SimpleWeblog

Concert Report: No Doubt, The Faint, and Kenna

I won't go into my reasons for going to the show, but I can't say I was extremely excited about it. Sure, I like some No Doubt songs, but only the ones from Tragic Kingdom really. But it seemed like it might be a nice change of pace from the small-venue indie shows. My expectations were that it wouldn't be a great show, but I'd have a good time with the whole experience.

The show was at the San Jose Event Center on the SJSU campus. We knew there was a parking structure nearby, but the traffic getting there sucked once we got off the freeway, so we found some street parking a few blocks away, which seemed to be a great decision. There was a huge line to get in, since it was a general admission show, I guess, but eventually we were able to get in. I couldn't bring my swiss army knife in, and they didn't have a checkroom, so I wound up losing it. Low point of the evening! Oh well. Should have snuck it in, but didn't like the potential for hassle. The Fillmore has a checking system that worked great - why can't this place?

Kenna tried to take that low point of the evening spot, though. I was surprised to hear someone playing when we finally got in, since it wasn't even 8 yet, but whatever points they get for punctuality were taken away because of their bland angry-but-wussy contemporary radio rock. I don't know if they actually have a radio song, but they might as well, it sounded a lot like what makes me glad to not listen to much commercial radio.

I didn't know who the support band was going to be, but when the guy came out and said they were The Faint, a name I recognized from Noise Pop, I became a little excited. I had heard good things about them. And they were good, but not what I expected. They played a very 80's pop sound, like earlier Depeche Mode, or whatever those other bands whose names I can't remember are. The dancy, electronic kind of 80's pop. The songs would not sound out of place on an 80's greatest hits CD, but they weren't too retro or kitschy, they were good. And dancable, although the lead singer couldn't get too much out of the crowd even though he knew "you'll dance when No Doubt comes out! I've done this before!" I kind of wish they had gone a little bit beyond that sound, because it isn't my favorite thing and they really did seem capable of doing other things, but they didn't dtray too far from that sound during this set. They may be worth checking out again - and they might be even better at a smaller venue or with a more receptive crowd.

And then it was time for No Doubt. The crowd was definitely ready, and we learned the crowd was full of many screaming girls. Wow. I think that was worse for my ears than the volume of the music. They definitely had the stage presence one would expect from a band this popular, but I think they relied on a few too many mentions of "san jose" and other cheesy crowd tricks. Gwen Stefani was not as charismatic as I had anticipated on stage, although I may have been biased by all the songs I didn't really like. They played a good mix of songs from several different albums, playing all the big hits, but the Tragic Kingdom album songs were the only ones I really liked. They were also the ones the crowd seemed to be the most into. And the band definitely recognized this - "Just a Girl" was the last song before the encore, which brought the crowd to a wonderful jumping, singing along, arm waving peak. And we knew we needed to stay for the encore since they hadn't played "Spiderwebs" yet, and it was definitely worth the wait as the crowd got completely into it again. The crowd was fantastic in its level of enthusiasm - it seemed like everyone was moving, even the people up in the balcony seats. The crowd also went along with the synchronized clapping and the arm swaying and all the other tricks that seem silly unless you have thousands of people doing it together. Which was a lot of fun! As for the music, I think all the musicians are really talented, and I am a sucker for a brass section in a band, so the music was well-played. But not all the songs were catchy, and the ones that weren't catchy were a little boring - the crowd really stopped moving during some of the songs. I also started to question the song lyrics - some songs seemed too trite, too many seemed to drop into Gwen doing a speaking/rapping kind of complaining about things. Hard to tell without being able to understand more of the words. (Their website actually has lyrics for all their albums except their newest one, and even some tabs. Very nice! I'm too tired to go investigate this now, though.)

So, overall, a very fun show, excluding Kenna, which just wasn't my thing. The Faint were entertaining, and so was No Doubt. If I had to choose, I may have given some of No Doubt's time to The Faint to make things even better, but that's all right. It was fun seeing a crowd get that into a show. Even at the cost of a cool swiss army knife that had a little pen in it.