leftcoasters

From The Swell Season - July 18, 2010 @HollywoodBowl

Green Day killed it last night in Hollywood. First they played through most of their new album, skipping a couple songs. But after a short break, they played a couple classics and then played requests for another hour. All in all, Green Day played for more than two hours. It was a great Thursday night, and seeing Drew Barrymore out front (with paparazzi snapping away) made me remember just how cool LA can be sometimes.

The Who played a private concert for a thousand-plus E3 attendees and other entertainment types at the historic Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles last night.  The party, which was thrown by Harmonix Music Systems and publisher MTV Games, was a promotion for Rock Band, a video game that features the band’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” After opening around 7 p.m., gamers, developers and general The Who enthusiasts mingled in a side room at the 82-year-old venue for drinks while a steady flow of gamers, rocker wannabes and musicians hit the stage to belt out their favorite tracks on the video game. The invite-only event was pretty hush-hush until later in the afternoon as the second day of the E3 Media and Business Summit came to a close. Rumors also swirled about Coldplay and Aerosmith playing other parties downtown, but details never materialized.

The Who played for almost two hours and few, if any, classics were left out of the mix. Playing songs older than most of the people in the audience, the group performed almost nonstop, only taking brief breaks every so often to make random comments about the Rock Band game, software and how its breathed new life into the 37-year-old song featured on the game.