Yeah.....Yeah.

Everclear in Concert

9.02.06 - Last Fling - Naperville, Illinois

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Everclear is coming to the area, so yes, I'd like to see them. I mean, I used to have two of their albums. Then I got sick of them and sold them both to a comic book store. Then, years later, I went back and bought So Much for the Afterglow again from some used shop. And yeah, their particular brand of riffy, infectious pop-rock can be sort of entertaining. And after something like fifteen years of doing it for a living, they ought to be good, right?

No way, man. Everclear sucked. Like a trainwreck sucked. It was so bad that I couldn't even bear to leave early. I had to stay till the bitter end, even through the encore.

In all fairness, I was sitting on a hill a distance from the stage, so I was probably missing some of that energy of being close. And the mix was really bad, but maybe I wouldn't have noticed as much if I were inside the "deaf zone" of the speakers. The fact that singer Art Alexakis was way to loud in the mix wasn't helped by the fact that he actually couldn't sing. He sort of bellowed out the lyrics to his songs, mostly in time. It sort of sounded like amatuer hour at karaoke night. You know that guy who's always there and he's really drunk and he thinks he sounds great bellowing out Neal Diamond lyrics, or maybe Meatloaf lyrics, but you can tell he's smoked about ten times the number of cigarettes that he usually smokes, and he keeps looking over at his friends who just egg him on from their table by the telepromter over in the corner? Yeah, that bad.

Then there were some song choices and format issues I didn't agree with. After like three or four songs they went into the obligatory acoustic part of the show. Why have bands felt the need to do this lately? Every band touring in America should read this statement: DOING AN OBLIGATORY ACOUSTIC PART OF THE SHOW IS JUST AS LAME AS HOLDING UP YOUR CELL PHONE INSTEAD OF YOUR ZIPPO DURING A SLOW SONG. And not only did Alexakis do the whole acoustic thing, but he did it poorly. He covered Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. Acousticly. And he didn't know all the words.

Then there was the encore. Remember that this was a live festival show for a town, and it only cost ten bucks to get in, so there were a lot of moms and dads and stuff. So as soon as the band stopped their main set, the crowd got up to leave. I guess there were some people standing and clapping down by the stage, but everybody else got up. Seriously. And they hadn't even played Santa Monica yet, so you just knew they weren't done. So they rushed back out real quick and played Santa Monica, which was fine.

Then they played another song. But before playing it, they pulled a bunch of girls onto the stage. For like ten minutes the band played funk background garbage while Alexakis pointed into the crowd and shouted into the microphone "you and you and that girl in the pink top and you and you and you and her and that girl right there and you and you." Seriously. And he announced that usually he would ask the girls their names, but it didn't matter that night because "they're all Jenny tonight." Then the band, for their last song, their fucking closing song, they played Jenny by Tommy Two Tone. You know. 867-5309. They finished with that. And all these girls, they danced. And they sang when Alexakis pushed the mic in their face. Ugh.

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So I hate to write a bitchy rant like this one. I mean, they're a band, and they're out there trying to make it. And they have mastered their particular brand of riffy, infectious pop-rock. I like So Much for the Afterglow. I wanted them to be good, but they weren't. And they're veterans, so I'd expect much, much, much better.