This Could Be Our Skyline, In a Couple of Decades
-thumb-110x110-460161.jpg)
Cops Get Tough With UC Berkeley Protesters
Photo du Jour 512
Truffle Season, It Is Here
SFist Tonight
(And now for a pro-SFO story...)
Airports simply aren't given to happy surprises. That's the way it is.
Gotta go, gotta do, gotta git. It's a funnel, a gilded chute, a holding pen. A set of obstacles, checkpoints, and fetch-quests. It's something to be overcome, not enjoyed.
But what if someone went out of their way to lace a usually-crappy process with the crisp surprise of basic joy?
That's precisely what the ebullient folks in the San Francisco International Airport's PR department did this holiday season with the You Are Hear music program -- they set aural whimsy traps throughout SFO.
Gleefully-played classical Christmas music filters down from a balcony onto the longest security queue in the airport, hip-shaking jazz reverberates down high-ceilinged industrial corridors past benches and exhibits and deadlines. Guitars and drums echo throughout a monstrous hexagonal Bond-villain-esque terminal. It's not what you'd expect.
Live music doesn't fit with the go-go-go frenzy of a holiday airport. And gloriously so. SFO's You Are Here program is a gloriously-direct affront to all of the attendant headaches of air travel.
Good surprises laid as traps. Brilliant.
Among the tango groups, bell-ringers, and singing saw players were scheduled local luminaries like Bart Davenport and Tommy Guerrero -- and a notable oddity -- Jason Lytle was coming back to the Bay Area to play music in the airport.
* Photos by Scott Allbright
It's like this: Lytle was the main songwriter for the band Grandaddy. Grandaddy created its own light-footed mostly-positive-minded indie pop that humbly soared like a mallard and genuinely wished you well through your earbuds. Prog and pop and orchestral Casio tones drifting through a summertime Central Valley haze. Themes of obsolesced technology, dreams, and desires echoed from road-tested amps. Loops would drone, things would break, guitars could churn into a fuzz-punk roil, yet at the heart of all Grandaddy's music there was Lytle's unpolished high-register keen of a voice, wishing the songs and the listener (and sometimes himself) all the best despite it all. Modesto never sounded so good.
Grandaddy never "made it big" here in the USA. Scored a bit bigger of a following overseas and a few commercials here but the strain of the whole thing pulled the band apart slowly like taffy, and so it went. In early 2006, Grandaddy was no more. Lytle lit off to Montana, and the rest of the guys went their own ways.
And last Friday, due to SFO, Jason Lytle came back to Northern California to play music inside SFO's Terminal 3 with former Grandaddy drummer Aaron Burtch. Those passengers returning through Terminal 3 had no idea what they would be passing by on their way to where they were going to.
Since they were set up in a post-security location, the show's audience was limited to those passing through Terminal 3. Which made for awesome people-watching. The experience would be something like this...
1) Travelers would approach, slowly adopting a quizzical expression as they tried to figure out what was goin' on here. 2) Some would slow down, some would speed up, 3) Some of those who slowed down would set down their things and enjoy the music. 4) Some of those who enjoyed the music would enquire about the band and the band's merchandise as in this picture.
Venerable Grandaddy superfan Troy gets his knitting on. He was helping to man the merch table.
Considering that many of Lytle's songs involve technology, the oddness of tech, and the issues of travel -- it seemed almost too perfect that they were set up next to the Departures monitors.
Lytle and Burtch played mostly new songs, at times improvising on the fly.
Burtch grinned broadly through his beard as he laid down effortless beats.
How much of the new songs did he actually know?
Impossible to know.
Has Lytle turned the corner on the claustrophobic, reactive push-back tone of the final Grandaddy releases (Toddzilla EP and Fambly Cat LP)? It feels like it.
Grandaddy songs played included Levitz, Beautiful Ground; XD-Data II; and What Can't Be Erased.
There was no single "set" of people who were more particular to stop and listen to the music: young travelers, grandparents resplendent in holiday sweaters, custodians, folks with little kids, captains, business travelers, and one couple who sat and ate identical sandwiches out of identical tupperwares.
This li'l dude on the right in the green stripes was rockin'-out!
Circulating through the flow of travelers were airport workers of all ranks and stripes.
Some stopped and listened, some didn't.
As perhaps you could tell by his kickdrum's head, Aaron Burtch isn't just an awesome drummer, he's also an accomplished painter and artist. Check out his work at the newly-launched aaronburtch.com.
Unfailingly polite, at the end of the set Lytle wished the audience safe travel
and slowly began taking apart his gear.
Safe travel to you too, Lytle.
More information:
http://jasonlytle.com/
http://aaronburtch.com/
http://www.myspace.com/jasonlytle
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Some of these performances can be surreal.
Here is Zoe">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jiWF91DssM">Zoe Keating covering "Time Is Running Out" by Muse from this summer's inaugural You Are Hear festival.
Some of these performances can be surreal.
Here is Zoe Keating covering "Time Is Running Out" by Muse from this summer's inaugural You Are Hear festival.
(Goddammit, I hate these Typepad comment servers.)
"one couple who sat and ate identical sandwiches out of identical tupperwares."
I call bullshit. You cannot get any food in tupperware through security at SFO. They need to charge you 12 bucks for a stale turkey sandwich and 8 bucks for a bottle of Heineken once you get inside the security zone. Bastards.
I saw Jason and some other dude working the electronic thingies they use for their sound at Cafe Du Nord a couple years back after Granddaddy split up. Basic, torn down and real.
Awesome show.
@RobinSF
For serious! I was sitting behind where these two were sitting and stared in wonderment!But there it was, plain as day: tupperware. And home-made sandwiches.
I wouldn't kid you on a subject of such importance. Maybe it'll show up in some of the pictures...
That DuNord show was good too. Can't wait for him to come 'round again.
@RobinSF
Ah-ha!As luck would have it, looky here! = http://sfist.com/attachments/Christopher Rogers/IMG_5931o.jpg
Right in the center you can see the composed & calm traveling couple. And the bespectacled guy is clearly putting the blue lid on top of his tupperware!
That's right! SFist! When doubts are raised and considered regarding tupperware, we can back up our Journalism with Hard Evidence!
You're totally right, Robin -- these folks must have landed at SFO to have food with them...
RobinSF,
These concerts are held in the concourse area before the security checkpoints so anyone can attend (that's how I took my video). As a matter of fact, I just hopped onto BART to get to SFO.
The Terminal 1 performance area is on the mezzazine level above the main concourse walkaway and security screening area.
The International Terminal performance area is in the concourse hallway not too far from the ticket counters. I haven't been to the third performance site but the pictures above show it.
Well, it looks like I skimmed the post too quickly and the Terminal 3 location is in fact in the post-security area. I should have recognized the United wing anyhow.
In any case, getting a plastic food container through security is basically whether or not the security staff were particularly vigilant or not. The security staff are looking for liquids and gels anyhow, not sandwiches.
The other two locations are still pre-security, so anyone can attend.