All right, well. Might as well talk about the concert I went to last Saturday. Went to the iHeartRadio ALTer Ego festival at the Honda Center in Anaheim. Saw 8 out of the 9 bands (decided to pass on Fall Out Boy as it was around 11 PM as they started and I decided I need to get on home. They'll be back in the same venue in March with Jimmy Eat World. If ticket prices are in a range I like, I may go for it.) Here's what I thought about those bands.
The Black Keys - They were all right. Solid stripped back rock sounds. The two main guys (the drummer and guitarist/vocalist) showcased their skills well.
Lovelytheband - They were ok as well. They had that one song, Broken, that I heard years ago on radio.
Yellowcard - They were in the middle of a comeback and one of the bands I was looking forward to. The sound could be better, but their performance was good enough to convince me to see them with Third Eye Blind at the Greek Theater later this summer if ticket prices are reasonable.
Sum 41 - Another band that I was looking forward to. Before they came out, Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park was a special guest and had a solid ovation from the crowd, and talked about a few things about his current endeavors before announcing Sum 41 to come out on stage. They had a lot of good energy and stuck with a few hits and one new song and I wished they had more than 20 minutes. They have announced an headlining show in Inglewood at Youtube Theater. Any other reasonable venue in LA, but Youtube Theater, would have been dandy for me to go to.
The 1975 - This was the band that everyone in the crowd was looking forward to. I don't think I heard a reaction similar to what The 1975 had since I saw 5 Seconds of Summer back in June 2022. Speaking of which, one of the guys of 5 Seconds of Summer came out to announce The 1975 and he too got a great ovation from the crowd. As for the music, it's ok in my eyes, but nothing that I want to go see their own headlining show for.
Bush - This was the band I wanted to see the most, but they got a bad draw when it comes to the placement, as I think people were treating Bush as their time to their restroom breaks (since there was only 5-10 minutes in between sets). Brent Smith of Shinedown was the special guest to bring out Bush to the stage, and sadly, I might have been the only guy in my section that knew who he was. All in all, yeah, it was a tough going for Bush in terms of crowd reception, but I enjoyed the set. They played Everything Zen, Machinehead, More Than Machines, Nowhere to Go but Everywhere (this was the spot where Gavin Rossdale did his going into the crowd and sing near the people in the seats spot). That may have woken the crowd up as they were receptive to the end of the sets hearing Glycerine and Comedown so it's better to end on a good note.
The Last Dinner Party - Now this was the restroom break for me and couple of other people, but I was still able to catch their short set. All-female band dressed in fancy dinner clothes, playing Alt Rock stuff. They were fine, but nothing that tells me that I need to go see them again in the future at their own shows.
30 Seconds to Mars - Oh goodness, where do I want to begin with this one? One of the guys from Maneskin was the special guest to announce 30 Seconds to Mars. Let's just say I'm glad to experience this as a short-30 min. festival set rather than see them play 90 minutes. First, they had a gospel choir on stage for the whole set. Then Jared Leto (wearing a cape) decided to make his entrance last, while singing in the crowd during Walk on Water as he makes his way to the stage. Then he announced that he's sick and needs the crowd to help him out singing along to Kings and Queens (he probably would do this anyway even if he wasn't sick) and had some small pyro. He had that aura that probably makes him think he was a god. I couldn't tell if he truly felt that way or how much of that was gimmick based. I'm pretty certain that with only two guys on instruments that some of this had a backing track to fill the instrumental space, until they brought out Mikey Way (the bassist for My Chemical Romance). They also played two new songs (one acoustic sounding and one electro-sounding I think).
Leto, as one would expect, does like to talk a lot and he had call us out on, before playing Attack, on how he knows that when we all first heard of them, we were in middle school-age and now we are older, our backs are broken, our legs are worn out, but he still wants this crowd to give all the energy they got. Final song was The Kill (Bury Me) and they went a verse and chorus before Leto was like, "Wait! Something is missing with this one. Oh yeah, we need some fans on stage to sing with us on this one," so he picked a few people from the crowd to come up on stage to finish the song. If this was their headlining show, I would have no quarrels, but in a radio festival where all the bands had limited time, you decided to pull this stuff and we have to wait a few minutes for the people to show up on stage? F that. I would have wanted another 5 minutes of Sum 41 if I knew this was a thing. Overall, I don't know how much I would stomach if they had an extra hour and quite frankly, 35 minutes is good enough for me.
As for the radio festival experience. It was pretty good. About 3.5 hours of live music along with all of the house music being the Alt Rock that I grew up listening on the radio in outlets such as KROQ and the crowd singing along to them (I recall one of those songs was SOAD's Chop Suey! and people in the crowd was peeved when the song track stopped (so that the next band would come out to play) because people wanted to get to the FATHER! part of the song)). That was great.
As for the next concert for me? I don't know. I got options in February. Will see what's out there.
Topic: Concerts for 2024 (Read 8559 times)
