S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT (Part II - Solo Battles)

Battles at Lee’s Palace was next on the agenda for yours truly and the Wife. I’ve been anticipating this concert for a long time, but things started out on a sour note. The people at the door rejected the Wife, because she “only” had the receipt for her Ontario Driver’s License and a photo ID, which was not enough to get in (somehow they had no problem with my expired MN license). They were not very nice about the situation either. My wife probably looks younger than she is, but she certainly does not look under 19. What a joke! Since my wife couldn’t get in and I am a gentleman, I walked her to the subway and said, “Don’t forget to let the dog out.”

In the hundreds of concerts I’ve gone to over the last sixteen years, I don’t think I’d ever been to one by myself before. It was a unique experience, especially since I was surprisingly older than most of the crowd. Somewhere between my fourteen-year-old self and now, I became that one “leerer” dude. Matters where made worse by the fact the concert started about an hour later than I expected. So I leered with a beer until the opening act, White Williams, started.

Anyway White Williams was the second most horrible thing I saw this weekend after Spiderman 3 (wow, that was bad). He really had a lame 80’s revival thing going on, which is strike one. I don’t know if it was just last night or what, but he also had zero charisma onstage, strike two. And I saw the cover of his album today, strike three.

Battles were great, as I expected, but I didn’t enjoy it as much I thought I would. Unfortunately, in my old age, I don’t like bands that clearly have a routine and do things the same way for every show. I know it’s tough keeping things fresh for 200 days in a row, but a band like Battles should not start every show with the bassist/guitarist coming out and doing the same layered-bass-through-delay routine. Switch it up a little boys. It’s probably just me, but I remember the second time I saw the Blues Explosion back in the nineties, and it destroyed me when I realized it was all just a choreographed thing that was basically the same every night. How hard is it to change a set list? Despite the lack of freshness in the set, it's hard not to get excited at the height of "Tonto" when everyone is going nuts on stage and in the crowd. Well worth the price of admission for that alone.

The door man at Lee’s Palace gets 0 Hortons, White Williams gets 1 , Battles gets 4 – but if they give it the same routine the next time, that might drop to a 3. Spiderman 3, one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time, gets 0 Hortons.