Zac Brown At The Forum

6/5/16

Pam and I saw  the Zac Brown Band last October at the Hollywood Bowl.  The show was spectacular.  They played all the great ZBB songs plus some unexpectedly great covers of The Devil Went Down To Georgia, Let It Be, and Bohemian Rhapsody, which was just phenomenal.  In general the show was really upbeat and fun.  We left feeling great and wanting more.  So when ZBB announced they were touring again this year, we knew we had to go again.  We had huge expectations this time, because last time was just that good.

We went to the show with our friends Marla and Stuart.  I was friends with Stuart in elementary and high school, and they have lived down the street from us for decades, but we rarely saw them.  Ironically, it took a random act for us to rekindle our relationship.  We live in West LA and Country music is not the most popular music in our neighborhood.  Last year Pam and I were driving to an Alan Jackson show which was on the same night and in the same location as a Laker game.  While driving, we saw Stuart and Marla going the same way.  We pulled up next to him and started talking.  This was not so easy, as traffic was heavy, but once we maneuvered next to him, we had time to talk.  Assuming he was going to the Laker game, I asked him where he was going.  He hesitated, probably for the same reason I assumed he was going to the Laker game, and then said they were going to see a country music show.  Oh My!  Who knew there was another Country fan in the hood.

After the opening act, which was actually really good, ZBB came out and played for about two hours with a five minute intermission.  They sounded great.  They are all world class musicians and the acoustics in the Forum are amazing.  So much better than in Staples Center, the most dreaded venue in which Pam and I will see a show, as the acoustics suck in there.  Anyway, we enjoyed the show, but it paled in comparison to the one Pam and I saw last year.  ZBB does not play traditional Country music.  Its most country songs, frankly, are not that country.  They are great songs, though, and we love them.  The issue is that ZBB’s music is morphing into a quasi-metal and psychedelic sound, that is just too dark for us.  Along those lines,  ZBB has been collaborating with Dave Grohl, of Foo Fighters fame, over the past couple of years and he has been a big influence on some of ZBB’s newer songs.  He made a guest appearance at the concert and led the band in a cover of Live and Let Die.  The cover was so distorted, we barely recognized it.  Definitely not Country.  On the other hand, the band closed the first portion of the show with an intimate three song acoustic set, which was Country and included Free/Into the Mystic, It’s  Not OK, and I’ll Be Your Man.  This was the highlight of the show for Pam and me.

Last year, ZBB closed the show with Chicken Fried, an absolutely upbeat song that is just plain fun to hear and you leave the show singing it.  This year ZBB closed the show with Beautiful Drug, arguably a pop song at best and trite at worst, with lyrics that evoke junkie, drug induced references and depict a Fatal Attraction type of relationship.  Couple that with a sophomoric light show  that takes away from the music and we walked away in a daze not wanting to hear another note.

As we were driving home, we were all kind of bummed because none of us were in any hurry to see them any time soon.