L7 packed San Francisco's Regency Ballroom on Friday for a Last Hurrah Tour date that honored late bassist Jennifer Finch and marked a 40-year run, The Mercury News reported.
The show was the penultimate North American stop before a final hometown concert Saturday at The Wiltern in Los Angeles. Next year the farewell tour is scheduled to continue in the United Kingdom, Europe, South America and Australia, according to a Guitar World interview with frontwoman Donita Sparks cited by the paper. Finch, 59, died of aggressive brain cancer this year. Her memoir, "Shooting Up and Making Out," is due in January.
Janis Tanaka, who played bass with L7 from 1999 to 2001, filled in. The Mercury News said she kept the band's sludgy groove solid alongside longtime drummer Dee Plakas, flipping her hair in front of a stage fan in a nod to her predecessor. Tanaka also recorded an early demo of the new single "Loma Linda" with the group in 2003, a track the band finally completed and released in October. Guitarist and vocalist Suzi Gardner shared the front line with Sparks in front of a packed, multi-generational crowd, photographer Jane Tyska's images showed.
The paper noted that L7's legacy is as much about activism as about riffs. The band rejected the 1990s "girl band" label and demanded to be judged on musicianship. In 1991 it co-founded Rock for Choice with LA Weekly music editor Sue Cummings, a decade-long reproductive-rights concert series that drew Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine and others.
The San Francisco set reached deep into the catalog. The published list included "Deathwish," "Andres," "Fuel My Fire," "Monster," "Wargasm," "Shove" and "Mr. Integrity," and an encore of "Pretend We're Dead" and "Fast and Frightening." The Mercury News opened its account by noting that the band "wasn't pretending to be dead on Friday night," a line that doubled as a joke about its best-known song and as a description of a loud, crowded room on a farewell tour.
For Bay Area fans, the Regency date was the local last look at a band that helped define early-1990s alternative rock and never softened its politics. The tour still has international dates ahead, but the California stretch was always going to be the emotional core: a tribute to Finch, a return for Tanaka, and a final run through songs that a new generation was hearing in the same room as people who bought the records the first time.
By Saturday, the circus was due in Los Angeles. In San Francisco the night before, L7 left the Regency the way it always preferred to leave a stage: loud, political, and very much alive.