He looked it too, hiding under a mop of hair, hunched over a well-worn acoustic guitar with no bandmates to fall back on. But in truth, he had nothing to fear - the seated audience of a few hundred people, mesmerized by Owens' rambling guitar fingerpicking, forgave a clumsy chord here or there as they sat in rapt silence for most of the set.
Johnny Rotten was "a pain in the ass," Chip Conley says. "Sinéad O'Connor, when I babysat her baby, was very nice," he continues, drumming his fingers on the wooden table. "... MC Hammer was nice." Conley is sitting in the bar of the Phoenix Hotel, which he founded in the '80s, scanning through his mental Rolodex of celebrity guests. He rattles off the names casually, as if a run-in with Sinéad O'Connor was an everyday occurrence. Because at the Phoenix, it was.
Brooklyn electro-outfit Fcukers was on stage and the sold-out room was downright sweaty. For all the gripes about how SF crowds don't dance anymore (they're not entirely wrong), this was hardly the case this evening. The fog machine was turned up to 11, there was a palpable industry buzz lurking throughout the 400 capacity space and the energy in the room was downright intoxicating; I wanted to live in that concert moment forever.