Saturday Night: Coheed and Cambria Perform Two Possibly Magical Sets at the Fox Theater
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Romana Machado Claudio Sanchez of Coheed and Cambria
The Second Stage Turbine Blade Tour
May 7, 2011
@ Fox Theater, Oakland
Better than: The next three fiftysomething chuckleheads you hear
pronounce rock dead.
The scene outside Oakland's Fox Theater last Saturday night was as old
as Dick Clark's eardrums, yet new as a just-pierced lip. Scads of
frolicsome teens and twenties capered under the negligent eyes of some
few slick, elder-indie-parent types, themselves seemingly divided into
two factions consisting of the wised-up and the clueless. Inside the
restored 1928 picture palace was much more of the same, with the
cocktail waitresses not particularly hard-pressed for work and the
front of the stage swarming with doe-eyed collegiates in band schwag
or some de minimus gesture at gothwear.
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Romana Machado Coheed and Cambria
Like The Psychedelic Furs' bravura run at Slim's last week, the
headliners were themselves the opening act, with guitarists Claudio
Sanchez, Travis Stever, and Mic Todd unobtrusively lugging out
acoustics and perching onstage almost before the crowd noticed. Once
it did, an impressive series of massed chirps and squeals rattled the
ornate hall, as these unshowy showmen proceeded to knock the audience members on their
collective asses twice. The first set displayed the lighter,
sprightlier side of the band's long multi-album Amory Wars saga. More lightly acquainted with C&C's self-contained universe than
most of those in attendance, I could deny neither the melodic raptures
nor audience commitment to them. All swayed Beavis-like, crooning
along in massed harmonic bombardment. Lighters were already going
up by the middle of the second song. Staffers were very helpful about
letting my photographer run to the very lip of the stage during the
opening salvo, an experience she likened to being thrust directly into
the beating heart of rock 'n' roll. A stentorian bellow of "That was
fucking magical!" discharged from behind me, as some fellow lost
composure entirely.
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| Romana Machado |
| Coheed and Cambria |
The first set ended after about 45 minutes of such
operatically emotional stuff, and the audience settled in for a wait
nearly as long until the second set. This consisted of the band's
full-length 2002 debut, Second Stage Turbine Blade, played in its punky
entirety followed by numerous bonus cuts and addenda. This was
drummer's Chris Pennie's time to shine as proceedings took a much
harder turn. C & C's bombastically proggy song-cycle wrings an almost
Trekkie-like sense of self-identification out of fans who presumably
see themselves somewhere in the sprawling space-opera plot. It was a
little past ten when the clamor for the first encore began to start -- a fierce hullabaloo went on until the band slumped out for 20
minutes more, with the crowd hooting and chanting as if some Spielberg
mothership were about to take them home. Then the band left again, and
another demonstration unwound before Sanchez and Stever came out again
for a muted acoustic finale and tender goodbyes. "This is a gift,"
Sanchez cooed, and so it was.
 |
| Romana Machado |
| Claudio Sanchez of Coheed and Cambria |
Setlist (possibly incomplete):
First Set
Always and Never
Mother Superior
Pearl of the Stars
Iron Fist
Milk Foot
Who Watches the Watchmen?
Here We Are Juggernaut
Wake Up
Second set
Second Stage Turbine Blade
Time Consumer
Devil In Jersey City
Everything Evil
Delirium Trigger
Hearshot Kid Disaster
33
Junesong Provision
Neverender
God Send Conspirator
IRO-Bot
First encore
Far
Ten Speed (Of God's Blood And Burial)
No World For Tomorrow
Welcome Home
The Black Rainbow
Second encore
Elf Tower New Mexico (acoustic)
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Location Info
Venue
Map
Fox Theater - Oakland
1807 Telegraph, Oakland, CA
Category: Music
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