Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and TI @ Cameron Indoor Stadium 4/7/06

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one? Honestly people, this may not seem like a terrible idea at first passing, but putting any thought to the logistics of having these two groups together would have led any reasonablly minded person to think 'wow, this is beyond dumb.' Think about it: CYHSY and TI's merch tables next to eachother. CYHSY and TI's fans coexisting. CYHSY and TI meeting eachother, for christs sake. I can't even imagine what that must have been like, if it happened at all.

Cameron Indoor Stadium : Worst. Venue. Ever.
Wow, just wow. The absolute worst acoustics I have heard in my entire life. I remember downloading a Grateful Dead show at Cameron freshman year, and thinking both that the sound quality was miserable and that it would be so sweet to see a sweet band live in Cameron. I guess I never considered that the reason the Dead show sounded so shitty was the reason ANY concert in Cameron would sound shitty. Someone needs to put an end to this.
On top of that, the seating situation was a disaster. I got a ticket for GA in the left bleachers thinking that the GA on the floor was sold out. While the floor was indeed sold out, it was not packed with people standing, but rather neatly "filled" with roughly 200 folding chairs. This led me (and Josh and Ian) to figure that these folks would then be allowed to fill the aisles, but no, this was simply not the case. "No rushing the stage" and "No standing in the aisles" were the words of advice from the 'surprisingly friendly' security guards. So we're left with approximately half of the floor left ENTIRELY EMPTY, and NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO DANCE THERE.

"What is this, the town from Footloose?" - me, after we got 'kicked out' for dancing

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
I feel so bad for this band. I hope they got paid really well; if they chose to play at the Cradle, they may not have made much more money (or maybe they might have), but they certainly would have been recieved and treated about 45-50 times better.
Fucking Duke kids. Maybe the band knew how bad a crowd this was going to be: when they got to the stage, announced at the beginning of the set (as if they had just been told of their time limit) they would be playing 11 songs. They were then met with a collective groan from the crowd. This was essentially the theme of the night. The band was trying to be coy and clever abaout having an uninterested crowd and these kids were so unresponsive to it. Here's a solution: if you don't like the opener DONT SHOW UP FOR THE OPENER, YOU FUCKING MORONS. The acoustics made the situation even worse: most of the instrumentation was entirely inaudible, and the singer's voice (which is admittedly hard to swallow) was the only element that carried well. The set itself wasn't bad: I knew a few songs from the first album, and their new songs were pretty sweet.

"Have a good night. Nice to meet you guys." - the 30-something couple who sat next to us as left immedietly after the set

TI
After CYHSY, TI didn't show up for about an hour. (Somehow, I doubt the two acts were ever in the building at the same time.) Ian joked that since TI stood tor "Totally Instrumentless" the switch should only take a few minutes, since they only had to move the band's gear from the stage, but we weren't that lucky.
We left after like fifteen minutes. He only sang about fifteen seconds of "Rubber Band Man," after which he launched into that song from that Chevrolet commerical. Apparantly we didn't miss too much since he only played about half an hour more. (This is what Kanye did three LDOCs ago too, and I can imagine how irate the crowd was at this.) For the audience's sake I hope he found the time to do a reprise of "Rubber Band Man."

Other Notes
Baseball is finally back. Vengeance is ours, and holds of questionable significance.
David Newhan has taken #17. I hope Keith Hernandez has a little chat with him, like he did with Jose Lima.
The Sopranos' denouement starts tonight.
Paul Thompson from Pitchfork has a good take on the new Sgt.Pepper tribute album.