Pacific Amphitheater – July 30, 2025
Okay, so we all know I’m a fan of Beck. When he announced another orchestral tour this year, I tried to convince Julie to go to San Diego to see it but she said no. When he added this show at the Pacific Amphitheater she agreed. Pacific Amphitheater tickets come with free Orange County Fair admission when it’s fair time (for most shows). We decided to go early and check out the fair before the concert. The plan was to get to Boudin’s for lunch and then head over to the fair to hang out before the show. Honestly, I just didn’t want to sit in traffic. Julie texted me in the morning to say she was getting a late start so she was planning to get to Boudin’s at 4:00. So much for avoiding traffic. A few serendipitous things happened through the course of the day though. The first being that I went to Island’s with my husband for a light lunch knowing that food with Julie was going to be later and managed to have a conversation about the Pacific Amphitheater and Beck before he stopped me and said, “Okay, that’s it. I was polite but I have talked about Beck all that I am going to.” That was fair so I changed the subject and at that moment “I Think I’m In Love” came on the Island’s sound system. All I could do was laugh – what are the chances? And then I needed to get gas on the way to the OC so I stopped at Costco. I was able to pull right up to an empty pump without waiting. I don’t think that has ever happened to me at Costco before. So I was in a pretty good mood for the loooong drive. At some point near Long Beach, Julie called to say her ETA just switched from 54 minutes to an hour and 24 minutes so she told me to call her when I got to the restaurant. I did and she told me to just go ahead and order. I was just finishing up my food when I remembered that I’d thrown an air tag in her car so I opened it to see she was in Fountain Valley. Not bad. She ended up getting there around 4:30 so she still had time to eat.
We made our way to the fair and slogged through the parking lot to find parking. I have to say, for the volume of cars coming in, they were handling it pretty well. We drove by the gate on Fairview (where Maps was sending us) but they were only letting cars in that were coming in the opposite direction. We would have had to make a left, so it made sense to not block the street with left hand turns. There was a sign directing us to Fair Drive and they had 3 or 4 lanes open and were taking $15 payment (cash or card) quickly and funneling people to various parking areas with cones. I actually found a spot near the front, so my luck was holding out. We made our way through security and into the fair at the blue gate, right next to Centennial Farm. Of course we looked at the livestock! Then we headed over to get a dipped cone and a fried Snickers bar, checked out the handcrafts, walked through the midway and carnival rides, looked at the culinary and fine arts, and Julie bought a sweatshirt. She asked the guy who sold her the sweatshirt where she could get a cup of tea and he surprisingly had an idea and sent us to a cinnamon roll booth in the Sales building. Not only did they have tea, they had English Breakfast! So tea in hand we made our way in the opposite direction past the racing pigs and they guy trying to sell us windows. It turns out you are allowed to bring anything you purchased (or won) at the fair into the Pacific Amphitheater. That’s a pretty good perk.
Our seats were in section 2 row K. They were great seats. The ushers were friendly and helpful. One of them even pointed to a ramp on our level and said there were restrooms there so we didn’t need to come all the way back to the top. The people sitting to our left were already in their seats when we arrived. The people sitting to our right arrived shortly after we did and asked if we preferred sitting next to the wife or the husband (I told them either was fine with me so it was their choice). The seats were comfortable and the cupholders in front of each seat were a nice touch.
Molly Lewis supported Beck on this tour. Sophia had seen her in Philly during last year’s tour and told me she was fantastic. Molly is a whistler. It’s a thing. Check out this episode of Huell Howser where he visited with another competitive whistler. See? It’s a thing. Molly took the stage wearing a beautiful sparkly dress that Julie could not stop complimenting and whistled alongside prerecorded music. It was captivating. Unfortunately, Molly failed to captivate the people sitting behind us. They did not stop talking through the entire show. The ENTIRE show – Beck as well. Ugh. And for some reason they could not wrap their minds around the idea that she was whistling. They kept waiting for her to sing or play an instrument, despite the fact that she said she whistles and she doesn’t sing. I somehow feel like her performance would have been better suited to a dimly lit bar or lounge where you could really get wrapped up in the music rather than an outdoor concert venue with people filing in and milling around, but she did her best to get the audience warmed up and performed for about half an hour.
The orchestra took the stage and I put on my tiara (“It’s the Symphony!). It was a smaller orchestra than the one that played the Hollywood Bowl last year but the stage was packed full of musicians. Beck brought his usual band with him as well – drums, keys, guitar/bass. It was pretty much the same show he played at the Hollywood Bowl last year with a few minor tweaks. I mean it’s expensive and time consuming to write orchestral arrangements, so it makes sense to stick with what you’ve already got. I would add that I think the songs he chose are likely the best suited for the orchestra (there are a few others I might add in – Chemtrails might work…maybe something off of Colors, and possibly Chemical (but he never plays anything off of Hyperspace live for some reason). As it stood though, it was a really good show. A nice mix of what we call “songs you can’t dance to” with a few “songs you can dance to” thrown in. The orchestra looked like they were having fun with the rare opportunity to play non-classical music. And even on the last night of this tour, Beck still took a moment to stand off to the side and take it all in as the orchestra did their thing. He also managed to add in a few extra songs once the orchestra left the stage. In addition to One Foot in the Grave, Devil’s haircut and the always-and-forever finale song Loser, he added Debra and Mixed Bizness. Debra is always a fan favorite and it’s easily customizable for whichever city he’s in (on this occasion he offered to take Jenny to Tustin for a really good meal) and it’s great that he was able to get one more Midnight Vultures song in. I love that album! It was a really good show. The only downside were the people behind us who did not stop talking through the entire performance. We could hear them with our earplugs in! I wonder if they knew they could have just had that same conversation at home and saved themselves a lot of money.