(way, way back in the day, when Saves the Day had more than music to offer)
Before I started writing, I opened iTunes for a little background music. Curious as always to see the single of the week (and hungry for a free song), I found a song called Run and Hide. It wasn’t anything I was interested in, it sounded like every other radio-friendly R&B song I can’t stand, so I ignored it. Then I saw that the artist’s name is Algebra. Dang, man. Her parents make me sad.
I know I said I would review my concert, like… A loooooong time ago, but now I finally have the time! Of course I’ll go into detail, but the bottom line is, it was terrible. I really don’t know what I was expecting. It had honestly taken me a few weeks to even make up my mind about going in the first place. The headlining band, Saves the Day, is a band I’ve loved since my sophomore year in high school. I got a hold of a song called “My Sweet Fracture” that has a line in it that says, “and hey, I choose my company by the beating of their hearts, not the swelling of their heads,” which I thought was pretty awesome, so I eventually had to have the album, Through Being Cool. From then on, it was love. Sure, Chris Conley wrote oddly morbid songs and it seemed as though he would never cheer up, but it was much better sounding music than everything else I got my hands on. Sure, Chris Conley sprinkles the ‘f’ word in at least one song on every album, but who is it really hurting, especially when I just skip those songs, or at the very least, those parts? Well, at the time, I wasn’t concerned with lyrical content, unless it made me and my friends look cooler and smarter than we really were… However, I realize now how much I have digressed. Hahaha…. Mostly, this is to illustrate to you how much I love Saves the Day. I tell you that now, at twenty-one, it’s not nearly as much as Switchfoot and JoFo, not nearly as much as Hillsong United, but still it’s a lot.
Anywho… I considered not going to the concert because I was going with a guy from work I didn’t really know and his friend, who I didn’t know at all. Guy From Work is a nice guy, we’d been talking about the concert for a while, it’s just that I had really never been around him outside of work, we don’t really have the same friends. I had no idea if I would be comfortable or not, but I decided to throw that out the window whenever I remembered that not only did I not have to drive to San Francisco, I hadn’t seen Saves the Day since October of 2003! Fast forward to the day of the concert, Guy From Work and I head to Guy From Work’s Friend’s house and he, trying to be hospitable, offers us something to drink. Not having the bottles of water he thought he did have, he brought us Martinelli’s instead! That’s fun, right? Drinking apple cider in plastic cups, on the freeway? Toasting to the band you’re about to see? Silly fun. I realized I was enjoying myself by the time we got to the incredibly windy beach to toss a frisbee around. We walked around Golden Gate Park for a while, found the venue and spotted the lead singer from Armor For Sleep - the band none of us liked. We bought our merch, put things in the coat check and found our spots on the floor, very close to the stage. I spent most of the time before the show, scanning the upstairs balcony for Chris Conley, Manny, Dave, any dude from Saves the Day that I could. I just couldn’t get excited about anything else. Then I was let down. Band after band after band after band, including Saves the Day.
The reasons for the concert sucking as bad as it did are threefold. First, the other four bands were either bands I’d never heard of or bands I didn’t like at all. Second, there were more cocky bros and scantily clad bro-hos than I knew what to do with. Third, one of the bands playing had two members related in real life - and this is not a lie - to Miley Cyrus and Mitchel Musso from Hannah Montana.
-First up was A Cursive Memory. Their songs were sort of catchy, but they weren’t at all memorable and the lead singer was pretty terrible. Really, that’s all I have to say about them. They did have some good news (for me) though! They told us that Armor For Sleep wasn’t going to play their set because someone got sick or whatever. I was really happy to hear that, I’m not cool at all with AFS and I’m certain that my night would have been immeasurably worse had they ended up going on!
-Metro Station. These guys are the ones related to Hannah Montana and CO. I can’t lie to you, the lead singer, Mitchel Musso’s older brother… I really, honestly, had a heck of a time throughout the first three songs trying to determine this guy’s gender. He had the haircut of a 50 year-old lesbian and he was wearing pink jeans. Then Miley Cyrus’ older brother was about as big around as my mechanical pencil and kept doing this weird dance where he put his arm against his forehead and flailed around. He also had the haircut of a 25 year-old lesbian. I also think he’d just discovered how to use the ‘f’ word, because he wouldn’t stop saying it. Around the time he started using it in the sexual context was the time I wanted to die and/or leave.
-Set Your Goals. Awful. I absolutely hate these guys. A friend of mine always used to make me listen to them and they pretty much make me sick. Apparently, they’re from the ‘East Bay’ area of San Francisco and that’s a big deal I guess because the show was in San Francisco. They have two lead singers that are polar opposites, one of them looks (and smells) like a polar bear, the other one looks like (and is smaller than - no exaggeration) Delores O’Riordan from The Cranberries. It was like watching father and son karaoke or something, the little one is no bigger than the twelve year-old I watch down the street. There are a lot of reasons I don’t really like them, but aside from their potty mouths, their lyrics are just way too convoluted. I think they want to pride themselves on being muy intelligente, but they can’t just simply say, “I don’t like suits. I don’t want to be one.” They actually have to say things like “shirts and ties/are not to congregate/in my sanctuary.” They also have this ridiculous pirate schtick where they sing songs like “Mutiny!” and say “a pirate’s life for me!” and wear eye patches in their videos. Another thing that totally kills me about these guys… Any band that advocates their fans kicking the crap out of each other is just not cool in my book. That they actually encourage “another effin circle pit” is just beyond me. If you don’t know what a circle pit is, it’s when all the people in the middle of the floor run around in a big “follow-the-leader” type circle and run full-force into the innocent bystanders. I’ve always felt there was too much testosterone in the music scene anyway and it’s a serious pain in the butt that instead of watching the band I paid thirty bucks to see, I’m watching the pit to make sure I don’t get a roundhouse kick to my jaw. Granted, I didn’t pay to see Set Your Goals, but I’d still much rather at least watch a band instead of a bunch of guys wearing the uniform of a tilted Giants hat, tight band t-shirt with threatening words, camoflauge cargo shorts and Vans, throw themselves into each other. Grow up.
-Saves the Day. They didn’t play even half of the songs I wanted them to, which isn’t really a problem in itself since they’ve got about seven albums - one of which was on a label that disolved, so I’m sure those songs are songs they don’t play for legal reasons. Even still, they came out at 9:00 and we were back in Guy From Work’s car by 10:15! They didn’t talk to anyone, they just came onstage, played their instruments and took off! Chris Conley, who likes to parade around saying he loves his fans more than anything, started bowing over everyone in the front with his hands folded, saying, “thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much,” like he was a politician or something and it just bugged the crap out of me. I have a lot of great memories tied to their music and it’s been present throughout the past six years of my life, but I don’t think I’ll be going to see them ever again. Mostly because it looks like they have no chemistry anymore (they are on their fifth drummer in eleven years), so it seems to me that their break-up is imminent. At that, I don’t think I’ll ever be caught dead at a secular concert again, I was thoroughly uncomfortable in that environment! It was my own dang fault, though, so I feel like maybe that’s the way to go if I don’t ever want to feel like crap again. I’m okay listening to my Saves the Day CDs from now on, I don’t need the live show - especially when it just feels like they’re going through the motions.
Soooooooo, question of the day: What’s the worst concert you’ve ever been to? What’s the best? What’s your ideal line-up? I’d say you know my answer to the first question and I’m sure you can all guess what my best concert experience is, but in case you don’t know… so far, it’s Switchfoot! I could watch those guys any old time. As far as my ideal line-up goes, I’d say at this point it would include Rosie Thomas, with JoFo and Brooke Fraser doing double duties as solo artists and playing with Switchfoot and Hillsong United. What a good show that would be!
PEACE OUT!
justcourtney
