2001-10-17 - 1:46

You've got my soul, I've got your heart

So I did indeed decide to catch The Dears and Sloan tonight. Surprised? Nah, I wasn't either. After listening to the CDs and watching the videos at work today, it was inevitable that I would try to get my hands on a ticket.

I thought that I might have been too late making it downtown; but it worked out well. Barrymore's was back to its policy of opening the doors one hour late. I was probably the only one who was happy about the delay, since I got my hands on a spare ticket about forty minutes after people should have been heading inside.

In the meantime, I got to chat a bit with the girls in line in front of me. It's funny. They so much looked and sounded like the kind of girls who would never say two words to me in a million years. I love having my stereotypes broken like that. I always hoped that I made at least one person rethink his stereotypes when I had my foot long purple hair and ridiculous goatee and I probably wasn't what a lot of people expected me to be.

Inside, it was simply more waiting. You know it's a bad sign when one hour after the doors are supposed to have opened, you see the opening act walking out of the club and the singer is cursing. Heh.

Of course, an hour standing outside and a hour standing inside proved to be well worth it the second that The Dears hit the stage. Damn, I love that band! Obviously, as openers, they had less time to work with than when I saw them headlining in Halifax. Again, though, every second was intense. The word that I used to describe that Halifax show was fierce and I'm going to stay with that description.

I'll either do a real concert review tomorrow afternoon or I'll wait until after the second show tomorrow night. I can say that I was pleased to see The Dears earn a fairly positive crowd reaction, even if few people were quite as enthusiastic as I.

As for Sloan, they were typically Sloanish. I'm actually not a big fan--I don't own any of their CDs--but I give them credit for a fun live show. If nothing else, the band is very likeable onstage. Their set concentrated on the CD that just came out that day; and I found most of the new songs to be typical of their past work.

My critique of the band is that they seem to play it fairly safe. It's not that they make bad songs; it's just that they aren't adventurous. That said, the strongest segment of the nearly two-hour set was the finish, which mixed things up more than the earlier parts.

It was also cool when Chris pulled a girl onstage (one of the five girls to my right, part of the group that I had been chatting with a little bit). She stole the show. She even challenged Chris at his own game, holding the bass and giving a high leg kick. Priceless.

I have mentioned before that I tend to fall in love every few concerts, right? Heh.

Oh, and to be honest, I hadn't really been talking to her. It was mostly two of her friends: one who promptly shifted her focus to some other bald guy and another who shared my opinion of the pushy guy with the camera who was rather rudely attempting to get to the front. For what it's worth, though, I thought that the girl who made it to the stage was the cutest of the five.

Okay, there are more details that I could fill in, for sure, but, as I said, I will deliver a more formal concert review later.

For now, I'm worn out from standing up for five and half hours, my ears are ringing from being within three feet of the stage most of the night, and I'm definitely ready to crash.

I'll be geared up for a second serving tomorrow, though. And it's the all ages show, so I can try to pick up an underage chick. That'll always be the dream. Heheh.

J.