Disappointed tonight in Frankie Rose, who opened for Jesus & Mary Chain/Psychedelic Furs. Was really looking forward to it. Didn't know anything about her, but listened on Spotify to see if the opener would be good, and I liked it. Unfortunately, they spent the whole set in the dark, backlit by red lights crossing the stage behind them and a screen playing black and white graphics. We couldn't see the band at all from the front row of a box, just silhouettes. Since the drums and keyboards appeared canned -- no discernable person playing those -- I had to wonder whether the whole thing was live or Memorex. Everything but the drums sounded pretty good, but maybe too good, and it was hard to focus on the music while being so annoyed at the band playing in the dark, like, who does that?, and wondering if it's all recorded. I'd like to think at least some of it was live, and I tried to tell, but the performance wasn't visible. In fairness, to her credit, she did visibly sing two songs with JAMC. So, I really wanted to like it, but lost a fair amount of interest.
Jesus & Mary Chain, and Psychedelic Furs, were great. Richard Butler's great weird voice hasn't changed at all. A lot of people left after "Pretty in Pink," but they missed out, their last three songs were some of their best.
