Just got back from the Beck concert downtown. Amaaaaaazing! The Kiva is such a great venue; there aren’t any bad seats. Don was there and we talked a bit. I remember when he was up on that stage last year for nationals.

When Beck hit the stage, the first thing I noticed was that the people projected on the screen behind the band weren’t people. They were marionettes. Marionettes dressed exactly like the band that were perfectly synchronized to them. At first I thought this was prerecorded and masterfully choreographed, but then I noticed that the puppeteers were actually at the back of the stage and there was a small puppet stage back there that was lit and set up just like the main stage. They were doing this live. They did it for the *entire* show. Whatever the band did, the marionettes did. It was so cool!

Beck played more songs tonight than several bands combined. It was like a Beck mix tape, the way he segued between songs without stopping, like a live crossfade, sometimes no more than a stanza. And when I thought he was done and he left the stage, he came back on not for an encore, but a whole other set. This happened twice. They had this schtick where the band takes a break to eat dinner, but they eat on stage, off to the side, while Beck does some mellow solo stuff. The puppets ate dinner too.

I would say the high point was when they showed a short film about the Beck puppets in Albuquerque. They must have shot and edited it that day. They had little skits from all around town. When Puppet Beck went into the Frontier the crowd lost it. We went nuts! A lot of bands will throw out little bones to the crowd, but this really made it feel like the concert was just for us.

And of course the encore was perfect: Loser followed by E-Pro. No other way to end it.

I’ve got one day to rest and then I go see INXS. And then Counting Crows on the 3rd!