Los Angeles Love

Last night I saw the Silversun Pickups play at the Wiltern. It was amazing. I've seen them before, and they're always fantastic live, but last night especially, they seemed hugely energized, and little surprise. In the past year, they've gone from being a local LA band that not a ton of people have heard of, to developing quite the following. Enough of a following that they managed to sell out the Wiltern a couple hours after tickets went on sale.

It almost made me tear up to think of how huge this was for them. And I felt so proud to be able to say that I went to see them back when they played at tiny venues like The Echo! And I think many people in the crowd felt the same way. The audience was teeming with hometown generosity to the band. This doesn't happen very often in Los Angeles. There are too many actors and musicians who technically call LA "home." So "hometown" in Los Angeles doesn't mean much, and Los Angeles rarely shows hometown pride towards their musicians the way that say Seattle or Portland or Atlanta does.

But last night, when Brian mentioned that the band was from Los Angeles, and that he had been born and raised in Los Angeles, it meant something. The whole crowd was cheering, and I felt a gush of affection for the band and for my city.