Best Show Ever!
I went to the Tenacious D and Friends Tsunami Relief Benefit concert last night.
The night opened with Will Ferrell coming out to get the crowd worked up. The pit immediately started chanting "Frank the Tank" All Will had to say about that was, "Ok, we get it." Then he proceeded to tell us that the one guarantee we could expect from the night was live music, no Ashlee Simpson stuff. He then admitted that he was talked into performing a song, and being a Coldplay fan he had been working on one of theirs to sing for us. He then proceeded to lip-synch the hell out of some Coldplay song.
Ferrell welcomes the crowd.
Then the D came out and talked with a red-cross employee about the benefit, which was both informative and hilarious as JB was asking the questions.
JB asking some awesome questions.
The first artist to come out was Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. He played about 4 songs, two of which were new and Dave Grohl jammed with him on the last song of his set.
Dave Grohl and Josh Homme jamming.
Next up was Eddie Vedder. Vedder was amazing. He played I am Mine, Trouble, Last Kiss, and then KG came out to play You've Got to Hide Your Love Away with him.
Vedder belting out some Zepplin.
At this point Chris Rock came out as a surprise to everyone, to fill the time inbetween sets. That man is funny.
Chris Rock was the only one not to rock (musically) last night, but he was hilarious.
Dave Grohl came out next. He started his set with a new song. Then he played Everlong, and two other songs that I'm blanking on right now. I don't carry a pen and paper to these things.
Beck was next. He played Lost Cause as the second song of his set and about thirty seconds into it, Will Ferrell comes out in a bright red unitard and starts doing some interpretive dance moves. Beck stops playing and asks Ferrell what he's doing. Will tells him that he was just hanging out backstage in his unitard and was so moved by the song that he needed to dance. Beck tells him that it's cool to dance as long as he does it by the very side of the stage. So Will goes to the side of the stage and Beck restarts the song and Ferrell restarts dancing. It doesn't take long for Will to work his way back over to Beck. Beck tells Will to give him some space, so Will dances over to Becks pump organ and starts gently humping it. Let me tell you, Will Ferrell + Red Unitard = Hilarity. Beck plays two more songs without any interruptions and then Tenacious D takes the stage.
Like Sting, Beck says "Don't stand so close to me." to Will Ferrell and his unitard.
The whole night was acoustic and all the other bands played mellower stuff, so when the D came on anyone who didn't holster their socks up probably lost them. Cause the D rocked. Hard. They played all the old favorites and two new songs from their upcoming movie, Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. If the songs are any indication on how good this movie is going to be, I'll probably end up seeing it in the theater 4 or 5 times. They also played a sweet as Al's stache melody of song's from the Who's Tommy.
The D! Moving so fast they're blurry!
At the end of their set, Jack Black had a dream. That they could get all of these musicians on stage at once to form some sort of supergroup. And on that note, the curtain raised revealing Grohl behind a drum set and the rest of the musicians harnessing guitars. Vedder and Black traded off lead vocals as the sang Time transitioned into Zepplin's Good Times, Bad Times and then back into Time. Oh, and Will Ferrell was out there playing the cowbell. And with that, the Greatest Show Ever came to an end.
JB's dream comes true.
Then in the parking lot my friends and I ran into the Foo Fighter's drummer and had a little chat with him, and scored some free swag from radio stations.
Photographs courtesy of Lontih who was right up front.
