The Bad Plus at the Knitting Factory Hollywood 6/3

You have to understand, The Bad Plus to me is like Metallica or Green Day to your average pop band, the biggest group of the moment at the top of their game.
I was really psyched when I heard they were coming here, Carrie and I saw them a couple of years ago at the Village Vanguard in NYC and we both really dug the show. So we were happy to see them again.

It was an incredible show, incredible. Last time I saw them they played a lot of stuff from their first record “These Are Vistas.” Since then they’ve had another record released (“Give”) and I figured I’d be hearing a lot of stuff from that. Not the case, they played unrecorded compositions almost entirely. They started off with a tune called “Physical Cities” I believe. The arrangement was really cool, there was a part near the end of the song that sounded like heavy-metal Phillip Glass, one riff rhythmically re-imagined over and over and over and over. The rest of the new originals were great as well, they also performed “1972 Semi-Finalist” from their first record. And they included their trademark interpretations of pop songs. The first was Bjork’s “Human Nature” which wasn’t nearly as clever as their other covers, this was proven later when they closed the set with a terrific rendition of “We Are the Champions” where the melody was fragmented and played inside and out before culminated in an anthemic ending.

For the encore they played fan-favorite “Big Eater” the opening track on “These Are Vistas.” And the final song of the evening was an incredible funk version of “Chariots of Fire.” While the arrangement was very similar to their arrangement of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” it was still the perfect way to close the night.

Let me add that I officially do NOT like the Knitting Factory. The set-up for the main stage is really bad and good spots to watch the show are hard to come by. Maybe they’ll play someplace else next time.

Good show though. And a good time was had by all.