![]() ![]() Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. ![]() with degrees in English and Communications. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. It was clear there were lots of hometown fans who got there early for Greer, singing loudly along to tunes such as “Song For Me.” Now signed to Epitaph Records, and still barely out of their teens, Greer impressed. The band Greer, formed by high school friends in Costa Mesa in 2018, opened the night with a strong set of indie rock that reflected influences such as Rilo Kiley, fellow travelers like the Regrettes, with whom they’ve toured, and a handful of unexpected covers - Elvis Costello’s “Man Out Of Time,” which, heck yeah, more please. Then, after a brief break, a single-song encore of “Do You Realize?” perhaps the band’s best-loved song, and a perfect summation of the message of the music and the night: life is precious, care for each other, and savor every moment while you can. “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and “Sleeping on the Roof,” both from 1999’s “The Soft Bulletin,” closed the show, the latter a lovely lullaby with cricket sounds and Coyne swinging a utility light around his head like a giant firefly as the crowd waved their phone lights back at him. “The W.A.N.D.” featured fuzzed-out guitars and buzzy synths, as well as a pair of handheld confetti cannons Coyne proudly announced they’d whipped together earlier in the day with bits and pieces from a party supply store. Highlights of the back half of the show included a trio of tracks from “American Head”: “Will You Return / When You Come Down,” which opened with a delicate vocal from Steven Drozd, who after Coyne is the longest-tenured member of the band, and then “Assassins of Youth” and “Mother I’ve Taken LSD.” He started to explain the Flaming Lips concerns - the last thing they wanted was to accidentally expose others to any virus picked up at home - and then two concertgoers behind me started screaming pro- and anti-vaccination arguments at each other and the rest of what he said was drowned out. But there are a lot of humans there that are resisting getting vaccinated.” “Normally, we are very proud that we come from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. “This is so wonderful for us,” Coyne said, explaining that earlier in the week, the band debated canceling the show and a few others out of COVID-19 concerns. “She Don’t Use Jelly,” perhaps the band’s biggest commercial hit, followed with most of the crowd singing along. 1,” which dazzled the crowd with a three-story-tall inflatable pink robot that towered over the band. One of the band’s most popular songs, it was followed by another, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. “Two scientists are racing / For the good of all mankind,” the song released in 1999 begins, before continuing a verse later, “Locked in heated battle / For the cure that is their prize.” “Race For The Prize” kicked off with blasts of confetti cannons over the venue, its soaring melodies inspiring, its lyrics eerily prescient. Settle in, set the controls for the stars, we’ll be taking off soon, the openers served to say, which then, with the section that followed, we did. ![]()
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