INSPIRED BY MUSE

The Outside Lands music festival is going on in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park as we speak. Three-day and VIP single-day tickets are still available if you want to see a mind-boggling assortment of indie rock acts: Phish, Arcade Fire, The Shins, The Decembrists, OK Go, John Fogerty, The Arctic Monkeys—and that's not even a fraction of the enormous three-day lineup. Think of a West Coast Woodstock, for established bands and newbies alike (and hopefully without all that mud).

The reason I bring it up is Muse. I'm nuts about this British indie alt-rock band, as you may know if you read my previous column, and I'm delighted to spread the word that Muse will be the headliners Saturday night at Outside Lands. (That's Muse frontman Matt Bellamy over there, on guitar.) With discernible trace elements of Radiohead and Queen, mixed in with some Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, and surf/space guitar, this powerhouse trio puts on a killer of a live show. (Check 'em out on You Tube and see what I mean.)

Art Boy and I went to see them four years ago, on a previous trip to SF. They were already headliners back in Britain, routinely filling places like Wembley Stadium and playing enormous venues like the Glastonbury Festival. But we were lucky enough to see them at the relatively homey Bill Graham Civic, where we thronged with the crowd about 20 feet from the stage. It was just about the most fun I ever had at a live music concert.

Looking back, my only regret is that we caught their live show before they'd produced their exceptional "Resistance" album (a song cycle so insidiously listenable, it played in its entirety on a loop inside my brain for weeks after we first got the CD. Who needs an iPod?) However, they played just about everything else from their previous four albums that night at the Bill Graham, every lick, every harmony and falsetto as deft and textured as the original recordings. Folks heading out to hear them at the Outside Lands fest are in for a big treat.

I couldn't be more thrilled that Muse is finally getting the attention they deserve, not just in the Bay Area, but in the USA as well. And I think it's great that we have James Durbin to thank in part for introducing the band to mainstream Middle America via American Idol. His cover of Muse's "Uprising" (from "Resistance") was a highlight of AI Season 10, and continues to be a big solo for James during the AI summer tour.

(Btw, did you read June Smith's great Sentinel review when James and the AI tour played San Jose last month? Here it is, in case you missed it.)

NOW THEY ARE SIX

Needless to say, James Durbin did not spend a single uneasy nanosecond in the penalty box on Thursday night's elimination round of American Idol, waiting to hear how America voted. It should come as no surprise to anyone who saw his performance of Muse's apocalyptic anthem, "Uprising," the night before—sung in a black leather steampunk duster, complete with marching band drum corps—that the minute James was asked to step out and hear the verdict, he was pronounced "safe" to sing another week. The odds in his favor are soaring as high as one of James' own high notes, now that there are only six contestants left. (Read more)

Btw, did I ever tell you about the time I saw Muse live (and how!) onstage? Yes, I know I mentioned it in passing last post, but I mean the whole story. I call it, "I Was a Teenage Geezer." It was all the fault of our pal, Lia Matera, who, a few years back, started burning us CD samplers of her favorite new alt rock bands.

Thanks to Lia, Art Boy and I are crazy for Brit rockers, Muse. Our favorite thing is to putter around the kitchen at the end of the workday with the Absolution CD cranked up to 11. So when Lia emailed one morning back in 2007 that she’d just bought us all online tickets to see Muse live in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Civic, even a pair of notorious homebodies like us were thrilled. Still, she almost talked Art Boy out of going, with visions of a giant mosh pit of sweating, drunken 20-year-olds flailing away while monster speakers splintered our eardrums. (Earplugs required, she told us.)

Since I hadn’t been to a rock concert in longer than anyone in Muse has been alive, I asked if they’d rope us off in the geriatric section, so as not to frighten The Youth.

“We will be completely invisible to them!” Lia promised me. “People our age are blank spaces between pheromones. We might as well put on invisibility cloaks.” (Click here for the whole sordid tale.)

I only bring this up because Muse is set to headline the gigantic outdoor music festival Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park, SF, this summer, August 12-14. Here's the info. Get in line now, says I.