Indulge Me My Lana

February 17, 2018 — Influences come in many forms. Sometimes, they are what many like. Sometimes, they are something we like just for ourselves. Because Lana Del Rey, for the most part here, is something that only I like, I’ll keep my review sort of simple.

Up to now, Lana’s concert calendar, and I mean of the time of her career that I’ve followed her, has consisted of the occasional festival and the occasional small venue. I first saw her at a festival in 2016. I saw her at a smaller-sized amphitheater in Santa Barbara in late 2017. In large part, those shows were similar. They used the same stage – a curtain backdrop with a neon “Del Rey” sign. While she had video projection, and images on the background, it was not all that elaborate. And her setlist was just around an hour long, a short, tight show, something very much for the devoted fan. That was then.

This is now. Following the release of her 2017 album, Lust for Life, Lana’s strictly non-radio audience seems to have grown to a size sufficient to warrant a full-scale concert, a two-month long tour in larger arena-sized venues all across the country, then for the rest of the year, South America and Europe. I’m not sure why there wasn’t a Los Angeles venue on the list, perhaps because she did warm-up concerts in small venues here and near here, including that Santa Barbara show, but San Diego was the closest of these dates to me.  I thought about not going. I had seen her in Santa Barbara only a few months ago, and I am very low on funds. Good reasons to not go, but … well… it’s Lana, Lana in an arena, and I just had to go. My bestest girlie goes big time!

I saw a sign today, one of those little signs people make and put on the side of the road. Maybe those are only in Laurel Canyon, and I don’t know who makes them, but this one was funny. The sign’s statement: Heaven is a traffic jam on the 405. Honestly, that sounds like a good lyric for a Lana song, although I don’t think many of you would relate to that because I’m certain you don’t know any Lana lyrics. Then again, most of you won’t know why that sign is so absurd, but trust me, there isn’t much connection between Heaven and the 405. The 405 is ridiculous, always, but on Thursday night, the traffic on that freeway (the North-South artery leading near the coast, then turning into the 5, which would be I-5 everywhere else) was the worst I’ve ever seen it.

Four and a half hours after I left my house, I arrived at a hockey venue in San Diego known as Valley View Center (I think), where most of the seats of the two levels and all of the floor were already filled with people. I sat in my appointed seat on the end of the tenth row, second level on the left side (facing the stage). That’s the side with the guitar player, and he’s fun to watch. I had a decent view of Lana seeing as the smallish arena wasn’t all that tall. I don’t know how many seats were sold; it seemed very full, and it was really nice seeing the huge success Lana is having.

Lana played to the San Diego crowd, referring to Los Angeles as well. Given the roaring scream on the reference to Los Angeles, it seems I wasn’t alone in driving from L.A. The audience had a lot of females, but there are more and more males all the time. Lana played for almost two hours, fitting 21 songs into the set list. Of those, nine were from her new record. She included her “hits” too, hits meaning songs the crazy Lana fans have known for a long time (Summertime Sadness, Video Games, Ride, National Anthem, Blue Jeans, Born to Die). There was even one song that might be considered a deep cut. It’s called Serial Killer; I won’t torture you with it, but suffice it to say, Lana fans went completely crazy over it. Her stage set was surprisingly good. It featured a lighted area on the floor that alternated between reflective wave shots, and the blue of a pool. For her second song, Pretty When you Cry, Lana and her dancers laid down on that area, performing the entire song with cameras angled onto them and the image projected as a backdrop, making Lana and her two dancers look as if they were swimming on the stage floor. The setlist included faster (faster for Lana) songs in two groups, with a middle section consisting of slower songs. During the slow songs, that reflective area turned blue, giving the feeling that we were sitting with Lana by an elaborate swimming pool while she sang.

And sing she did. Lana’s vocals were the strongest I’ve ever heard them. Perhaps that’s because my goal up to now has always been to get as close to the stage as possible, a place where her extremely devoted fans drown out a lot of the sound with their own singing. but up higher, all the sound was present. You know the sign of a good concert? When a performance goes well beyond the record version. That was the case with these slow songs. Especially strong was Lana’s performance on her song When the World Was at War We Kept Dancing, a political cheer for America on her newest record, and a song I quite frankly usually skip. I loved Yayo, a song from the earliest days of Lana, a time when she played in bars, singing with just a guitar (an electric though, playing one-finger chords as her own musical accompaniment). She played her Gibson Flying V on Yayo, no band, just her, and I could watch that for hours. I liked West Coast, perhaps the hardest of the songs outside of the closing, and one I hadn’t heard live before. It’s a nice ode to my adopted home, so it’s a particular favorite of mine. I liked the swings, swings that carried the two dances back and forth as Lana sang Ride. I liked Lana’s partial performance of Simon and Garfunkel’s song Scarborough Fair. I especially liked that I knew that song when nobody else around me did – a good moment to be older than the average Lana fan. I liked Lana’s talking too. Gone are the days of the shy Lana who barely moves. Lana walked the stage and talked a lot, even showing her loyalty, loyalty to her musicians – her band has been with her for ten years she said, for her producer, whom she said was also with her that time, and especially to the fans. She thanked the fans, acknowledging the fact that she’s an independent artist who’s now playing in arenas because her fans got her there. Ten years to get to arenas people; you have to respect that. And you have to respect her fans who put her there.

Indeed, you can’t help but be taken in by Lana’s interaction with the fans. Still, even in an arena, Lana spent a song’s-length of time walking into the space between the stage and the first row to take photos with fans, accept presents, and this time to give about half-a-dozen little small red-velvet boxes to some lucky fans. She might be playing arenas now, she might be playing the set-length of a major act, but she’s still accessible, still humble.

I found myself standing, then sitting, then standing, then sitting for the end, happy to take in what Lana means to me. She’s my musical inspiration. She makes me want to pick up my guitar and play for hours. She makes a good example too, always getting better and better, stronger and stronger as a musician and a songwriter, certainly as a performer. Lana is a worker, and I’m a worker.

I thought long and hard about what to write in this article. It’s not really an article with a theme; it doesn’t do a run-down of songs, all because I felt like I was writing an article that wouldn’t really interest anyone. Lana Del Rey, again? I mean, really, someone is going to revoke my rock card. But, honestly, my experience that night came down to one image to me. It came down to this moment when I was walking to my truck after the concert. I had passed a chain-link fence where about ten or so people had gathered. I heard the words “I can see her.” It seemed the people expected her to come to the fence to greet them. I was walking parallel to a young woman. There seemed to be only me and this girl, okay and her man whom she was walking with, also quite young. I looked back at the fence. That girl did too. The young man asked his girl if she wanted to go over there. At that point, both of us girls stopped and looked at each other. I asked her if Lana was going to come over to that fence. The girl said often Lana does. The girl explained “Lana loves her fans too much.” Indeed, I would bet Lana did go to that fence. I don’t know what was going through that girl’s mind, but I turned to look at the fence. I was tired, with at least three hours of driving ahead of me and a full day the next day, so I didn’t want to add to my already time-burdened day and take from my little sleep I would get, but I did stand there for at least half a minute. The girl did the same. I could hear the young man, in a voice that had a lot of tenderness, the voice of a young man trying to make his young girlie happy, say “are you sure you don’t want to go back”. At least three times the girl said no; after each he said “are you sure”, but I think, and I can’t know, but I think, this girl was thinking what I was.

My thought. My overwhelming conclusion to this beautiful concert was that I was watching my own personal movie, that it didn’t matter to me what anyone thinks, not really, that when I hear these songs, they make me believe in the me I want to become, and that it’s all possible. No, forget possible. It’s all going to happen. It’s all real. If Lana can; I can. I didn’t need to go to the fence. It had been enough for me as it was. So I kept walking. That girl in the parking lot? I think she was the same. Her movie ended too. She just wanted to walk. Yes, we walk to our cars or trucks or whatever, really quietly; we walk. No, the music doesn’t touch everyone, but for those of us whom it does touch, we are better for it, better for this concert, better for Lana and her music. We walk, perhaps a little bit prouder now. You see, Lana, our Lana, now she’s in arenas!

And for everyone else, here’s a theme for you, for this week: post guitar solos, post all the things that move you…because it’s really fun to indulge this. Share whatever it is for you that moves you. Indulge me my Lana, but let’s get yours in too. Perhaps we’ll even hear a bit of the story of that G3 concert. How about it?

(Note: Video of When the World Was At War We Kept Dancing was not from San Diego, and is included to show the stage set. All other videos were from the San Diego show.)