Normally I really enjoy seeing bands I like performing live. I’m not sure if it was the atmosphere, the time of night, or the band itself, but I have to say that seeing VAST was a little disappointing.
Part of the problem may be that I am less familiar with their more recent work than their first album. A lot of the stuff they performed was unknown to me, and although I do have their albums in my iTunes cart, I haven’t purchased them yet.
I also feel, just a little, like they may fall victim to studio enhancement. I absolutely love their singers voice on the albums. In person, his voice isn’t as deep, and it almost seemed like one of the other guitarists has the deeper voice and is able to do those lower parts. For me, since that is probably my biggest draw to the band, I wanted to hear authenticity.
It was also pretty damn late for me. Which the singer made fun of, he asked if it was past our bed times here in Salt Lake. I felt like being snotty and saying “no, it’s past our bed times if we ARE ADULTS WITH NORMAL JOBS!” Musicians, sheesh! But seriously, the first opening band (which I had heard at the Airborne Toxic Event show, coincidentally) didn’t start until 930 PM. I’m not even sure what time it was when VAST finally took the stage. But I can assure you that it was wicked late for me.
My friends and I also had the mistfortune of hearing the second opening band, called Endless Hallway, but we decided to call them The Ralphs. Before they started, we saw all these guys who looked exactly the same. Five of them, to be precise. They were loading gear onto the stage, and we decided they all needed to have the same name, since they looked the same, so we settled on Ralph. It was only later that we figured out they weren’t roadies, but the band itself. So for the record, we had: Green Ralph (lead singer), Tattoo Ralph (drummer), Dingy Ralph (or New Ralph, we weren’t sure for awhile if there were more than 5), Blonde Ralph, and Grey Ralph.
So aside from their horrible fashion (seriously dudes, how did y’all manage to find each other? Is there a Facebook group for guys with long, unwashed hair, too thin to the point where you can see their ribs, and black emo pants?), their music wasn’t good. They suffered from the sin of screaming into the mic for the sound check, so that when they actually played you couldn’t hear the vocals. Which was probably good. And I kid you not, I had to not watch because Green Ralph had ribs poking out. And I think I saw some Ralph underwear as well.
I really wanted to ask them if they had a manager or stylist so I could help them out. I mean, I admire uniqueness in a band, if it exists. But truthfully, from what I could hear, they are like plenty of already more popular bands. And look terrible. Boys, if you ever read this, get yourself to the Great Clips stat! For the record, I don’t normally advocate Great Clips, but that is probably the fastest place you can get this fixed. Also, stop shopping together at Hot Pocket Topic and buy some reputable clothing. I know that Nordstrom is where, like, the preppies and all those crazy’s shop, but I promise you can do yourself some good with some nice slacks and an adorable button up shirt.
Also, just as an fyi, if you feel like you need to play a Nirvana cover to rile the crowd up, you need to reevaluate your music. And please don’t tell the crowd it needs to be hot, smelly, and stinky in there. That is the fastest way to lose me. For the record, I went back and listened to more samples of The Ralphs Endless Hallway on iTunes and they’re still not any good. I did, however, add Kelly Clarkson to my cart.
One of my good friends also spent the evening shielding me from strange boy who can’t dance and had two holes in his shirt. He was not cute, and I spent much of the time figuring out what exactly I would say to him should he try to speak to me. Fortunately, he did not. This isn’t usually how I spend my concerts, but I was so tired I had to do *something* to keep myself awake.
On the whole, we determined that we are far too judgmental to go to a show in a small venue with a lot of straight people. I will refrain from commenting on the other fashion atrocities I saw there, but friends and I decided we need to make “Fashion Police” badges and get a cut of the ticket sales. Think of how one of my last duties in Salt Lake could be cleaning up the fashion at the straight clubs!
As you can see, this entire concert post has degraded into pretty much what my concert experience turned out to be. I can’t fault VAST for all of this, and the positive side is that it was a small, albeit one of my least favorite, venue. Which means it only cost me $15 to get in. This is a plus, cuz otherwise I would have felt cheated.
So basically, if VAST is cheap and coming to your town, it isn’t a total waste. But if they come with The Ralphs and you hate them, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
