For Those About To Rock

Show time: Van Morrison at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium, 10.8.10

I couldn't blame Van Morrison for bullying his way through the first three songs of Friday's set at the Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco.

The legendary Irish singer/songwriter started off with three career-defining numbers in "Baby, Please Don't Go," "Here Comes the Night" and, of course, "Brown Eyed Girl."

Morrison pushed through them in so perfunctory a fashion, it felt obligatory.

How many times must he have remembered when he used to sing "sha-la la-la-la la-la-la-la la-la-ti-da?" Hundreds? Thousands? It's probably a staggering amount.

Fortunately, the opening salvo was an appetizer before the main course.

The meal was lavish, a feast of some of his rarer cuts, with a setlist collecting chestnuts from throughout his entire 45-year career.

Morrison and his band found solid footing with "Fair Play." Though issued on the sadly overlooked Veedon Fleece, Morrison did not begin adding it to setlists until 2009, 35 years after the album's release.

"Fair Play" set the tone for the rest of the set, which found Morrison as comfortable as a man disguised behind a black fedora and sunglasses can look.

Eager to live up to the mysterious image he's cultivated for himself, he matched it with a genre-shifting fluidity as he leapfrogged from blues to rock to jazz. When he wasn't singing in his now-earthy growl, he was the conductor, pointing at his band members when he desired a violin or trumpet solo.

It revealed a perfectionist behind the mask, feeling genuinely befitting of a man who came on stage punctually at the printed 8 p.m. start time and whose crowd directions forbade audio or video recording or still photography of any kind.

Even in the middle of songs, he was directing. On "Sometimes We Cry," for which his daughter, Shana, joined him, Morrison pointed at the organ midway through the piece, moving a band member from keyboards on the spot.

In between songs, he progressed from one song to the next with scant banter. Early in the night, the mention of Clint Eastwood's name drew a cheer. "Oh, he's local, right?" asked Van.

Other hits were repackaged for freshness. Morrison peppered the pace of "Moondance" into a hot jazz number while "Into the Mystic" sailed on twin saxophones, one played by Morrison himself as an introduction to the piece.

He recalled his roots with Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me" and his own "Keep Mediocrity at Bay," both flecked with a blues twinge without overindulging.

Though Morrison showed more flair and passion for the less familiar parts of his catalogue, Friday's set ended back at his beginnings, with take on "Gloria" which brought the crowd to its feet for the only time.

Morrison did not sell out the tiny 3,000-seat venue, although this reviewer speculates that's owed more to the ticket price in tight economic times than the performer.

I Loathe the '80s

The 1980s was the worst decade in music history.

I wish there was a way to pour some sugar on that, but you can’t fight this feeling.

The music often reflects the times and the ’80s are no exception. It was a decade of exuberance -- bright clothes, gaudy hairstyles and shameless music.

There’s no decade that matches it for grating, cheesy pomposity.

It’s supposed “highs” are of the face-meets-palm variety with the likes of “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “Up Where We Belong” or “Funkytown.”

It’s a decade responsible for Wham!, Milli Vanilli, Debbie Gibson, Great White, Dokken, Motley Crue, Hall and Oates, Boy George, Loverboy, Air Supply, Rick Astley and many, many more abominations.

Here are seven-and-one-third more words to convince you: “We built this city on rock ’n’ roll!”

Does anything induce the gag reflex as much as Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear it for the Boy,” a 1984 hit that pretty much encapsulates everything horrifying about pop music in the 1980s — synthesizers as a primary instrument, unnecessary amounts of reverb and a tendency toward dance pop brazenly lacking in self-awareness?

I almost feel a little guilty about this because making fun of ’80s music is like picking on the slow kid at school.

It would be one thing to berate one-hit wonders, but my distaste for the decade extends further to otherwise reputable artists who were engulfed by the vortex of shame.

Bob Dylan, that champion of ’60s counterculture, became a born-again Christian and released some of his worst material.

The Clash went from the raw power of “Janie Jones” to the novelty pop of “Rock the Casbah” in just five years.

Despite their own claims, The Rolling Stones did much more suckin’ in the ’80s than the ’70s or any other decade of its career.

Rock ’n’ roll had ceased shocking people. It was there to mollify us with the likes of Ratt, Poison (right), Warrant, Skid Row, Slaughter, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner and Journey with bad, long hair, tight jeans and a color palette to make Richard Simmons blush.

For me, synthesizers are the biggest reason for the wretchedness.

Nothing distinguishes music from the ’80s as much as a firm layer of cheesy synth.

It so permeated popular music from the decade that use of the bass guitar became passé. Look at Van Halen, which went from 1970s metal thump to “Jump,” which relies heavily on an escalating synth phrase.

Reverb, too, was out of hand. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” is awash in walls of it. The album also suffers from overblown production values and rides on a pile of synthesizers. In spite of these things, it remains a decent record.

It’s worth noting that this epidemic did not spread to the then-fledgling hip-hop genre. “Old school” hip-hop is generally remembered for being either silly and fun of the Sugarhill Gang variety or political such as Public Enemy.

Yet culture has a way of wrapping back around on itself, which makes the new wave/post-punk revival going on so eyebrow raising to me.

These are groups such as The Killers, Muse, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Faint, Editors, Foals, Arctic Monkeys, The Ting Tings or Abe Vigoda.

I think we go in 20-year cycles with things like this because the individuals who are responsible for this were kids the first time around, so it influences the musicians. For the listeners, there’s something familiar about this brand of material.

These bands have taken the worst elements of the ’80s and reigned them in. The synth is there, but it usually doesn’t drive the mood of the song. The reverb is there, too, to give the songs a wider sense of scope rather than dominating the hearing landscape.

Still, some of them get a little too close to their inspiration. I can stand these bands, but only in small doses.

People who enjoy the material on terms that are not ironic must have a personal attachment to the period, maybe growing up during it.

Seriously, the 1980s represent the worst in music and popular trends. It’s a decade that is worth forgetting in musical terms.

Let’s never hear it for the boy again.

Ever.

The Force is with 'Star Wars' in 3-D

Earlier this week, Lucasfilm announced that the six live-action films comprising the “Star Wars” saga will arrive in theaters in 3-D beginning with “The Phantom Menace” in 2012.

This comes not long after the August announcement that the sextet will, for the first time, arrive as a box set in Blu-ray next fall.

The timing of the two finds the mind behind “Star Wars,” George Lucas, mining his favorite find for more gold, but also speaks about the changes in the film industry.

Lucas made repeated remarks about waiting out the high-definition format fisticuffs between Blu-ray and HD-DVD before moving his features to that medium.

It’s a welcome decision, especially for me, someone who put off buying any of them on DVD in the hopes that there would one day be a set with all six. While all six may not be essential, I'm sort of a completist like that.

However, Lucas looks like a bandwagoner when it comes to 3-D.

After last fall’s “Avatar” became the highest grossing movie of all time — due, in no small part, to its breathtaking and ground-breaking 3-D effects — studios became hungry dogs eyeing a choice cut of sirloin. Executives started rubber stamping films into 3-D production.

Films that were not intended to be seen in that way were suddenly being retrofitted, such as “Clash of the Titans” or “The Last Airbender,” the latter of which received horrific reviews for its poor transfer to 3-D. Having M. Night Shyamalan directing probably didn't help, either.

On the whole, however, the collective resurgence of 3-D during the last year feels so gimmicky to me, in the same way “Smell-O-Vision” was a ploy to put butts in seats.

“Avatar” may have re-energized excitement for the medium, but its resurgence is largely artificial. “Despicable Me” and “Toy Story 3,” for example, were movies that would have performed well at the box office regardless of how many dimensions in which they ap- peared. Those that have not fared as well were movies people were shaky on in the first place.

Some in the industry are much more quizzical of the 3-D binge. Christopher Nolan, director of the hotly anticipated third film in the relaunched “Batman” series, has stated on multiple occasions he has no love for the feature.

To be fair, Lucasfilm does not seem like they're doing an “Airbender”-type hack job and rushing the transfer. They're taking their time and giving themselves more than a year to retrofit “Menace” as a starter.

The news about reshaping the films into 3-D has had mixed reaction thus far. While there are many who can't wait to see them re-imaged on the big screen, others have a bad feeling about this. Some wish the mind behind them would stop tinkering with his most famous work.

Will it work? Time will tell, although I'd caution those who will inevitably smirk at the box office haul of “Menace” on its opening weekend to keep in mind that, when it comes to “Star Wars,” the higher the numbers climb, the better the films get. At least, for Episodes 2 through 5, anyway.

I'll give it a shot, especially since I passed on seeing the special edition versions on the big screen back in the '90s.

Those skeptical are well-justified. Lucas doesn't appear to have a purist streak when it comes to leaving the films the way they were initially released, given his tinkering for the special editions in the ’90s and additional tweaks for the 2004 DVD releases.

Han definitely shot first. But not all of Lucas’ fixes were bad. Adding Jabba to “A New Hope” gives him a nice through line to “Return of the Jedi” and seeing the outdoors in Cloud City in “Empire Strikes Back” really gives a better sense of the scope of the universe.

So I'm willing to give him and the 3-D retrofitting job the benefit of the doubt and see them myself in 2012.

But you? You're still doubtful?

Well, I sense much fear in you.