Loud

Before I forget to talk about it I thought perhaps I should talk about last Friday's concert adventure. We drove up to Portland's Roseland Theater and sat through an awesome, albeit loud, concert. I'm getting up there in age, but I'm not an old codger yet. The volume was just a bit too loud for that small of a venue. I couldn't really hear well again until today.

But that being said, it was a great concert. The wife and I climbed up into the 'fogey balcony" where the bar was and sat front and center. The first band (supporting the supporting act) was Redwalls; a strange mod-like band. They were good, peppy and loud. The next band, one my wife really came to see, was Rooney. I admit I like them too. I guess the lead singer is from some famous acting family and he himself was in the Princess Diaries. His guitar strings broke on the first strum and it took a roadie two songs' worth of time to get it restrung and tuned. Rooney was great, and loud.

Then the headliner, the one I came to see, was the Polyphonic Spree. If you haven't gotten to see them in concert, well … it's not really a concert, it's more like a theatrical event—just go. You'll either hate it or you'll love it, or maybe you'll just sit there and go "what the hell was that?" when it's all over. I loved it. We saw them last year at Edgefield out on the ninth hole of a golf course and they were so far away it was pitiful. But Friday night I got to absorb the entire event. It was amazing. My wife thought it felt a little 'cult-like', and it does seem that way sometimes. But it's a show, not a sermon. If you can find a better band that has 22 members including a harpist, two keyboardists, two drummers, a three-person string section, a three-person horn section, two guitarists, one bass player, one rockin' flute player, a six-girl choir, and the lead singer Tim (whom you may remember from a band called Tripping Daisy), confetti cannons, strobe lights and smoke machines, well … I'll give you 20 bucks. But you won't find a better show. And unfortunately, they were also a little too loud.