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Gasp! Matt's doing work again!? Who woulda thought... Anyway, I went to not one, but two Dashboard Confessional/Further Seems Forever shows in one week last December, so I'm just gonna do one big ol' feature on both of 'em. Well, I don't know if the first one I went to would even qualify as a show; this one had to have been the most disappointing show of my life. First of all, me and my Troy peeps got stuck in traffic and got to the venue (Shades Valley Community Church) late. No problem, right? Cause shows never start on time, right? Noooooo, this time it started on time. And it wasn't just some crappy no-name band that I missed; it was Twothirtyeight, who are absolutely amazing (do yourself a favor and buy their Regulate The Chemicals CD right now from Tooth & Nail Records). We got there a few minutes after they finished, so I was pretty bummed right from the beginning. The next band on the bill was Seville, who I had seen once before at, you guessed it, a Further Seems Forever show. So Seville plays a few songs, rockin' out pretty nicely, when all of a sudden the PA starts crapping out or something. After getting all frustrated and kicking some drums around (kinda immature if you ask me), they leave the stage and everyone in attendance has to just sit there for the longest time wondering what's going on. Finally, Chris Carraba from Dashboard Confessional comes out and tells us that the show is basically screwed, but that we can stick around if we want to and at least have a little entertainment. So then, the singer and two guitarists from Further Seems Forever come out and say that they're going to do some acoustic stuff without a PA and that we would have to try to stay quiet so everyone could hear (Fairweather, who was supposed to play between Seville and FSF, didn't play at all). At first I was kinda disappointed that I wasn't gonna see the rockin' FSF set that I was expecting, but then I thought "Well, we're getting a nice, intimate 'unplugged' set that none of the other tour stops are getting to hear," and decided this was gonna be a cool show after all. Well, they play two songs, "Just Until Sundown" (which they didn't play at the last show I was at, so that was a nice treat) and "Snowbirds and Townies" (which is one of my favorite FSF songs), then they say that they won't be allowed to play anymore. At this point, people are getting a tad irritated because not only is our show getting cut off, but we have absolutely no idea what's going on. Then Chris Carraba comes out to play a set by himself; in case you don't know, Dashboard Confessional started out as just a solo acoustic act before he decided to enlist a bassist and drummer (who are also the bassist and drummer for Seville), so Chris Carraba could've played an entire set by himself. However, he only played three songs. By now, the entire audience was pretty mad about this whole fiasco. When it was over, I went and talked to this girl from U of A that I met on Makeoutclub once (I think she was more ticked off than I was), and then I was gonna buy merch, but I didn't feel like paying for a bunch of Further and Dashboard stuff when I had already been basically cheated out of my admission charge (I think it was like 10 bucks). However, there was a Takehold Records merch table set up, so I bought Tantrum of the Muse's Modernmu$ick(2000), a Sleeping By The Riverside 7", and some buttons and stickers (plus a few buttons/stickers from Further and Dashboard). After buying merch, we went and ate at the Purple Onion with some B'ham people that my Troy friends knew and then we went back to Troy. I basically had a good time that night in spite of the fact that the whole show was a disaster; Oh, and when I got back to my record player in M'ville, the Sleeping By The Riverside 7" wouldn't spin right. Figures...
Anyway, after talking to some people who knew some people who knew some people, it looks like when the PA system went bad, the tour manager made the bands cut their sets short, so apparently it was his fault that Further and Dashboard only played a few songs, and not "Mr. Rockstar" Chris Carraba as was speculated by numerous "scenesters" on various message boards.
On to show number two. Since the first show was such a disaster and since Dashboard Confessional and Further Seems Forever were scheduled to play the Cow Haus a few days later, we decided to make the trip to Tallahassee in hopes that this show would turn out better. When we went in, Seville (who else?) started playing; I think I like this band more every time I see them. Next up was a band called The Rocking Horse Winner, who had sort of a soft, indie-rock sound with female vocals and sounded somewhat similar to maybe the Sundays or Innocence Mission. The singer was the same one who did backing vocals on both Dashboard Confessional albums. Oh, and believe it or not, but the guitarist used to be in Shai Hulud (!). Further Seems Forever played next. It was fun to hear them play acoustically the other night (even if they only played two songs), but I think this performance was the best one I've seen from them yet. The crowd was way more into it than the crowd at the first FSF show I went to, and the band just totally fed off their energy and put on a very intense performance. At one point, Jason Gleason (the singer) leaned out into the audience holding the microphone and my friend Jared managed to reach it and sing a few words; he was pretty excited ("Okay, now I can die!"--Jared). Dashboard Confessional was up next and played a great set even though FSF had to be a pretty tough act to follow. I was pretty excited to see them since Dashboard now has DAN HOERNER from SUNNY DAY REAL ESTATE playing guitar with them! I just wish I could've been on his side of this stage so I could've gotten some better pictures of him. Chris Carraba played some songs by himself, too, which was pretty cool. I didn't buy anything that night, but we went to Waffle House after the show, where everyone thought I was weird for ordering chili at a Waffle House. Oh well, their loss; Waffle House has good chili. After we got back to Troy, a few friends of my Troy friends hung out with us until like 5 A.M. before driving back to Tuscaloosa for finals that day. I think I finally got to bed at like six in the morning. For some reason, it just felt kinda nice to fall asleep as the sun was coming up outside. Well, I'm starting to sound really emo so I guess I'll stop here.
Pictures should be up soon; the pics from the first show are scanned and ready to go, but I still need to scan the pics from the second show. |
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