Gabe bought me a ticket to go see a group that he’s been raving about the last few months, Rogue Wave. I had only heard a couple of their songs streaming out of his laptop speakers and wasn’t impressed, but figured I’d go anyway.
The concert was Sunday night at the Showbox, a venue that I’m not too fond of for it’s layout. There’s too many bar areas where people often just talk loudly and don’t listen to the music. I’d be fine with that except when a band tries to do anything quiet and intimate, it usually fails. That and the fact that they never seem to start a show on time. And by on time I mean within an hour of what they say on the ticket. The show was said to start at 7PM and the warmup, warmup band didn’t even start until around 8:30. And it was awful.
Finally Rogue Wave came on around 9:30 and it was a great show. They’re much better live than on their album, which after having seen them live I gave a second chance and liked. I was impressed that the drummer and lead guitarist frequently switched roles.
The headliner was Nada Surf, a band whose claim to fame as far as I know was the one hit wonder “Popular” back in the 90′s. I bought their CD back then and hated it. I’d heard they’d gotten better. I suppose they have, but I’m still not impressed. They weren’t even on until close to 11, and when they came on I was just tired of standing around waiting. I’m not going to wait around four hours for someone who I barely care about, so we left after 4 or 5 songs.