It was a small private show at the offices of Flood magazine. I got there a bit early, way before they started allowing people in and watched the sound check of Blonde Redhead. They were deciding what songs to play as they also figured out which lights should go where. It was nice to watch the behind the scenes before they were set to go live.
A small crowd started tickling into the gallery, the setting was pretty dark and people got settled in with their drinks and had their conversations. At about 9:30 pm, Blonde Redhead took to stage and played a thirty minute set which was not nearly long enough for just how great they are, but it was expected as it was a private one-off performance.
The band played songs off their new album Barragån as well as a couple older ones. At the end of their set, they were trying to determine whether or not to play one more song because they apparently had a hard curfew of ten o’clock and it was now 10:02 pm. The crowd yelled for them to play more songs. One fan said “play one more,” while another person yelled to “play four” more. Those fan requests were outranked when one very excited fan hollered for Blonde Redhead “play all night long!” Wishful thinking …
The band debated for a few minutes and it got kinda awkward, guitarist Amedeo Pace took off his guitar and was about to set it down, then he debated a bit more with vocalist, keyboardist, and guitarist Kazu Makino. Before you knew it, he strapped his guitar back on and at about 10:07pm they played one more song. Fans were elated, and so were the band.
Their set was loud and perfectly haunting. It may have been a short performance, but it was nothing short of amazing.
Check out the photos below from Blonde Redhead’s private Hollywood performance. The band are playing at Indigo Music Festival at The Observatory this Saturday, along with The Melvins, Deafheaven, Deerhoof and many more great acts. Tickets are available here.
Photography & Words: Wes Marsala
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