Jake Bugg

I’m going to have a couple extra tickets to this sold out show. Lemme know if you dare to go. 🙂

Thanks! Report tomorrow.

It was a fun night in Hollywood for myself, Grumpymama, and my Parisian friend Etienne. We walked into the club on Hollywood Blvd. about halfway through the opening act’s set, Honeyhoney. Girl fiddler, gentleman electric guitarist, madolin, and banjo player, and another gentleman guitarist seated at a drum kit alternately strumming his acoustic guitar or pounding the drums way too loud. The did a fine version “I Lost It’, written by our pal Lucinda.

Jake entered at 10 pm in his customary all black outfit, and a dour look beneath his Beatleesque Rubber Soul era moptop. The place was packed, floor and balcony. Tickets went on sale in the spring and instantly sold out, long before they knew how popular he was going to be. They should have moved the show to a larger venue but I am glad they did not. Extremely noisey (sp?) and rude persons talking in my section during each song, especially the quiet ones, during which they laughed loudly. Finally I found it necessary to speak to them in my serious voice, causing them to stare at me in horror. We didn’t hear another peep out of them all night. Jake was accompanied by a bass player and a drummer, the same fellows I have seen him on TV with all year. Excellent. He was a little looser this night, and actually cracked a smile several times and laughed when the crowd shouted things to him. More electric than his record. He did several new songs from his upcoming new CD, Shangr-i-La, recorded in Malibu at the same-named studio where The Band, Dylan, Neil Young, and others made records in the past.

It is easy to hear Johnny Cash, Oasis, The Beatles, and Neil Young as his influences during various songs. He is going to be a big star methinks. Different sounding voice for sure. Very weird enunciations. He can turn the word “girl” into a 3 syllable word somehow, it comes out like “gairrrl”. His in between song banter was indecipherable to my ears.

Grumpymama, who knows all things, says Jake will be back on January 24th at the Wiltern Theater, so he is graduating to the big time already.

LWj, I don’t remember LU playing here but it would suit her just fine. It is a lot like the El Rey.

I know Jake Bugg is off to Europe for a while before returning to the U.S. He played in Vancouver last week.

This being his first headlining tour, I think they scrimped and saved and didn’t hire a guitarist, so he is his own electric guitarist. I think he is improving. All the shows I have seen him do on TV and such he is playing the same parts over and over. When he does bigger venues like the Wiltern I think he is going to need a bigger sound. He is an excellent acoustic guitarist I think.

LA is funny in that every show I got to seems to be an all ages type thing. There were kids there with their parents (it is a bar basically but you need a wristband to drink). There were young people without parents, and parents without young people.

P.S. Thx for the video heads up! I will view them when I get home from work. And FYI, there are a shitload of concert videos of him on Dime from this tour, most of them professionally shot.

Here is a story from the New Yorker about his 9/17 NYC show. It could have been written about the LA show.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/10/jake-bugg-from-nottingham-to-malibu.html

Good stuff. The LA Times gave his new album an entire 1 1/2 stars.