#3 Concert at the Hollywood Bowl - R.E.M.

The next stop on my list is the Hollywood Bowl. The venue is iconic, and I wanted to see a major outdoor concert. R.E.M. is one of my favorite bands, so I had high hopes for this show. I went with Lisey and her dad, who had been waiting a long time to be able to see an R.E.M. concert together.

The only problem is that the Hollywood Bowl is not the most accessible venue. We did some research to find the best option for parking, because everyone told me that it's a nightmare at the Bowl. To avoid steep parking charges (I've mentioned before that I'm cheap thrifty, I decided to park at the nice, safe, unstacked parking structure at Hollywood and Highland. This meant walking almost a mile up a hill to the Bowl, but that turned out the be a good choice. On the walk, we passed over 10 parking lots that cost between $20-$40. Screw that. It was actually a nice walk (gorgeous, perfect weather), and it turned out that a lot of other concert-goers had a similar idea, so we had a lot of company.

Walking through the tunnel into the seating area was very cool. That first glimpse of the white arc-ing stage is awesome. Our seats were pretty good, too.

The first opening act was The National. They were pretty good, but I'd never heard of them before.
Modest Mouse was next. I'm not a huge fan of their music, but they put on a rockin' show.

Finally R.E.M. came out. As usual, they put on an amazing show. I love their new CD, and they played almost the whole thing, plus a great mix of their old stuff.
They had this fantastic light and video show going on behind them.
The sound wasn't so great at the beginning, but it got better. As is custom at the Hollywood Bowl, there was also a lingering scent of marijuana at various points throughout the evening.
I still had a great time, and love love love this band.

R.E.M. has a great official site for tour coverage, and this is the page for the concert I saw. The videos better
illustrate the light and video show that went on upstage.

Overall, fabulous show, but the venue is problematic.

Miles: 33.0 (1.6 miles of which we walked)
Cost: $97.75 ($75 ticket, plus the Ticketmaster fee, $10 parking)

Miles to Date: 88.9
Cost to Date: $107.56