Concert, didn't have to bail early on this one because it was seating.
The Chemist was first support, didn't know they were even playing. Not bad, might pick up a CD. Was going to, but they could only accept cash and I was out of tender. They sounded pretty garage, none of their songs were terribly original, their influences were incredibly obvious and they badly needed to fix up their sound levels (too loud for the venue). All of this was fine, I like a garage sound, garage is normally too loud for its own good, the transparency of their influences is why the songs didn't seem original and those transparent influences were widely ranged and all very good taste. Australian band from Perth. No light show. Good show. Worth seeing. Better than The Vines were at Powderfinger, automatic win (The Vines suck hard just as an FYI)
Next up Silversun Pickups played, they were the advertised support, they are who I paid to see. They were the only band that had their sound levels right. You could you know hear and enjoy everything they played. Instrumentation was a bit distorted and the vocals could have been a touch more pronounced. My little brother was a bit bummed out that they didn't sound as good as some live recordings he has, but eh, they were the support act. They wouldn't have been given nearly as much precedence on getting the sound setup done properly. The fact that they had the volumes right and while slightly distorted everything was audible was enough for me. Well worth the $60 ticket price (for reference, Metallica tickets set my siblings back like double that, Gorrilaz are just short of double that) and I highly reccomend them to everyone. They worked the crowd and just were happy to be playing Australia again it seemed. They also sounded pretty garage at times, but yeah already covered audio stuffs above. Easilly the most stage presence for the night. Had a light show but never stopped you from seeing the whole band. Was awesome. Oh and the keyboard player looked like Hal (from very far away), hat, beard, glasses, skinny guy, probably tall (was sitting). He rocked out. It was pretty fun. The bass guitarist was good to watch, she was relaxed and pretty cool. Oddly the Hal association made me think of Metroid when watching her play. So yeah that probably helped give me a general positive association, making me think of two of my favourite DLers and getting me thinking about DL Cons in general rubs off positive over all (also I think I still haven't written a DLC5 post con wrap up, need to get on to that). They are from the States (California I think?), so you US types might see them touring (Haha DL giving a fuck about music)
The headlining act, now here I am just going to be mean. These guys weren't bad, let me just get that out up front, but I am just plain going to be mean. Take that into account along with the fact that I didn't go to see them and don't know their stuff very well. First up, their light show was fucking shit. That normal strobing bullshit ruining fucking everything. YOU DIDN'T WANT TO SEE THE BAND YOU PAYED TO WATCH RIET GUYS??!?? Normal headache inducing crap (at least it wasn't yellow lights). There was one truely inspired bit for like 30 seconds where they decided to play a projected sped up image of what looked like TV static playing while strobes went off. Thanks guys. They had no stage presence, and with the shitty fucking light show you could forget half the band was even there, you could rarely ever see the keyboarder or drummer in the dark. Seriously fuck this shit. When are we going to get over that crap and just go back to old school single colour washes? It might be boring, but you can SEE ANYTHING AT ALL. But yeah so you could barely see them and when you could? No stage presence whatsoever, so there was no fucking point (probably why they had the light show). Just no charisma to hold the crowd at all. The few points of engaging the crowd were dull and flat where the only person engaging was the singer. You know who can get away with an amazing concert with only the singer engaging the audience? People like Billy Corgan and Robert Smith. Honestly, between the light show and the boring stage presence, I honestly fell asleep at one point. Audio wise? Everything was clear and audible, they were setup well and used it well. Then of course they made it way too fucking loud and didn't even have that garage sound to it. Annoying and stupid and not the kind of music you can even justify it.
And here is where I get really mean.
Everyone was wearing skinny jeans. You know what is not a good look? Skinny jeans and a tartan print shirt. Skinny jeans on three dudes. Skinny jeans while you are playing instruments. Skinny jeans while all you are doing is singing. Skinny jeans where you are dancing like the whitest dude ever. It is an awesome way to look amazingly effeminate while not having the hair cut or top to carry it like the great classics (Jagger, Bowie, etc). If you are going to look androgynous you need to do it all over, not just from the waist down. You know what is hard? Dancing in skinny jeans. The lead singer spent like an hour and a half on stage I think. I lost track because I fell asleep. Anyway I took a note on my phone "White guy dancing in skinny jeans" because it was all I was taking out from this show. It struck me about half way through that he looked like a Thunderbird trying to dance. Now here is the really sad part. Where the Silversun Pickups got me thinking about how I should really probably put together a DLC write up because I had good times, this got me thinking about WoW. When you make me think about MMOs I have actually actively quit, wow, that is a pretty bad show.
Concert was totally worth it though, Silversun Pickups were totally worth the price of entry and I learned that I don't really care for Birds of Tokyo (they are fine, just not my cup of tea) and found another band that might be alright.
