Before I start let me just say that I usually do not like live music. It’s loud, it’s hard to understand, and it’s almost always stuff I don’t know the words to (the only songs I know by heart are Love the Way You Lie by Eminem and Rhianna and Glamorous by Fergie). The other night, though, I decided that I should give live music another chance (I had actually recently gone to CEC’s Bruin Plaza concert for Chairlift and had fun, so like, what the hey, why not?). The concert was put on by the Student Committee for the Arts, a group of students that is part of UCLA Live. SCA puts on art-related programs for students that range from things like concerts to recitals to film screenings.

The headliner for the show was a band called Portugal. The Man, and they got to play with the UCLA Philharmonic (which is totally cool, the UCLA Phil rocks!). My favorite part of Portugal’s show was their ~light show~. They had four big strings of spherical white lights about the size of  big softballs that hung from the ceiling and then about four or five “light trees,” which had the same sort of softballish lights. All of the white spheres lit up with the music in a bunch of different colors (it kind of reminded me of a lighting fixture I had seen at Limited Too (in a good way)). Besides the multi-color flashing spheres, there were also green lasers and spotlights from above – all very fun!

There were two other bands that opened for Portugal. The Man – the Ten Thousand and Haim. I actually recently saw the Ten Thousand perform in Spring Sing. I thought that they were great then, and I was blown away at the concert. Their songs were so fun! And to top it off, the band was from UCLA (if you hadn’t already gotten that from the fact that they performed in Spring Sing). The second band, Haim, was super good, too. One of the band members said she went to UCLA and all of the band members had just gotten back to US after being in the UK for a while. Like seriously they had only been in the states for 12 hours, and they said that their performance was a mix of “jet-lag and adrenaline.” That mix totally worked out for them, Haim was amazing! All four band members had drums and they finished up their set with the huge awesome (super loud) drum extravaganza. The singing was great, the attitude was great, all around was great.

Although historically I have been opposed to attending concerts, this one was pretty legit. Next week, the winners of Spring Sing, a band called Alto, will be performing in Bruin Plaza. With my recent track record in attending live shows, it seems like Alto is a good bet. Perhaps this is the beginning of my love for live music (or at least my like for it).