Back in 2005, I attended the Chicago stop of a tour that was billed as featuring Say Anything (which was at the time a relatively unknown alternative/punk group) as the opening act.
However, a few days before the show I discovered that Max Bemis and Co. had dropped off the cross-country trek and were replaced by another equally unheard-of Vagrant band: Emanuel.
Although I sampled a few songs from this unfamiliar group on the Internet beforehand, I still went into the House of Blues not really knowing what to expect – and was totally blown away.
Due to some faulty directions (or my inability to follow the ones I printed off Yahoo), my friend and I arrived late as the set was already in progress and were treated to the high-intensity track “The Hey Man!” as our first taste of the Louisville, Kentucky-based post-hardcore act.
After that initial experience, I ended up seeing the band three more times over the next two years – twice at the Creepy Crawl in St. Louis and once at Warped Tour.
Then came last fall (and the long-awaited point of this blog post), when I drove an hour to Decatur’s Millikin University to watch them perform with a few local bands.
It was to be the first time I had seen them live since the release of their August 2007 sophomore album, a record that unfortunately featured the group trading in the raw energy and hooky melodies found on its debut for more straightforward, atmospheric rock tunes (with a small amount of screaming still thrown in for good measure).
Nonetheless, I was excited to hear the new material in a live setting.
But then a strange thing happened – it became the worst show I ever attended. To be fair, the “venue” was more of an all-purpose meeting room with carpet and low ceilings, the sound was terrible and the crowd was small and unenergetic.
But the band, instead of attempting to make the most of a bad situation, only contributed to the adverse conditions, playing a short, uninspired set comprised almost entirely of new songs (instead of mixing in more old favorites that might have raised the crowd’s energy level).
After announcing there would be two more songs, lead vocalist Matt Breen decided one was enough and before the band could launch into its closer (most likely, “The Hey Man!”), threw his microphone at a wall to the left of the stage and exited the room.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I haven’t heard much of anything from the group since then, which is just as well seeing as I had lost most of my respect for them.
While I do understand that bands can have off nights and one bad performance shouldn’t cloud all of the other times I had seen and enjoyed them, this experience still left a bitter taste in my mouth that hasn’t gone away.
Ultimately, what I’m getting at is this: has anyone else ever stopped liking a band after seeing them live?
I generally think of concerts as a time and place to discover new music and/or see a different side of a favorite act then can be found on their recordings. But occasionally, as I found out that night, they can also lead one to negatively change their opinion of a musical act.
A prototypical case in point is Ryan Adams, whose egocentric attitude and sometimes confrontational on-stage persona has occasionally served to alienate him from those in attendance (or just enhance his legend).
The All-American Rejects are another band that come to mind. Maybe it’s just me, but after seeing them in St. Louis a few years back I found it strange that a group which plays squeaky-clean pop songs swear like sailors (so to speak) in front of a live audience. Imagine Robert De Niro singing “Swing, Swing” in GoodFellas and you’ll get the picture.
But that’s enough from me. If you’ve had a similar experience, feel free to vent.
Chris Hassen: I goes to shows.
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Chris Hassen
I goes to shows.