Tour Dates 2013+

[Emma]

Hermesacat,

Thanks for your detailed concert review and your live recording. It sounds excellent. Very good taping job for a beginner!

I didn't know they started the tour with a concert in Sacremento until I came across this post with a Sacramento set list and a short Fade Into You video clip. Was it a "secret" concert before the launching of the official tour?

I also came across this mixed live review of the Portland concert.

[Emma posted the set list from the Portland show which mirrors what i learned at setlist.fm (it may have been her source)

Mike, I took it from setlist.fm but I don't know if it is accurate...
As you said, the oregonmusicnews article is a bit confusing as the reporter does not seem to know MS very well. She confused Lay Myself Down with I Have Been Let Down, Blue Flower with Blue Light, etc. With all these inaccuracies, I am not even sure they played Taste of Blood.

[MikeRMD]

Hi all,

I noticed that Sacramento listing as well late last night but it wasn't even on hopesandoval.com so maybe it was a 'warmup' show. As far as set lists go we'll know only for sure if we get tapes as Hermesacat did of the Seattle show. For that one we KNOW what they played.

Cheers

[intodust72]

I am seeing the band in Boston on the 19th, I would love to hear Umbilical! Although I am happy to hear/see them live at all, and I hope the crowd is nothing like Hope's last visit to Boston!

[alas]

Someone recorded Fade into You at Portland:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgs61VqvfL8

The camera didn't zoom in, but you see how calm Hope's delivery is. Her voice doesn't sound strained (as it did in some of those outdoor festivals).

[Hermesacat]

Judging from the YT clip, Portland got a much clearer view of Hope than people in Seattle did. There was no direct light on her in Seattle at all. I guess sometimes she's more successful than other times at obtaining the darkened stage she prefers. I agree her voice sounds much better from what I've heard on this tour so far than in 2012.
Here's a short but enthusiastic review of the SF show:
http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_24473400?source=rss

I've just upped the audio file of the Seattle show to dimeadozen.org torrent site. In the torrent description I direct people to the mazzystar.free.fr forum. Hopefully, that will bring some more visitors & new members here.

In comments at my Dime upload someone who was at the Sacramento show wrote something interesting about the audience there & Hope's reaction:
''Thanks for taping this! We attended the show in Sacramento a few days earlier, and Hope was VERY displeased with the audience chatter during the show. It's too bad, because she sounded fantastic but I've never seen an artist exhibit less enjoyment of performing. It'll be nice to relive the gig with a nice pair of headphones : ) ''
-The Sacramento show was at Harlow's ''restaurant & nightclub''. MIke's theory is clubs are more likely to have noisy audiences than are theaters. There's likely something to that. If Hope doesn't like places like that, why doesn't the band try harder to land halls & theater gigs instead of nightclubs?

There are no other torrents up yet at Dime from other Mazzy shows from this tour, but hopefully they'll turn up. Some good ones from 2012 were posted there last year. The Seattle show's getting a pretty good number of thumbs up votes at youtube (in terms of ratio of total views to thumbs votes). It's good people seem to like it despite its ''warts'' (btw, thanks Emma, & Mike). Hope's voice has lots of clarity in the recording. That's something I like about it.

[madub]

Glad i finally found the new-new MS forum. Just a long shot here: Is anybody driving from the Kitchener area to the Toronto show next Saturday? hoping to find a ride....

Glad that the show is at the Danforth Music Hall, a great venue, quiet, intimate. Hope's had some bad shows in Toronto, walking off early, cursing the noisy crowd. Those shows were at bad venues. They've also been given a tough time getting across the border I've heard, having their van ripped apart and such. I saw the Warm Inventions show in Vancouver at a noisy club, in fact the ventilation fan above the stage nearly drowned them out. This should be a good show in Toronto, and I agree that in the bootleg of the Seattle show they sound great, much better than last summer's festival gigs.

[MikeRMD]

Hi all,

Thanks to Hermesacat for letting us know about the problems at the Sacramento show. My theory sort of goes with an experiment which was done once regarding littering. If an area was kept clean people were far less likely to litter than if there was already garbage there. So my theory is that if people are in a hall or theatre with nice ambience where they're all FACING THE SAME WAY TOWARDS THE STAGE then they're much more likely to be respectful and quiet. In clubs some of the people are not even facing the stage and they're around a table with drinks talking etc. There's also the problem with ice in glasses and cash registers etc. I saw Alan Holdsworth once in a club and during a quiet song a blender started up crunching ice for a drink. I go even further than Hermesacat in saying that if MS cannot find a suitable venue then don't play that city. As Madub said the show HSATWI did in Vancouver went badly mostly due to the venue and the audience acting like they usually do in such places. That said I recall an interview Hope gave during the tour where MS opened for Jesus and the Mary Chain and it was commented on that the audience was very quiet and respectful. Hope replied that audiences were beginning to learn that they had to be quiet for MS to stay on stage longer than 30 min. Why the Sacramento crowd were talking when this band has not toured since 2000, and for North America not since 1997. They ought to treat the chance to see MS for the rare gift that it is.

As far as intodust72 hoping to hear Umbilical. I love that one too and it shows on the set list for Portland but I wouldn't trust the veracity of that. It's possible the person who put that info up confused that song with STTIMS which the band have been doing regularly.

Nice to see a few more of the BLVD'ers making their way here thanks to Emma starting this site! Thanks!

[Hermesacat]

A review of the L.A. show at the Wiltern Theater, Nov. 7:
http://consequenceofsound.net/2013/11/m ... um=twitter
It also gives the long setlist:

1 Look on Down from the Bridge
2 Cry, Cry
3 In the Kingdom
4 Lay Myself Down
5 Ride it On
6 Does Someone Have Your Baby Now?
7 Into Dust
8 She Hangs Brightly
9 Halah
10 Fade Into You
11 Blue Flower
12 Disappear
13 Flying Low
Encore:
14 California
15 So Tonight That I Might See
[Later update edit: The above set list appears to have been taken from a set list printout used by the band onstage, but is not what the band actually played. They ended up not doing Flying Low, & did a second encore after Tonight That I Might See which was I've Been Let Down]

The reviewer mentions what forum member ForceofNature also mentioned something about in another thread, i.e. that people ignored the signs forbidding photography. Worse, they left their flash on, resulting in Hope complaining. By contrast, in Seattle I saw a few people take non-flash photos (I tried to take a few too), but not one flash went off during the show. I doubt the band would even mind photos if people would simply turn their flash off, & maybe not take photos from right up close to the stage.

More reports of audience behaviour at venues this tour:
- Here's a quote from comments at my Dime upload from someone else who attended the Wiltern show:
''...Unfortunately, L.A. was plagued by heavy drinkers that brought their outside voices. Nice "longish" set. I will get it up as soon as time and work permits.''
(Good, so, he's planning to up his recording of the show to Dime, & he also says prior recordings of bands he recorded turned out really well).

-A quote from someone who was at the SF show:
''I attended the Warfield (Theater) SF show, and it was a pretty stellar crowd. During the quieter numbers, the hall was as silent as I have ever heard at a concert...''
(In Seattle, the audience was very quiet during the louder numbers too)

-Someone else made a general comment about Seattle audiences vs. SF ones:
''... I've found people in Seattle to generally have a better appreciation of music than I'm used to. I just moved here over the summer from San Francisco... and the difference is noticeable at shows...''

It sounds like the most obnoxious & noisiest audience so far on this tour was in Sacramento at Harlow's nightclub. The rest of shows have been at theaters or at a vintage ballroom (in Portland). This may be further evidence Mike's correct about nightclubs bringing out the worst in audiences. Madub' s comments re. Toronto venues reminds me of the Warm Inventions recording from 2002 from Lee's Palace (nightclub?), Toronto, where the audience chatter bothers Hope so much she asks for the sound volume ''in the house'' to be turned up to drown out the voices. They do turn up the volume, but unfortunately the raised volume distorts the sound on the recording, & the rest of the show doesn't sound as good after that.

I suspect it's true audience behaviour's influenced by venue, as Mike says. But I think ''local attitudes'' are a factor too. e.g. L.A.'s sounds like it may have been the least tolerable audience among the theater shows, so far. Also, I doubt the open hostility Hope & the Warm Inventions were subjected to in Boston a few years back at The Paradise Rock Club (btw, Why would Mazzy Star play the same club this tour?) would have occurred in many other cities. I can't forget a Hope quote from that Boston gig: QUOTE: ''Boston is fuckin' scaring the Hell out of us!''

-update - Another L.A., Wiltern show review, Hollywood Reporter:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... ing-654619

[Hermesacat]

Set List from San Francisco, Nov. 6, The Warfield Theater:
01 Look on Down From the Bridge
02 Cry, Cry
03 In the Kingdom
04 Lay Myself Down
05 Ride It On
06 Does Somebody Have Your Baby Now?
07Into Dust
08 She Hangs Brightly
09 Halah
10 Fade Into You
11 Blue Flower
12 Disappear
13 So Tonight That I Might See

-A fairly good quality recording of this show got posted to Dime here:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-deta ... ?id=471180
I've re-upped it for direct DL here:
http://www.filefactory.com/file/25g2780ffv6j
& added it to the Boots list. It's the same 13 songs as Seattle. I'd like to see lots more
variation in set lists. I wish they'd play a lot more seldom performed songs as they did
on the 2000 tour with half the songs played being unreleased rarities.

-In SF, Hope adds a new line of ''lyrics'' to ''She Hangs Brightly''. In the middle of the song she says:
''STOP filming (with) those i-phones'' !
And at some point in-between songs she says to the audience ''You guys are savages.''
The audience, though more raucous than in Seattle, sounds fairly well -behaved overall,
but still managed to peeve Hope, apparently.
*************************************************************************
Another review of the Portland show, Nov. 3, Crystal Ballroom:
http://opbmusic.org/blog/live_review_ma ... l_ballroom
I notice a Portland review Emma posted a link for earlier has a comments section with quite a few comments. A few people at the gig complained about loud, obnoxious audience members. One gives this priceless depiction:
''The Crystal is an awful venue to see a real show. Also, the number of suburbanite dudebros who'd driven their girlfriends in just to hear "Fade Into You," and thus were acting like TOTAL ASSHOLES, was really really high. Warning to real Hope Sandoval fans: you're going to be outnumbered by aging 1995 graduates and their drunk, loud, dickhead boyfriends.''

[Hermesacat]

Someone's posted the entire Wiltern L.A. show (audio) to YT, here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k4KReqOBvg
Forum member ''creek'' also recorded the show along with a few video clips & photos. Someone at Dime is promising to up a quality audio recording of it there. I figure waiting to see what turns up, & then uploading the best sounding, most complete version for the boots list might be a plan.