The Worst Concert I’ve Ever Been To

Have you ever felt like you were in the Twilight Zone, having an experience completely disconnected from everyone around you?

As someone easily swept up in “crowd mentality,” this isn’t usually something I experience but I got a good taste of it last night.

Last night was, hands down, the worst concert I’ve ever been to – and I seemed to be the only one who thought that.

In this post, I’ll explore the various reasons I thought this concert was such a flaming disaster.

1. I should have been a bigger fan of the bands (this is on me).

The two bands performing were Deerhunter and Dirty Projectors – two bands I only had a passing familiarity with.

Over this last year of concert-going, I’ve learned that I enjoy myself a lot more if I know the band well and spend the majority of the concert swaying violently and yelling the words to the song – ideally at a volume annoying no one but the strangers violating my personal space.

I certainly have liked concerts from bands I only casually knew (Rooney, as an example), but knowing the band well doesn’t hurt the odds.

Not that this would have helped necessarily, because Dirty Projectors played three new songs in their set, because that’s obviously what people want when they go to concerts.

2. The alcohol was too expensive.

I’ve been attending concerts at smaller venues and this usually equates to cheaper alcohol. I don’t usually drink a lot at concerts but I do think the whole concert experience is nicely rounded out if you’re holding a Rainer, or similar cheap beer alternative, pricing in at about $5.

The Showbox, the locale of this calamity, had drafts starting at $10, which was more than I was willing to shell out, meaning the bands got no “beer goggle” assistance.

3. Poor time management.

This is always a killer for me.

Doors opened at 8PM and the concert was supposed to begin at 9 and actually held close to that. The concert was, however, supposed to be wrapping up by about 11 and instead the second band (Deerhunter) was only just taking the stage with the longest sound check I’ve ever witnessed.

The sound check was what got me because it was a straight 20+ minutes of a crew member on stage with the unenviable task of testing instruments and getting broadcasted feedback from a band member – all in front of the crowd. BUT THEN, the band got on stage and the sound check continued for another 10 minutes. This consisted of blasting the audience with audio 2x as loud as the last band with a fully bone rattling amount of base.

Being someone who likes getting to bed by 11, I was beyond peeved and dipped partway through the first song of the second band because it was loud, it was late, I’d been standing for the last 2.5 hours, and the people around me were incredibly sweaty.

In contrast, I’ve been attending shows for the last few months at the Sunset Tavern, a teensy venue in Ballard, and have been blown away with the promptness of the venue. If they say the concert is starting at 9, the concert is sure as heck starting at 9. If they don’t list an opener, there’s no opener. I made both of those mistakes with one of the first shows I saw there, Rooney, assuming that the show would start late and there was an unannounced opener. Instead, I ended up missing the first 20 minutes of Rooney because I showed up at 9:20. What I’ve noticed is that if there are 3 bands on the bill, they’ll start right on the dot, run for 40 minutes exactly, have set up for the next band for the next 20 minutes, and then repeat.

4. In my opinion, the first band tanked.

To be clear, no one else seemed to share my opinion.

Here are a few things that went wrong that I didn’t blame the band for:

• The lead guitarist’s strap broke. Obviously, these things happen. It did, however, add to the awkward visuals for a few songs while his strap (connected only at the bottom) either flapped around wildly or loosely draped over his shoulder. There was also a fun minute of awkward silence while he tried to screw it back in with a fingernail. This was eventually fixed by a crew member.
• The lead male vocalist’s voice was pretty fried. I think the band had been on the road for a while, so this seems a bit inevitable, but still.
• The sound mixing was pretty abysmal. Not at all being someone who knows audio, it was clear even to me that things were not as they should be. Comparative volumes of different instruments and vocals were all over the place and made for a very patchy final product.

That being said here were a few thoughts that I had throughout the performance:

• The male vocalist does a quick pitch change thing in their songs that works well in recordings (I suspect with the benefit of multiple takes and autotune) but honestly looks totally ridiculous in person, especially if he’s not hitting notes just right.
• Generally, my default is being attracted to any and all musicians – just being on stage and playing an instrument gives you a +4 in my book. That being said, with the amount of awkward happening, I was not attracted to anyone that stage with exception of the bass player, who looked about 10 years older than everyone else, giving overall appearance that this was a high school band who picked up an older dude off Craigslist to fill a vacant position. That being said, pretty cute.
• The males in the band, particularly the drummer, really embodied the term “slackjawed” – to the point where I began to wonder if he had difficulty closing his mouth. If Tom Holland looks like he’s holding a frog in his mouth, the drummer looks like the frog is putting up a good fight.
• In general, I do like the recorded music of Dirty Projectors but their stage presence was so negligible and awkward that I felt like I was watching a high school talent show that was not going very well and that their parents must listen to these largely cacophonous songs and think “Is this music?”

At the end of the night, I was tired, sweaty, disappointed, and felt like I’d just listened to a mediocre Vampire Weekend cover band.

As I sat, after midnight, waiting for my bus for a half hour, I thought about something the band had asked the audience – whether we’d attended the Capitol Hill Block Party and I kept coming back to the same thought: I missed Lizzo for this.