To traverse the 250-foot mountain that is Nob Hill to reach The Masonic is an act of blind faith. But trust in Beck, and he will deliver.<\/p>\n
On the sixth stop of his Ride Lonesome Tour, Beck took the stage dressed in a red blazer and a tie that hung loose around his neck but tucked neatly into his white slacks. The set started off mellow, with the screen behind him playing a looping video of ocean waves as he serenaded a predominantly Gen X audience with the second single from his new album \u201cIn The Night.\u201d The opening songs highlighted the sharp acoustic chime of new steel strings and created a blanket of sound that floats above the pit.<\/p>\n
After each song, the lights went out, plunging the band \u2014 and the audience \u2014 into complete darkness. This began an enduring battle with technology. While most of the issues manifested as faulty lighting, there were moments during songs such as \u201cBleed\u201d when Beck visibly tore out his earpiece during the harmonies. \u201cI think our board blew up,\u201d the singer joked.<\/p>\n
Despite this, The Masonic provided excellent acoustics to showcase Beck\u2019s vocals, which were remarkably faithful to their studio counterparts. At times, his eyes became heavy-lidded as he stared out at nothing in particular, just taking in the sound. His backing band, he gushed, is composed of \u201cridiculous musicians,\u201d including guitarist Smokey Hormel, drummer Joey Waronker and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen. The Bay Area crowd was particularly thrilled to see guitarist Jason Falkner and keyboardist Roger Manning, who are members of Beck\u2019s longtime touring band and former members of the San Francisco-based rock band Jellyfish.<\/p>\n
In the final third of the show, the crowd finally rose to their feet for \u201cDevils Haircut.\u201d Old-school grunge fans rocked their heads, hippies swayed wildly and a few younger fans raised their arms in the air, pointing toward Beck \u2014 perhaps trying to communicate something along the lines of \u201cyou\u2019re the man.\u201d Every now and then, a couple of pieces of pink confetti drifted from the ceiling in what one might assume to be a residual effect of the lingering technical difficulties. Either that or the heavy stomping and clapping of the enthusiastic audience rocked a few bits out of the rafters.<\/p>\n
The setlist naturally focused on songs from the tour\u2019s namesake album, though 2005\u2019s Guero followed closely behind with four rock-heavy tracks to Ride Lonesome\u2019s five. Most of these came near the back end of the show when Beck played \u201cGirl,\u201d \u201cQu\u00e9 Onda G\u00fcero\u201d and \u201cE-Pro\u201d back to back. \u201cE-Pro\u201d in particular got the crowd going; Falkner\u2019s electric guitar solo ripped through the room, and the \u201cna-na-nas\u201d of the chorus became louder and louder as the audience joined in.<\/p>\n
However, nothing tops what happened minutes later, when the switch to a distortion pedal signaled the big one: \u201cLoser.\u201d The massive \u201990s hit from Beck\u2019s debut album Mellow Gold ensured that not a single seat remained filled. The 56-year-old rock star sauntered around the stage like he owned it, flaunting a well-worn swagger as he sang the nonsensical lyrics that started it all.<\/p>\n
After \u201cWhere It\u2019s At\u201d faded out, the distortion died, the clapping quieted and the rainbow of stage lights dimmed. The band left the stage, but the audience didn\u2019t give in \u2014 it wanted an encore. After a minute or two, Beck reappeared alone on stage. He dreamily recalled a time before his career when he learned a song in a New York City bar, assuming a famous musician had written it, only to find it was by a friend of a friend. Beck ended the show with \u201cTrue Love Will Find You in the End,\u201d a song from that very friend, Daniel Johnston, a soft and saccharine acoustic number that makes descending Nob Hill seem a little less daunting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To traverse the 250-foot mountain that is Nob Hill to reach The Masonic is an act of blind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[30407,188499,188513,188505,188509,119815,9514,188507,188498,188503,51027,188501,188502,128079,188510,26854,188508,188506,188497,188504,101,103,102,104,106,105,188500,188512,188511],"class_list":["post-480602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-beck","tag-bleed","tag-daniel-johnston","tag-devils-haircut","tag-e-pro","tag-gen-x","tag-girl","tag-guero","tag-in-the-night","tag-jason-falkner","tag-jellyfish","tag-joey-waronker","tag-justin-meldal-johnsen","tag-loser","tag-mellow-gold","tag-nob-hill","tag-qu-onda-gero","tag-ride-lonesome","tag-ride-lonesome-tour","tag-roger-manning","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-smokey-hormel","tag-true-love-will-find-you-in-the-end","tag-where-its-at"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}