On Snow Patrol, and how much I love them.
Last night was the Snow Patrol concert at the Great Saltair. Anyone who has been around me for, oh, about the last three months knows how excited I was for this concert. The last time they were here, I couldn't go, and I cried for a week. So when I heard they were coming back, way back in November(?) when they announced their North American Tour, I was so freaking excited I could barely stand it, and knew I was going, one way or another.
Luckily for me, my grandmother owed me about seventy dollars about the time that tickets went on sale. So I bought a ticket for me, and one for Allie for Christmas, since she likes them almost as much as I do. (I'm obsessed, for those who don't know. I had to buy "Final Straw" twice, because I wore out the first one. Seriously.)
So the lineup was the Silversun Pickups, OK GO, and Snow Patrol. Hmmm, I said. I'm not really partial to OK GO, but tickets are thirty dollars, and I like what I'm hearing of Silversun Pickups. The concert is at the Great Saltair. Until then, I was unaware that it was still open, and I had never even heard of concerts being held there, but apparently the Taste of Chaos tour is being held there tonight. *shrug* I'm just not up on my concert venues.
So anyway, I had never been to Saltair. It was..interesting. It's a beautiful place, and it's surrounded by beautiful mountains, but you look closely and there's broken windows and sort of a general abandoned-building feel. The parking lot is all gravel, and there's big semi-trucks going in and out. It's...odd, and minorly hard to describe. Kind of an isolated feeling as well; you can't see the freeway, or any other buildings.
We arrived at about 4:45, because all the tickets were at Will Call, so we wanted to be there early and get a good spot. There were already about thirty people in line when we got there, but I expected a lot more. As it got closer to six when the doors were supposed to open, the line was up to probably 200 people actually in line, and another fifty in the Will Call line. The sun had ducked behind the building and we were all in the shadows, and freezing our butts off. Most of us figured, hey, we're going to be squished together, we don't need coats, and the doors open at six.
The doors opened at six, but they wouldn't let anyone come in until about 6:15. Splitting hairs much?
After they finally let us in, after searching everyone and confiscating lighters and chains, we enter. Directly in front of us are stairs to the bar, to our left is the stage, with people already crowded around it, and to our right is the coat check and concessions. With all the people pressing behind us (Snow Patrol fans are a wicked bunch, you know), we decide to go secure ourselves a place in the front. There's maybe four "rows" of people in front of us, so we're excited, even though we're freezing. We're finally here, and it just barely hit us that we get to see Snow Patrol! *insert fangirling here*
Standing next to me is a group of high school asshats. The lengths of their asshattery will be shown later. There's two boys (both over six feet), and two girls. In front of us is a guy, his pregnant wife and their two probably high school girls. We talked to them quite a bit.
The show started promptly at 7:30, which was a good thing. The Silversun Pickups were first. Their bassist happens to be three things: wickedly talented, female, and incredibly nice. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bring my camera, so I have no pictures. *sigh*
So, they start playing. Everyone is just enthralled, because they are just bad-ass. We were standing by a bank of speakers, so it was a bit loud, but not too bad. So, I'm already grooving on them, when the lead guy starts singing the Willy Wonka boat song. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. My jaw just drops. Allie turns to me and says (shouts) "You're in love, aren't you?" And yes, yes I was.
They only played for half an hour, which wasn't enough. I vowed to buy their cd.
OK GO. I disliked them before, with the exception of Here It Goes Again, which I liked simply because of the music video, I'm not ashamed to say.
It went like this:
LEAD SINGER GUY: Blah blah FUCK
AUDIENCE FULL OF MORMONS: *gasp* We can't believe you said that! But we like you anyway!
ALLIE AND TONI: Heehee, he said fuck!
OK GO: *scream some song that no one knows*
SOME ASSHOLE IN THE CROWD: *starts moshing*
TONI: *knee dislocates, curses asshole with every curse she knows*
ALLIE AND TONI: *are not amused*
OK GO finally gets off stage, but not before doing a rather bizarre rendition of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", which left me with kind of a WTF? face. And apparently no one listens to ELO anymore, because everyone under the age of 20 went "Who? What? I've never heard this song! It's not on the cd!"
Damn youngsters! *shakes cane*
I didn't like them. Sorry. They played for an hour, I think. I stopped counting.
Moving on.
It took Snow Patrol 35 minutes to get set up and come onstage. Not cool, kids. We're getting squished, because the Asshole was still trying to mosh, and it's HOT AS HELL because there's three hundred people in this small venue touching each other. Next time, keep that in mind, okay guys?
And then they started playing, and all was forgiven.
Everyone stopped squishing each other, and faces turned toward the front and were just rapt. I have never been to a concert like that; there's always someone trying to be an ass. But not here. There was no more moshing for the rest of the concert.
They started out with two songs from "Final Straw", and everyone pulled out phones and cameras and were just totally into it.
The lead singer started talking, and someone screamed "I LOVE YOU!". He stops and in that awesome Irish accent goes "You don't know me! Do you not listen to the lyrics of these songs? I'm a bad boyfriend!"
Gary, honey, WE DON'T CARE. You're cute, talented and Irish. You could be playing us, and we wouldn't care. Seriously.
Everyone laughed, and he kept mentioning it the entire night. "Here's another one of those bad boyfriend songs."
Before he did "Chasing Cars" he asked the crowd if they were in love. About half of them screamed. He looks around and asks if we've ever been in love. Most of the crowd screams. Then he says something about being glad for it, and this song was about being in love. Then he says "Just don't let it kick you in the balls like it did me." I was amused greatly by this.
They would play a couple songs from "Final Straw", then they'd play a few from "Eyes Open". It was a pretty good mix of tunes.
About halfway through their set, the asshat high schoolers (remember them?) proved just how dumb they were. There were four girls that came up, all of them less than five feet tall. The asshats (who are six feet, remember) won't let them go in front of them, and they say that there's tall kids in front of them too. Honey, no one in front of you was more than 5'6". Asshats.
It was about this time that Allie started feeling like she was getting too hot and she wanted to go to the side so she wouldn't pass out. So we wander over to the side, where we can actually see and breathe and take pictures, but not necessarily in that order.
AND THEY START PLAYING "MAKE THIS GO ON FOREVER"!!!
This is my favorite Snow Patrol song, and one of my most favorite songs in the universe. It's up there with Baba O'Reilly in Toni-World. I would like to say that I said something intelligent to Allie at this point about recording the song, but my brain wasn't functioning. So I just gaped and pointed and went all fangirl but regained my intellect long enough to take like eight pictures and four videos of them.
I had goosebumps. I love this song, and it was fucking awesome! I have goosebumps just THINKING about it. Seriously bad-ass.
Fangirl over. Eeeeeeeeeeeee.
The rest of the concert was uneventful. Well, it was eventful and completely bad-ass, but you know what I mean. After they left, we cheered, and they came back on and did two songs, then left for the night.
Everyone surged to the exits, but we figured since we were first to get there, we'd chill and go look at the t-shirts.
I ended up buying a Silversun Pickups cd, and Allie bought a bag from them. We're looking at the Snow Patrol booth, and the bad-ass bassist (whose name is Nikki) shows up. I felt really dumb about it, but I told her that she was awesome and she signed my cd and Allie's bag. :D
I bought a Snow Patrol bag and Allie got a t-shirt. Yay!
I only had a couple of complaints about the show. The venue wasn't as good as it could have been, but I'm sure that's just the people in the back trying to get to the front.
The sound quality for the opening bands wasn't very good. It was loud, and you could barely hear the words. You could hear Snow Patrol pretty well, so maybe it was an issue that was fixed? *shrug*
Open the doors when you say you're going to open the doors!
Taking so long to get onstage tends to make people kind of upset. We know that you're the headliner, (why else would we be here?) but please don't pull a rock star. It would still piss me off if Johnny Cash took half an hour to get onstage, and we all know that Toni's love of Snow Patrol is surpassed only by her love of Johnny Cash.
That said, I enjoyed it immensely, and will go see them again. All in all, it was a bad-ass concert. They played all of my favorite songs, and they talked to the crowd. It was completely and totally awesome!
They better come back to Utah!
So, there's my long-winded concert review. Go buy a Silversun Pickups cd, and go buy "Eyes Open" and listen to "Make This Go On Forever" (on repeat, of course) for me! Go! Shoo! :)
Luckily for me, my grandmother owed me about seventy dollars about the time that tickets went on sale. So I bought a ticket for me, and one for Allie for Christmas, since she likes them almost as much as I do. (I'm obsessed, for those who don't know. I had to buy "Final Straw" twice, because I wore out the first one. Seriously.)
So the lineup was the Silversun Pickups, OK GO, and Snow Patrol. Hmmm, I said. I'm not really partial to OK GO, but tickets are thirty dollars, and I like what I'm hearing of Silversun Pickups. The concert is at the Great Saltair. Until then, I was unaware that it was still open, and I had never even heard of concerts being held there, but apparently the Taste of Chaos tour is being held there tonight. *shrug* I'm just not up on my concert venues.
So anyway, I had never been to Saltair. It was..interesting. It's a beautiful place, and it's surrounded by beautiful mountains, but you look closely and there's broken windows and sort of a general abandoned-building feel. The parking lot is all gravel, and there's big semi-trucks going in and out. It's...odd, and minorly hard to describe. Kind of an isolated feeling as well; you can't see the freeway, or any other buildings.
We arrived at about 4:45, because all the tickets were at Will Call, so we wanted to be there early and get a good spot. There were already about thirty people in line when we got there, but I expected a lot more. As it got closer to six when the doors were supposed to open, the line was up to probably 200 people actually in line, and another fifty in the Will Call line. The sun had ducked behind the building and we were all in the shadows, and freezing our butts off. Most of us figured, hey, we're going to be squished together, we don't need coats, and the doors open at six.
The doors opened at six, but they wouldn't let anyone come in until about 6:15. Splitting hairs much?
After they finally let us in, after searching everyone and confiscating lighters and chains, we enter. Directly in front of us are stairs to the bar, to our left is the stage, with people already crowded around it, and to our right is the coat check and concessions. With all the people pressing behind us (Snow Patrol fans are a wicked bunch, you know), we decide to go secure ourselves a place in the front. There's maybe four "rows" of people in front of us, so we're excited, even though we're freezing. We're finally here, and it just barely hit us that we get to see Snow Patrol! *insert fangirling here*
Standing next to me is a group of high school asshats. The lengths of their asshattery will be shown later. There's two boys (both over six feet), and two girls. In front of us is a guy, his pregnant wife and their two probably high school girls. We talked to them quite a bit.
The show started promptly at 7:30, which was a good thing. The Silversun Pickups were first. Their bassist happens to be three things: wickedly talented, female, and incredibly nice. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bring my camera, so I have no pictures. *sigh*
So, they start playing. Everyone is just enthralled, because they are just bad-ass. We were standing by a bank of speakers, so it was a bit loud, but not too bad. So, I'm already grooving on them, when the lead guy starts singing the Willy Wonka boat song. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. My jaw just drops. Allie turns to me and says (shouts) "You're in love, aren't you?" And yes, yes I was.
They only played for half an hour, which wasn't enough. I vowed to buy their cd.
OK GO. I disliked them before, with the exception of Here It Goes Again, which I liked simply because of the music video, I'm not ashamed to say.
It went like this:
LEAD SINGER GUY: Blah blah FUCK
AUDIENCE FULL OF MORMONS: *gasp* We can't believe you said that! But we like you anyway!
ALLIE AND TONI: Heehee, he said fuck!
OK GO: *scream some song that no one knows*
SOME ASSHOLE IN THE CROWD: *starts moshing*
TONI: *knee dislocates, curses asshole with every curse she knows*
ALLIE AND TONI: *are not amused*
OK GO finally gets off stage, but not before doing a rather bizarre rendition of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down", which left me with kind of a WTF? face. And apparently no one listens to ELO anymore, because everyone under the age of 20 went "Who? What? I've never heard this song! It's not on the cd!"
Damn youngsters! *shakes cane*
I didn't like them. Sorry. They played for an hour, I think. I stopped counting.
Moving on.
It took Snow Patrol 35 minutes to get set up and come onstage. Not cool, kids. We're getting squished, because the Asshole was still trying to mosh, and it's HOT AS HELL because there's three hundred people in this small venue touching each other. Next time, keep that in mind, okay guys?
And then they started playing, and all was forgiven.
Everyone stopped squishing each other, and faces turned toward the front and were just rapt. I have never been to a concert like that; there's always someone trying to be an ass. But not here. There was no more moshing for the rest of the concert.
They started out with two songs from "Final Straw", and everyone pulled out phones and cameras and were just totally into it.
The lead singer started talking, and someone screamed "I LOVE YOU!". He stops and in that awesome Irish accent goes "You don't know me! Do you not listen to the lyrics of these songs? I'm a bad boyfriend!"
Gary, honey, WE DON'T CARE. You're cute, talented and Irish. You could be playing us, and we wouldn't care. Seriously.
Everyone laughed, and he kept mentioning it the entire night. "Here's another one of those bad boyfriend songs."
Before he did "Chasing Cars" he asked the crowd if they were in love. About half of them screamed. He looks around and asks if we've ever been in love. Most of the crowd screams. Then he says something about being glad for it, and this song was about being in love. Then he says "Just don't let it kick you in the balls like it did me." I was amused greatly by this.
They would play a couple songs from "Final Straw", then they'd play a few from "Eyes Open". It was a pretty good mix of tunes.
About halfway through their set, the asshat high schoolers (remember them?) proved just how dumb they were. There were four girls that came up, all of them less than five feet tall. The asshats (who are six feet, remember) won't let them go in front of them, and they say that there's tall kids in front of them too. Honey, no one in front of you was more than 5'6". Asshats.
It was about this time that Allie started feeling like she was getting too hot and she wanted to go to the side so she wouldn't pass out. So we wander over to the side, where we can actually see and breathe and take pictures, but not necessarily in that order.
AND THEY START PLAYING "MAKE THIS GO ON FOREVER"!!!
This is my favorite Snow Patrol song, and one of my most favorite songs in the universe. It's up there with Baba O'Reilly in Toni-World. I would like to say that I said something intelligent to Allie at this point about recording the song, but my brain wasn't functioning. So I just gaped and pointed and went all fangirl but regained my intellect long enough to take like eight pictures and four videos of them.
I had goosebumps. I love this song, and it was fucking awesome! I have goosebumps just THINKING about it. Seriously bad-ass.
Fangirl over. Eeeeeeeeeeeee.
The rest of the concert was uneventful. Well, it was eventful and completely bad-ass, but you know what I mean. After they left, we cheered, and they came back on and did two songs, then left for the night.
Everyone surged to the exits, but we figured since we were first to get there, we'd chill and go look at the t-shirts.
I ended up buying a Silversun Pickups cd, and Allie bought a bag from them. We're looking at the Snow Patrol booth, and the bad-ass bassist (whose name is Nikki) shows up. I felt really dumb about it, but I told her that she was awesome and she signed my cd and Allie's bag. :D
I bought a Snow Patrol bag and Allie got a t-shirt. Yay!
I only had a couple of complaints about the show. The venue wasn't as good as it could have been, but I'm sure that's just the people in the back trying to get to the front.
The sound quality for the opening bands wasn't very good. It was loud, and you could barely hear the words. You could hear Snow Patrol pretty well, so maybe it was an issue that was fixed? *shrug*
Open the doors when you say you're going to open the doors!
Taking so long to get onstage tends to make people kind of upset. We know that you're the headliner, (why else would we be here?) but please don't pull a rock star. It would still piss me off if Johnny Cash took half an hour to get onstage, and we all know that Toni's love of Snow Patrol is surpassed only by her love of Johnny Cash.
That said, I enjoyed it immensely, and will go see them again. All in all, it was a bad-ass concert. They played all of my favorite songs, and they talked to the crowd. It was completely and totally awesome!
They better come back to Utah!
So, there's my long-winded concert review. Go buy a Silversun Pickups cd, and go buy "Eyes Open" and listen to "Make This Go On Forever" (on repeat, of course) for me! Go! Shoo! :)