Hollywood Bowl – July 16, 2025
My formerly frequent Bowl Buddy who moved out of state came into town for a quick trip so off to the Bowl we went. I managed to snag $12 tickets in section W2 for this evening of Latin music. We left super early to make sure we had enough time to swing through Trader Joe’s and make our way up La Cienega to the new bus lot at the La Cienega/Jefferson Metro station. We ended up getting there super early. When we arrived at 4:52 for the 5:30 bus, the Bowl guy told us that the bus was already loading so I placed the parking pass that I remembered to bring on the dashboard and we made our way down the street to the bus. Sophia commented on how this set up was not old people friendly because the bus was a distance from the parking lot, but it’s actually better than the WLA College lot in that regard since there are no stairs or steep hills. The bus ride into Hollywood was fairly quick but for some reason the bus driver drove up Highland rather than cutting over to Cahuenga. That last stretch up Highland is brutal. I suspect he was just using Maps and didn’t realize they stop traffic on Cahuenga to let the buses through. We still got there nice and early. We opted not to take the AMEX entrance because of all the stairs and since the regular entrance wasn’t crowded. After a stop at the Amoeba booth for swag, we made our way to the top of the hill and into our seats. It turned out the seats on the end were taken, so I got us the next 2 seats in on the overhang. In case you didn’t know, the seats expand outward by 2, typically in row 6. This is to allow the people in rows 1-5 to come up the stairs and then back down some stairs to get to their seats. If you sit in the seats on the ends of row 6, there’s no one in front of you – just the stairs.
Shortly after we sat down, El Marchante started his DJ set. It was a nice mix of music mostly from local artists. It was a beautiful night at the Bowl too – temperate and windless. It’s nice to sit close to the stage and feel like you are part of the show, but it’s also nice to be in the very top section and just enjoy being at the Bowl. We finished our dinner before LA LOM took the stage and to be honest, I was there for LA LOM. I first heard the Los Angeles League of Musicians when they opened for Beck at a Lodge Room and have been following them ever since. They have a really cool cumbia-meets-surf music sound. They did not disappoint. It was clear that no one else in my section was there to see LA LOM because they did not slow or quiet their conversations one bit.
When Juanes took the stage, however, he had everyone’s attention. I have to say I have been to several latin music shows at the Bowl and this was the first one where absolutely no English was spoken. It turns out my Spanish is not as rusty as I thought because I was able to follow along. The rest of the audience knew every word to every song. They were singing along and often dancing. At one point Juanes spoke for a few minutes and then started a song where no one sang and no one danced. I turned to Sophia and said, “This must be a song off of his new album.” Sure enough, at the end of the song, they put something on the screen with a QR and a release date at the end of July. His music was good (even the new stuff!). It was actually a little strange for me to hear latin rock-I’m much more used to salsa, cumbia and boleros-but I would definitely see Juanes again.