This month I have had the chance to attend two great concerts near my home. First on July 1 at Westfair Amphitheater in Council Bluffs, IA. I saw 311, Matisyahu, and Swizzle Tree. I went with a carload of friends and it really made for a great time. Swizzle Tree was the first band and they really had a hard time getting the crowd going. It was hot and the crowd was not feeling the band. Matisyahu was the next band. I had heard they were good from friends who had seen him previously and they were right. Matisyahu was out to really have a good time. He was climbing and jumping on top of tall speakers and dancing all around. He also ran into the crowd and climbed a large observation tower about 50 ft in the air. Matisyahu sounded good and true to his albums. His clothing was somewhat interesting. He had suit jacket that soon came off and he had a t-shirt type shirt on underneath. He also had khaki colored baggy dress slacks and white tennis shoes. Overall, the best song he sang was his beat boxing. Matisyahu really got the crowd going and I think just about everyone liked him. I got a good picture of Matisyahu with my camera on my Razr cell phone.
On to 311, the main event for the show. I have been to two previous 311 shows and they have all been good. They are best when the band is not promoting a new album that has just come out. Fortunately, this was not the case this time. The band played a wide variety of songs, which was great old and new. The bad thing was the sound quality. It seemed to me that the balance between the instruments and vocals was not right. The vocals were not clear for some of the louder stuff. It was almost as if they turned the volume up to 11 and things were distorted. The other disappointment of the show was the last encore song. The concert’s theme was Red White and Boom and it was put on by 89.7 the River. The last few songs fireworks were lit off. The fireworks were decent, not the best I had seen but it was definitely professional level fireworks. The problem was that all of the fireworks went off almost at all the same time. The last song was Omaha Style, which usually is one of the beginning songs. The usual last song is F**k the Bull Shit that is just a classic and is great live. It is a shame they did not play it this time but I guess there is always next time. Overall it was a good show by 311. No pictures of 311 worth posting they did not come out sorry.
On Saturday July 21 at Westfair again I went to the annual River Riot show put on by The River radio station. There were quite a few bands such as Fuel, Buck Cherry, Papa Roach, Hinder, and Incubus at the show but I really only wanted to see Incubus. Evidently a lot of people also had the same idea just to go see Incubus because it took 1 hour to get parked. We first waited on the interstate and then along the highway to find a spot. We ended up having to park facing the wrong direction on a road behind the concert. This made getting out tricky but we managed.
Being a sold out show the amount of people was kind of unreal. People were every place but we found a place to squeeze in. As we walked in the door Papa Roach was just finishing and Hinder was getting set up. Papa Roach sounded ok from a distance. Hinder is not a band I like so I really did not pay much attention to them. They were good at stalling for Incubus and Hinder even played a cover of Born to Be Wild. The original is far better.
Incubus took a while to set up but they did come out on time. Everyone in the crowd was stoked and very excited for them. The beginning of incubus show was very full of energy and was some of their more high energy songs such as “Wish you were hereâ€Â, “Anna Mollyâ€Â. As the concert progressed, the show became more mellower and calmer. The opener was “Quicksand†from the Light Grenades album. A surprise of the evening was the song “Driveâ€Â. I was surprised how soon they played this song. I was expecting it to be one of the last songs because Incubus is very well known for it. However it was played with in the first 5 songs. Incubus played for about 1.5 hours and it was a very good set. It included a nice mix of new songs and older songs. Some cool things that they did was during If I remember right the song was “The Warmth†Brandon Boyd the lead singer had two flood lights and he did some artistic movements of them and then he went and pointed out each member of the band who had a solo jam session. It really was well done and a cool simple visual. Another neat thing was how the band went off stage. The last song of the encore was “Aqueous Transmissionâ€Â. It is an interesting song because of the use of an instrument called the “Pipa†(Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueous_Transmission) The band played the song and then went off one by one with the remaining members still playing. It really was a neat way to end the song and concert.
Overall the concert was great and one of the best I have been to. Incubus sounded very good and very much like they do on their albums. I had a good time in the pit and it was just a great show because Incubus was there. It did take an hour and 20 minutes to get out and on the interstate again but that is all part of the fun of it.
Media from the concert. These are all from my Razr phone.
