bought these tickets on EBay thinking that it would be a great birthday present for my wife, Mary. She didn’t seem too overjoyed — I guess I like Beck a lot more than she does.

The show was at the House of Blues in Cleveland, which we had not seen a show at since it had opened around five or six months before (though we had eaten there). Prior to the show we ate across the street at Pickwick and Frolic, a comedy club/dinner place that is a staple of downtown. Then we walked across the street to HOB and had a chance to check it out.

It’s a pretty cool venue. You walk into a small lobby and straight ahead you enter the venue while to the right is a very spacious lounge and bar. When entering it, you are greeted with a very plush environment with big comfy chairs to relax in and TVs showing (at that time) sports.
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The year 2000 brought some great things to me — one of which was Gary Numan returning to tour the US in support of his release Pure. I had seen him several years before in support of Exile and it was a great show, so there was no way I would pass up another opportunity to see him. Of course it wasn’t until 2001 that he came to Southern California to play, but it was worth the wait.

The show was different from the previous tour because of the type of album Pure is — a bit harder than his usual stuff — a little more rocky. The result was great interpretations of some older songs including “Cars,” of course. The songs from the album were fine, but I am one for the classics as far as he’s concerned. Another stand-out, I recall, was “Films” — a great version.

Gary Numan is a true entertainer. He’s performed live so many times and released so many albums that he could easily “call it in” but he seems fresh and interesting each time. Seeing him in a small venue is also fun because he does have a loyal set of fans that he interacts well with.
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