So I'd been trying to get rid of the ticket I bought for the Aussie Invasion Tour (The Living End + Jet + The Vines) for about a month now... mostly because I'm not crazy about The Vine's new material, but also because The Vines have about as many ballads as they have faster (better) songs, and I positively hate (their) ballads. Ballads are fucking gay. Most of them anyway. So my brother's friend was looking for a ticket for a while, but then my brother took so long to get back to him that his friend had bought one and I got stuck with mine. And I was still whining that I didn't want to go at 8pm tonight when I decided that I wasn't about to waste $30 and effectively made myself go. I still had some studying to do (skull anatomy) so my brother and I planned to meet at St-Laurent subway station at 8:45pm, so that we'd miss most of The Living End's set.
So we get to the Metropolis and discover that the show is sold out and the place is p-a-c-k-e-d with a mostly teenage crowd (I must be old because I now despise all-ages shows) - nothing like
the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' show last month. So we're there with our layers of coats and all, and the place is packed, and we won't see anything unless we get down into the pit, so we check our coats and brave the crowd. If we're going to do this, might as well go all the way - so I get us 4 shots of tequila to help get the evening going. The highlight of The Living End's set (the 5 or so songs that we heard anyway) was, predictably, Prisoner of Society. Despite the hip injury he sustained while snowboarding earlier today, and despite the reservations he'd mentioned about moshing, I could see my brother was itching to get into the pit, so I encouraged him to do so. That was the last I saw of him. Good thing I had made sure he knew how to get home, and how late he could afford to leave, etc (he couldn't sleep at mine because he's got 10am driving lessons, so he had to make sure he caught the last subway and bus to our 'rents' place). So The Living End finished, a bunch of people left the pit to get a drink / a breath of fresh air, and I made damn sure I took advantage of the massive exodus to squeeze my way into the 3rd row, dead-center.
Jet played an alright set, although you could see they weren't really into it. I sort of was expecting that to be the case, because I have come across a few articles explaining that the boys were severely homesick and generally hating America (who can blame them?). And it's hard for the crowd to get into it when you keep tempering the euphoria with yet another fucking ballad. (Did I mention how much I hate ballads?) They gave us some half-hearted bullshit about Montreal being the best town they'd played yet, and I had to chuckle. Don't say it if you don't mean it. So they played Cold Hard Bitch, which was the one song I was dying to hear, and they played the iPod song that everybody knew. It was alright, but nothing terribly impressive or exciting. The (only) advantage of being surrounded by a see of kids half my age was that they were all short, so I could see alright. There was a lot of crowd surfing, so I was hit in the head by (in sequence) combat boots, cowboy boot heels, and sneakers (lots of times). Some kid standing next to me who thought he was at a Metallica concert managed to bang his head into my temporal bone, which was both painful and frightening (nothing like medical school to make you imagine the worst). My zygomatic bones also got elbowed plenty.
Then another long break to allow for Jet to pack up and The Vines to set up, which I spent looking for my brother and fighting to maintain my prime position. The Vines came on. For the entire duration of the set, except for the single encore, they alternated between ballad and non-ballad. Every other song was a ballad. The worst possible set list ever. What the fuck? Do you really want to put us to sleep? (OK, maybe it’s my fault for always skipping every ballad on their album.) Then there were some technical difficulties involving Craig's mic stand constantly falling down - it was eventually changed by the crew but not before I busted out laughing (he also was a good sport about the ordeal) – and it’s not a good thing when you laugh AT a band. Not to mention that they didn't even play Get Free until the encore, which to be fair to them, is from their first album so they don't have an obligation to play it on this tour, and in fact they're probably sick of playing it, but to be fair to us, they've never played Montreal before, and their new album doesn't officially come out until tomorrow, AND it's one of their few songs that fucking rocks.
The minute the encore ended I sprinted to the coat check (I usually linger and scream and beg for more) but still managed to get caught behind a sea of people coming down from the balcony - I waited a short 15-20 minutes before getting my coat (versus an hour after the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). I stepped out and walked the 12 or so blocks home, hoping that my brother had managed to beat the crowd. Then I emailed him the minute I walking in.
So, in short, Jet and The Vines alike could learn a thing or two from The Datsuns. Now there's a band that can sustain mass euphoria and thoroughly rock a crowd for over an hour [
see previous concert experience]. And they have amazing stage presence (not like Karen O, but that’s comparing apples and oranges). And they don't have a single fucking ballad in their repertoire. I’m not against ALL ballads – The White Stripes’ ballads are great, for example. But The Vines’ ballads are spacey, trippy, shitty downers. Overall the show sucked. The bands all played short sets, the bands all looked like they didn’t want to be there (except for The Living End), and all the set lists sucked.
