By now you've spent the twenty-odd seconds it takes to watch the entire San Diego 4th of July Fireworks-gasm. Just in case: They fired everything at once, leading to an amorphous balloon of light and catastrophic sound. The incident has been chalked up thus far as a "technical error," but an astute observer here in the RFT office noticed something familiar: That blaze of sound (described by one observer in visceral terms: "It hit you right in the chest.") bears a striking resemblance to a certain guitar band at its cranked-out peak. Indeed, My Bloody Valentine may never have had a more apt descriptor than $125,000 worth of fireworks going off at one time -- particularly during the extended "Holocaust" section of "You Made Me Realise," which is literally just the same chord played for as loud and long as possible. A side-by-side YouTube comparison (skip to the 2:45 mark in the MBV clip):
Granted, here it's mostly just two things that spike whatever shitty microphone is being used to capture them, but you can imagine the experience wouldn't be that dissimilar if you were actually at both places.
The one key difference? The band keeps that shit up for half an hour. So if you ever find yourself at a MBV show and the Holocaust section of "You Made Me Realise" is on the setlist, you know how to describe it to people: Like $3.5 million worth of fireworks going off at once (and that's if they keep it to the standard fifteen minutes, instead of the half hour you see above).
