I am a man who loves his words. I'm verbose, unable to be concise, and usually dominate conversations. However, I am in a unique position as I'm able to sum up the show I'm reviewing in one word this time around:
Hot.
I mean this in the most literal sense of the word, in that it was easily above ninety degrees, likely pushing a hundred both in and out of the venue. In just a few hours I purchased more than a half dozen bottles of water. It was an excellent show, all the bands were very cool, but all of those adjectives pale in comparison to the sheer hot factor. When the bass player headbangs and soaks half the front row, the sweating is excessive.
Thankfully, the first band had fairly short hair so we were able to stay dry. Last Great Summer is another local Minot band which has members I know and yet I've never heard. I find the reminders of my shame are becoming more and more frequent. At least this time, they're not in my chosen genre of music so I have some reasoning. Their brand of indie/alt rock was certainly well written and performed, but I can't say it ever really engaged me. Their performance wasn't helped by the fact that three of the five band members were clustered over stage right and seemed hesitant to move around at all. I was a bit more forgiving the day of, but after the stage presence of the next three bands, in retrospect I have to take points off for the awkwardness. Doesn't mean in a different room at a different time it wouldn't have been a problem.
Danger Casanova, however, overflowed with confidence. It could almost be said that it dripped from their pores, but that was just sweat. Regardless, the band, perhaps sensing the flat pulse left by the first group, turned the party vibes up to eleven and began throwing condoms into the crowd and attempting to recruit girls for photo shoots for an upcoming album. Each member, even the drummer, put forward a great deal of charisma and enthusiasm, and within a song or two the whole room was moving towards the front and dancing along. Unfortunately, the only merch available were a t-shirt I myself could not justify wearing in public and condoms, otherwise I probably would've loaded up on what CDs they had. As it is, I guess I'll just have to wait for this upcoming album and thank God that the female friend who accompanied me was able to restrain herself from either volunteering for any photo shoots or if nothing else throw herself directly into the lead guitar player's lap. That's not even a judgement on her by the way. That's just the effect these guys had on people. As grateful as I am, I would not have been able to blame her.
The Sammus Theory have evidentally been into town a few times, a fact I was unaware of, so the cheers that greeted them were ones of familiarity that surprised me a bit. Other than wondering if the band name was indeed a Metroid reference, a line of questioning that I never did pursue, their name didn't ring a single bell to me. They definitely brought a bigger sound and a feeling of experience to the stage, but in the wake of Danger Casanova I couldn't help but feel that there was something intangible that wasn't working for me. There was nothing wrong with them, other than the bass player's continual insistence on jutting his headstock out into the crowd and nearly decapitating me on a few occasions, but I also wasn't left with that same burning desire to hit the merch booth afterwards. My friend did, to the tune of pretty much all her spending money for the evening, and judging by crowd reactions and the lines afterwards her enthusiasm was in the majority, but I was on the outside looking in. Oh well, not the first time.
That outside looking in feeling continued into the evening's headliner. Going into the show, I knew Richard Patrick had been a touring member of Nine Inch Nails in the early days, he wrote a song called Hey Man, Nice Shot which was allegedly an enormous radio hit despite my never having heard it, and his new record was both called The Sun Comes Out Tonight and fairly good. I cannot emphasize enough how incredible their performance was and just how quickly the band won the room over. It was as if suddenly the heat didn't matter anymore, nor did the sweat. People's hair was flying everywhere as heads thrashed and banged, and nobody cared. We were all caught up in it. Suddenly, they began playing songs I recognized, and I realized I'd heard their songs Jurassitol and Can't You (Trip Like I Do) on the soundtracks to The Crow: City of Angels and Spawn respectively, a fact which in the moment seemed like curing cancer. The feeling was something I've rarely experienced in a live performance, possibly never outside of Lamb of God's show a few weeks before this one. It was readily apparent that the band was feeling it too. Richard Patrick was dancing around so frantically that other band members were tripping over his quickly discarded mic stand. He actually plucked my friend's camera out of her hands and took it on a tour of the stage shortly before climbing the scaffolding surrounding the stage. The rest of the band It would've been a perfect evening...if a dude hadn't gotten pushy and started crap with my friend and I. But I can't really hold that against anybody. Richard Patrick was cool to hang out with afterwards and was really open to talking about his sobriety with me and signed just about anything thrown at him. He may have started the evening a touring member of Nine Inch Nails in my mind, but by the end he was the front man for Filter.
....
No, I didn't ask him for Reznor stories, but yes, I wanted to.
....
No, I didn't ask him for Reznor stories, but yes, I wanted to.
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