Porcupine Tree hoovers genres, rocks Seattle

[elfs]

As I mentioned last week, Omaha bought us tickets to Porcupine Tree at the Showbox last night.

Now, I've never been in the Showbox. I had no idea what to expect from the facility, nor did I have a real clue what to expect from the fans of Porcupine Tree. As it turned out, the audience was a complete mix, with kids as young as fourteen and fifteen all the way up to serious geezers whose first concerts involved Yes and Peter Gabriel's Genesis. There was even a rumor that Alan White of Yes was in the audience although I didn't see him.

Omaha and I took refuge in the bar-- it was less crowded than the center stage. I won't discuss the opening act here, but not for lack of desire. See the next post.

The Showbox speaker system is huge. Depending upon the frequency hit I felt more than heard some of the baselines all up an down my innards. By the end of the concert my hearing was seriously dulled (and today still feels a little weird although it's mostly recovered) and I felt like I'd been standing behind a 747 for three solid hours.

Porcupine Tree is a much harder band than it used to be. They were once a high-end psych-prog rock band, doing all kinds of nifty things and playing musically solid and lyrically intellectual songs in the vein of Pink Floyd and Yes. Last night they rocked like they wanted to be a heavy metal band, or maybe the last great grunge band. Steve Wilson was amazing naturally but so was his back-up guitarist, who isn't identified on the website dammit.

They had one technical glitch when the video player went out, so they played an instrumental piece that then dove into hard rock and loud metal grunge. They did that a lot: playing pieces like "Light Bulb Sun" and "Sever", pieces you don't think of as heavy, with so much volume, power and energy that it left my head spinning.

Omaha's only problem is that when the band went really loud they also broke out the fucking strobes and she has to be aware of that because they might trigger an epileptic seziure. But she was good about keeping her hands over her eyes and the band gave cues.

The audience was fabu. Some kids tried to start a mosh pit but it fizzled, and one of the kids who was in the mosh pit lit up a spliff I could smell from fifteen feet away, but other than that it was a good time.

If I had one disappointment, it was that they didn't play any really old stuff: No "A Slave Called Shiver," or "Last Chance To Evacuate Planet Earth Before It Is Recycled," or "Voyage 34: Phase I". A different crowd, maybe, would have found those pleasing. They're among my favorites. But I had a wonderful time rocking out to one of my favorite bands, and I think I might have a new love, too. More on that later.

Comments

[spiralsong.livejournal.com]

Aaaag, blink tag. Evil Elf.

[jenk]

It is rare that I see an LJ post that makes me want to open IE to read it....

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

Open 'about:config' in Firefox and put 'blink' into the search box; you'll get 'browser.blink_allowed', which defaults to 'true'. Double-click on it to toggle it to 'false', then restart Firefox. No more blinking.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Hey! We have friends in common - how weird is that?

'Tis I #54. Left a message at the end of yesterdays post, but I know many people don't go back and look after a while, so here I am being annoying. :)

Just wanted you to know who I am, as I friended you.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

serious geezers whose first concerts involved Yes and Peter Gabriel's Genesis

Bite me.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Gladly!

Hey, my first concert involved Deep Purple. I'm not ashamed to admit that.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

My first concert was actually Great White, because I preferred hard rock. But it could have been those you cite, and if you call me a geezer in front of jenner he's going to have a cardiac event.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Billy Joel concert tonight--thanks for reminding me to bring earplugs.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Assuming that's not a facetious comment, do you think that concerts have in general just gotten louder over the past decade? This was way louder than the Pink Floyd and Blue Oyster Cult concerts I attended a decade ago (and frighteningly louder than the Kronos Quartet concert Omaha took me five years back).

I can understand rock bands trying to elicit a viceral reaction in the crowd by using the amps as bodyblows, but... Billy Joel?

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

No, it wasn't facetious, I did bring earplugs. I should have had them back in 199X for the River of Dreams tour, but didn't think about it. I'd say that either concerts have gotten louder or the general hearing ability of the people doing sound has gone down, so that things are louder.

Now, I'm an anomaly. I have extremely sensitive hearing in some ranges, especially the very high ones (I can hear many CCTV security systems). Also I have problems with the middle range, especially picking men's (lower) voices out of background noise, and I don't want to lose either the high ranges or exacerbate the problem in the middle ranges. Also, loud noises hurt. They hurt more now than they used to, which is probably an effect of the fibro, but my idea of "too loud" has historically been at a lower decibel level than what most other people seem to consider "too loud". It was forever a bone of contention between me and whoever else was riding in the car, for instance.

Same goes for temperatures--most people's idea of drinking temperature is too hot for me and my idea of drinking temperature is most other people's lukewarm.

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, Camino honors the blink tag. I'd shake my fist at you, but these days the annoyance is nostalgic.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's so rare I see a blink tag (and when I do it's on one of those websites with horrible primary color backgrounds and foregrounds, usually informing me that The End Times Are Near!) that I figured it would be more amusing than annoying.