Marina Green,
San Francisco, CA 94123
Annual Event that begins 2nd weekend of October View Map
Celebrated in conjunction with the Columbus Day festivities since 1981, Fleet Week draws over one million visitors to the city for its various exhibits, parades, air shows, roof deck parties, and beer gardens at the Marina Green. The beer garden is often packed, drawing crowds for their cold brews, various prepared foods, and unobstructed views of the bay. Festivities run pretty much all weekend, starting with the parade of Naval ships at 11:30 am on Saturday and concluding with a live concert series at Pier 39 that goes from 1 pm until 7 pm Sunday. Other notable activities include the air show and Blue Angels aerial performances that start at 12:30 pm and finish at 4 pm on both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday night, pick a nice vantage point, grab a blanket, and watch the fireworks show at Pier 3 that begins at 9:30 pm. When Sunday comes around, the Italian Heritage Parade is another event worth seeing. The parade starts at 12:30 pm and moves right down Columbus Street, through the North Beach District. So dust off that old bomber jacket, don some aviators, and prepare yourself for Highway through the Danger Zone on repeat. |Fleet Week|
Live at the Fillmore 3/30/2009 Love-hate relationships with the future of technology and mankind are rarely as entertaining as this.
With lyrics like “I saw the future, the geeks were right” and song names like the backwardly titled “Machine in the Ghost” you might think Todd Fink was holed-up underground somewhere awaiting our machine overlords from the future. After a four-year break that involved building their own recording studio and setting up their own label (blank.wav), Omaha’s The Faint return with their newest album Fasciination: ten tracks that will give the listener a variety of lyrics to sit back and think about. The subject matter ranges from profoundly transcendental with “Davey knows we all create the world from in our skulls…” and “what was there before the bang/let’s ask the atheists…” to the sarcastically apologetic with “forget the words I said, I was not myself. I never thought you were psycho…,” yet still manage to stay ironically pop-ish, and fresh.
In finding new electronic sub-niches for Fink to attach his sublime “watch what the humans ruin with machines…” and often bizarre “My mother was filled with popcorn…” lyrics to, the band has come a long way sonically from “Glass Danse,” likely from the newfound freedom of having their own label and studio, as well as personal maturation. The squeaky, distorted bass sounds of “Fulcrum and Lever” and the electro-angelic weeping and digital pops of “A Battle Hymn for Children” represent new and eclectic sonic landscapes for the band, but won’t completely surprise, as the sound is still definitively The Faint. The seemingly endless and lethargically rhythmic dance-groove of “Forever Growing Centipedes” and tweaked-out disco-funk anthem “Get Seduced” are sure to get your body moving and are likely to become welcome additions to the band’s already great live shows.
The Faint’s ability to seamlessly fuse their sometimes electronic-dance-pop sound with conceptually ambitious and dystopian lyrics still remains the key to their dysfunctional charm. However, it’s not clear the band knows which to highlight more, the undeniable dance-ability of their music or the introspective and un-arguably thought provoking lyrics of their lead singer. Fink’s lyrics this time out show more awareness and sensitivity and seem more heartfelt than previous albums (there is a noticeable down-tick in juvenile sexual references), but there are times when the music’s intensity is overwhelming, making the lyrics seem more subtle than they are. The band faces an obvious problem, become more irresistibly dance-able or lyrically compelling and you inherently diminish the effect of the other. For now, however, it seems The Faint are balancing the two just fine.
Marina Green,
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