2007年 Nov 19日 Monday, 0:46

Sat 17 Nov – Streetlight Manifesto, Suburban Legends, The Stitch Up

Well. I'll start with saying this was the greatest show I've ever been to. The venue (Revolution Hall in Troy, NY), though small, was a great place to see live music. The small capacity definitely made for a more intimate show. The bands that played were The Stitch Up, Suburban Legends, and, of course, Streetlight Manifesto.

The Stitch Up, a band fronted by MU330's former singer, played first. They started out with just the singer playing an acoustic guitar for a few joke songs before the rest of the band joined up about halfway through the third song. The crowd didn't really get into them until they played "Raw Fish", an MU330 song. About halfway through their set, they called for two guitarists from the audience, and I was lucky enough to be thrown in the air by some people and be chosen to go on stage. They then had a vote-off between me and the other guy, but just let us both play anyways. It was an amazing experience. Even though the riff was fairly simple, just being able to play on stage was an experience unto itself. So they finished up their set, and up came Suburban Legends.

Suburban Legends had to borrow all of The Stitch Up's equipment since some dicks in Philadelphia decided to steal $50,000 worth of their equipment. Although I'm not a big fan of their sound, every time I've seen them they've put on a great show. I was expecting a little bit less from them seeing as they had just been robbed and I thought they'd be acting mad because of this, but quite the opposite was true. They managed to put on a cool show complete with their dance routines and a Disney cover, of which was a Lion King song, which was a good one to hear with the horns.

Finally, Streetlight Manifesto came on. The crowd, as anticipated, was absolutely psyched to see them. Every Streetlight show I've been to has had such an insane crowd reaction. The crowd is almost a part of the band since Tomas Kalnoky needn't even sing half the lyrics because his voice can't be heard over the crowd. Almost everyone there knew every lyric to Streetlight's material, both new and old, as well as the Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution songs that they also played, and "Keasbey Nights" sandwiched between "Point/Counterpoint". Anyhow, they started the show off with "We Will Fall Together", the first song off of their new album, and then went into "Everything Went Numb". After that they played "Down, Down, Down to Mephisto's Cafe", probably my favorite song off the new album, Somewhere In The Between. After that I cannot remember the order, but I know they played more than half of Everything Goes Numb and more than half of the new album. They also played several BOTAR songs where Kalnoky picked up his acoustic guitar and the bassist played an upright bass of some sort in which his hands moved too fast to see. The BOTAR songs played were "It's A Wonderful Life", which had a stunning instrumental, "They Provide The Paint For The Picture Perfect Masterpiece That You Will Paint On The Insides Of Your Eyelids", and, later on, the Streetlight/BOTAR song "Here's To Life". They ended the show with "The Big Sleep". But the crowd chanted "ONE MORE SONG! ONE MORE SONG!" enough to get Kalnoky to come out once more with a big smile and deliver my favorite line of the night, which was something along the lines of "We're not playing one more song. WE'RE PLAYING TWO!!!" So, they ultimately finished the show off with a breathtaking "Here's To Life" and a massive cheer from the audience. It was truly a show to remember. Skanking all night long was a great thing. I don't even know how I survived avoiding dehydration during Streetlight's show seeing as I didn't stop skanking or singing for the hour and a half or so that they played. Just an amazing show with great musicians. It's why Streetlight is the best band on Earth.

By they way, buy the new album. It's amazing. It's worth $12 and then some. Don't download. Streetlight's one of the few bands that actually deserves the money coming from album sales.