Here’s the way opening acts are supposed to work. You go to a show to see the headliner. That’s who you paid you money to see and the fact of the matter is you could give a rat’s ass about who else is playing. And there is some compassionate part of you that feels a little bad for the opening act(s) because they are up there on stage trying. But usually they suck so bad that all your compassion goes out the window.
Quite a while back Wonder Boy and I went to see the Kings of Leon play. I had reviewed their first album, Youth and Young Manhood, when it came out and was all excited to hear their new one. Until I did. And it sucked. And worse, so they sucked. Which is actually quite an over exaggeration. They played fine. They played live EXACTLY how their album sounded, which is nice, I guess, but then why did I pay money to see them live. I would have been upset, EXCEPT that the opening act rocked so hard.
The Features. I want to marry them. I want them to move into my house and play music for me every night before I go to bed.
So now when Wonder Boy and I go to see a band and we like the opening act better, we refer to show as being Kings of Leon-ed. Last night I saw a concert that got totally Kings of Leon-ed.
In one of more rockstar moments, I had written a preview article for the Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah show and got to interview the lead singer, Alec Ounsworth. So I went to see them play in high anticipation and with big plans to try and go backstage and meet the band. After all, press can do that, right?
The opening act, a band whose name I didn’t even know, played for exactly 10 seconds when I knew I would be buying their album. They were that good. And then I told myself to wait and hear the second song they played before I made any purchases. It didn’t matter. They rocked. The Brunettes, out of New Zealand, will rock your world. Their six-person band with their suite of maybe 20 instruments is an unbelievably quirky onstage eargasm. That good.
The problem is, when your opening act starts out like that, you run the very real risk of being Kings of Leon-ed. And alas, it happened. Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah were good, but they couldn’t measure up to the eargasm that warmed up the stage for them.
Wonder Boy
I want to follow The Brunettes around and wash their tour bus. It’s SO good!!!