everclear in champaign

[mike squires]

I have to admit, I'm not a huge Everclear fan. I can say they have some damn catchy songs with good hooks. I bought their sparkle and fade years ago and went cause I deserved a night out and was a bit curious. I also thought it would be a nice filler until the Tweedy show later in the month.

 

The band has none of it's original members except Art of course. He was showing his age a bit but still looked and sounded good.

 

They took their time getting on after the opener. At least the Canopy was playing the Lips' Yoshimi battles the Pink robots. They eventually made their way on stage and got quite a response. The crowd, a surprisingly young group sang almost every word to many of the songs. The highlite for me was a solo electric version of Strawberry. They also did a Rollingstones cover accopella (sp?)

 

So after maybe a little over an hour, Art said they were making them get off early tonight due to some dancing. Everybody responded with a chorus of boos. With that they broke into Santa Monica. about 1/4 into it, a young girl jumped onto the stage to give Art a hug. She got down and after a few seconds got up again. Alexakis stopped the song and told the girl she not only got up once but twice and for that would have to help sing the song. The girl obviously would not be able to deliver. By this time there were 5 or 6 girls and a guy on stage dancing and bobbing around. Art stops the songs again and it appeared he was trying to get the girls to drop their shirts. The girls would have none of that and hopped off...except the girl that originally got up there. She was near the edge of the stage and Art gave her a shove and down she went into the crowd for some surfing. Until she got about 3 feet or so away from me and down she went. It sure looked like she hit her head but appeared OK.

 

me and the rest of the crowd thought for sure there wold be some encores, but he was serious. They were not coming back and they were getting off early. After maybe 1 hour and 15 minutes the show was over. It seemed even shorter than that. They were going to sign autographs in the front but after about 10 minutes I spllit. I walked outside to see hoochy mamas standing in line to get in. My fear is is that he brought out the ol acoustic and played an intimate set by himself in the bar section. But if he did, I didn't see it.

 

Overall I was dissapointed in the short set but it was nice to get out of the house and see some live music.

 

Can't wait for the tweedy show. May have to check out Bennet when he comes by in a few weeks too.

 

MIke

[remphish1]

Well it sounds like you enjoyed your Everclear expierence more than I did mine. I worked security for a show of theirs back in 2000 or so and although I wasn't really watching the show it was still the worst concert I have seen in my life. This is out of 600 concerts and I have seen some pretty bad ones. They sounded so poor. It seemed like they never rehearsed. It was really embarrising. I knew alot of there songs but I couldn't recognize any of them because the playing was soooo muddy. The sound system sucked too. I also saw them with the orginal members Anyhoo...I usually like any band live but this still after my 12 years attending concerts this was the worst!

[Kicking_Television]

They came to my college years back, and it was horrid... to top it all off Nickelback opened for them, yes it was that long ago

[G_willy]

They came to my college years back, and it was horrid... to top it all off Nickelback opened for them, yes it was that long ago

 

 

the thought of that is unfathomable... I would probably kill myself if I had to be subjected to that nonsense