November 2012
I love going to concerts. I used to see shows all the time. I don’t go to as many anymore due to the combination of not being particularly good at getting into new bands and the bands I already like not touring enough (I’m looking at you Brand New).
Well the other day I went to go see Taking Back Sunday for the 10-year anniversary (evidence I’m bad at finding new music) tour of their debut album Tell All Your Friends. TBS has 5 albums but TAYF (ahhh, acronyms) is easily their best (and I like the other ones too). They opened with a few songs that could be called the greatest hits of their more recent 4 albums, then played Tell All Your Friends in its entirety, and finished with a couple of well-known b-sides from when they recorded TAYF. I loved it, it was great, but even the best, most nostalgically awesome things aren’t good enough for some people.
Taking Back Sunday forgot to play the obligatory encore! (And not that Eminem album, though I would pay good money to see them cover that.) Don’t think of me as creating a straw man either, I actually heard people complaining about this! Encores are that thing that has just become the norm and I’ll admit that I’ve come to expect them but if the concert was thoroughly finished, why have one? The whole point of this show was to see them play their best album in its entirety, how exactly could they follow that up? I guess they could have played a bunch of songs off that one album that no one likes by them. The one they skipped over entirely in their opening, New Again.
People just need to think outside the box! Take the Beastie Boys…
The first time I saw the Beastie Boys was in the Fall of 2004. Their opening acts were Talib Kweli and… a dog show. I just Googled the show to make sure I didn’t make that up in a wonderful dream I had. According to the results, the dog show did happen and people were not pleased. I remember thinking it was such an interesting and fresh idea and that only the Beastie Boys would do something so cool. I don’t even remember what I thought of the quality or appropriateness of the dog show, just that it was happening and it was awesome.
At this same show, the Beastie Boys played for an hour or so before exiting the stage. They came back out for an encore and played some more before exiting the stage again. At this point, the house lights came up and people started exiting. However, I was standing pretty close to the stage and as I looked under the stage’s background I could see something going on. Then out of nowhere, as everyone is leaving, the Beastie Boys come out for a second encore after completely fooling the audience into thinking the show was over. Could this have been a technical problem and a mistake that the house lights went up? Sure, but that doesn’t matter. The surprise second encore was so much more memorable than the first encore that everyone was expecting.
