Red Elvises at Redondo Beach Pier
Redondo Beach, California
August 30, 2003
By Kayt
The Redondo Beach Pier is one of the coolest places in Southern California that Red
Elvises play. It’s right over the water, has beautiful – hey, hot can still count as
“beautiful!” -- weather each year and the location has plenty of room for rows and
rows of chairs but also ample space for dancing. It was an early show, 6pm-8pm, so
we had the afternoon sun going into the early evening…and Oleg and his lovely friend
even posed for me in front of the sunset during the break, how cool is that?
This was the fourth local show in one fun-filled month for us spoiled southern
Californians, but this was also the most shows in one month we’ve had here in quite a
long time, so you can forgive us if we were a little giddy, right? No? Well, okay.
Since they’re going to be back out on the road as this hits the Web, hopefully most
or all of you will get to see them, and we here in the “home base” area won’t see them
for the next couple of months at least. Feel better? Okay, we’re even!
Usually, at Redondo Beach shows, people dance. They can’t help themselves, you know? But
for some reason this year it seemed most butts were inexplicably glued into their chairs
as the guys played with their usual wild happiness and worked hard to entertain us. I
don’t really understand how that’s possible, but it happened. As you can see from the
above photo, some of us lined up to take photos from time to time. It was almost like
a press conference, a little row of us stepping up with cameras clicking away. But for
some reason it was a good long while before we managed to get any sort of a decent
crowd of people up to dance. I think everyone had a good time anyway, but it would’ve
been nice to see more dancing.
Now here is where I would tell you about the songs they played, and believe me, they
played a lot of the great ones! And I even wrote them all down, honest! But…I seem to
have lost my little red notebook I was using there. How could this happen? I checked
the pockets of my “Better Than Sex” bowling shirt that I wore that day…I looked all
over my room, twice, and even checked in my car…not there. It’s like it vanished
into thin air! I’m sure I’ll probably find it…on October 2nd or sometime. But anyway, just
know that most of your favorites were played, with great finesse and fantastic sound as
always. They played mostly the same songs as at the Laguna Beach show of August 24th in
last month's issue. And during “I Wanna See You Belly Dance,” we had the treat of one of
the actual belly dancers who appeared in the video joining in. She wasn’t wearing her belly dance
costume, but she was up there between Igor and Oleg with all her belly dance moves anyway.
That was pretty cool.
So it was a fun show, very entertaining and lovely with seagulls flying overhead and
ocean waves breaking nearby. The guys had great energy and there were lots and lots of
smiles amongst the audience, even with fewer people dancing than in previous years. A
beach, nearby seafood and beer AND Red Elvises too, now that’s a terrific combination.
Be sure to go see Our Favorite Band when they play near you, even if there’s no beach
for thousands of miles…you can just imagine the hot weather, seagulls and ocean waves.
And you can dance!
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