Nickelback!!!

Yesterday I met up with a friend to go to dinner and to see Nickelback in concert. Oh. My. Goodness. I love when a band sounds just as good live as they do on the radio. And they absolutely do. I think that's the sign of a good band. When a band sounds really similar whether they're on the radio or on a stage, it's a beautiful thing. Too many bands today rely on the recording studios to clean up their acts enough to be considered decent enough to sell. The three opening acts where kind of in that category.

The first opening act was Saving Abel. I had heard the name before but couldn't tell you what they sang. After listening to them play for 30 minutes though, nope, still couldn't tell you a single song of theirs. First of all, I couldn't understand a word they sang (or said). I'm fairly certain I could pick out the f-bomb being repeated in between songs. It was sort of like "blah, blah, f-bomb!, mumble, f-bomb!, hahahah! f-bomb!". And the audience went wild.

The second act of the evening was Papa Roach. I actually recognized several of their songs, and like them. On the radio. Jacoby (the lead singer) has a very decent voice overall. The songs are pretty rockin' as well. In person, there's a whole lot more screaming going on. And again with the f-bomb. Also, I think Jacoby might have abandonment issues regarding his genitalia as he spent a large portion of his set locating them. Just sayin'.

The third opening band was the one I was most looking forward to, Hinder. Unfortunately I was not as thrilled by the end of their set. I mean, it's not that they are bad at all, it just seemed that the vocals should have been the loudest thing and it wasn't. I struggled to hear Austin's unique voice over the cranking bass lines & ripping guitar chords. Not that it was bad because it wasn't, it just wasn't the way I would have preferred to hear it.

Then came Nickelback. And they were AWESOME! The vocals were clear, the music was jammin', there were huge screens showing the band members in oversize mode, and there was a pretty good show of pyrotechnics. Just awesome. The best part was the rapport Chad had with the audience. He has an obvious sense of humor that comes out in his running commentary between songs and he had the audience going crazy. Not me of course, I sat quietly watching the band, tapping my toe and (only occasionally) screaming out lyrics. Lest you think that he isn't a rock star, he did drop some f-bombs himself, but he seemed capable of saying several sentences in a row without doing so, which was a huge improvement over the opening acts.



Can you make that out? Yeah, camera phones combined with distance, combined with horrific lighting makes for a pretty crappy photo. But I was at Nickelback! Wooooohooo!