Concert Journal Part III: Hey, I paid good money for that!

With the recent karaoke thread kind of bringing us back to music, I thought this might be a good time to get back to the concert series.

Back in September I wrote about the tendency of the Crystal Ballroom to have atrocious opening acts, but I will say that once we got to the main attraction, the shows I have seen there have been quite good. Sadly, that can't be said about every show I have attended.

One thing that I have found is that the venue does matter. A good venue does not guarantee a great show, but a bad venue can really make things harder. This is why I don't really like shows at the Roseland or Wonder Ballroom. The seats are uncomfortable and the rows are too close together. You can be down on the floor, but I am a rapidly aging person and I like having the option to sit down, or to get up and dance. I suppose that makes it weird that I like the Crystal, but good bands give good shows there for not very much money, and it just works out.

I would say the Wonder Ballroom is a little better than the Roseland, but really, I hope no one I really like ends up there. The Roseland show was Franz Ferdinand, though I think I also saw Gogol Bordello there (that was a trip). The Wonder Ballroom show was Dashboard Confessional, which had much worse problems that shall be treated later.

Now, the Memorial Colisseum can be a fine venue, but not when its festival seating on a weeknight. Coming in from work to see Franz Ferdinand (again), we roamed and roamed trying to find seats, but everything outside of nosebleed was taken, and any time you stopped security would tell you to move along. They wouldn't help you find seats, but they would have no sympathy for your inability to find seats on your own. "Festival" makes it sound fun, but it wasn't.

Honestly, besides the Crystal, I think I had had my best luck at the Keller and Schnitz.
Sometimes the venue is fine, but the atmosphere can still be wrong due to the audience. This was definitely an issue when my sisters and I went to see Sting at the Rose Garden. I know he's older, so I guess his fans are older too, and maybe that's why no one was getting into it. We did dance some, but we felt like we were sticking out like sore thumbs. It was more than a feeling, in fact, because the next day at church Mark and Amy mentioned seeing us. We were embarrassed, but they were like “Good for you. We wanted to dance.” Still, it’s good I went then, because I am completely over Sting now.

Worse than issues with the venue or the crowd is when the band lets you down. After all, that’s why you came. This has happened to me three times.

The first time was Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl was really obnoxious, and there was just no spark. I believe it was due to a little too much alcohol. Probably some people do perform better with a mild buzz, but if you overshoot, well, all he could really do was talk about how great it was that Portland had so many strip clubs. Seriously, for the next few weeks I was looking for an announcement that he had entered rehab. The concert was not a total loss though, because the opening band was Wheezer, and they were great! It was like a total reverse of every Crystal show, only more expensive.

The second time was Cheap Trick. This was really disappointing, because with Foo Fighters I was more there for my sisters, but I thought it would be a good show. I knew Cheap Trick was going to be a great show, and then it wasn’t. I hated the venue. It was Spirit Mountain, and I don’t love casinos anyway, but that’s where they were playing. The hall has too much of a lounge feel, so perhaps it is not an ideal setting for rock, but Robin was just barely there. Rick tried to compensate, but it was hard not to notice.

The last one is that Dashboard Confessional, and it is not really fair of me to complain, because in this case he did bring his A-game—it’s just not what I was expecting. I mean, I had noticed that he had a tendency towards the slower and sappier, but he still had songs that I liked, and that had some energy to them. What I did not realize was that in a live show all of that energy would be promptly killed.

All right—maybe it wasn’t so much killed as transmuted. Chris Carrabba totally played to the audience, but that audience was composed primarily of 14-16 year old girls (one argument in favor of age-restricted shows). What these girls wanted to do was gaze at him in adoration and sing along to every word. He accommodated them by slowing everything down, and amping up the heartbreak. I would say he became extra soulful, but if you say “soul” that implies there was some spirit, and there wasn’t. What it was is that every song sunk to the level of "Stolen", which is his slowest and sappiest, last time I checked. It wasn’t fire or ice.

And really, it should have been a little more fierce, because I noticed something about him that night. Chris Carrabba is remarkably hairy. I had seen the prominent eyebrows, but I hadn’t really thought about them until I got a load of his arm hair. He must never get cold. Anyway, it suddenly seemed very likely that he was a werewolf, so that should have been somewhat exciting, but it wasn’t. I guess it does mean that all of those teen girls were on Team Jacob.

Enos – Words of Mormon
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