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311/The Roots in Chicago 7/1/2004Jul 02 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line See 311, on tour in your area this summer. If you're in the U.S. that is.
I literally JUST got back from this concert. I came home, took a shower, and couldn't sleep due to the ringing of my ears. Then I thought, what could pass the time that I can't sleep better than writing a review of the concert that is oh so fresh in my mind? So here I am. Anyway, a lot happened before and during the concert so this should keep me occupied for a while. A little backstory: Well, 311 has been my favorite band now for some time(and I don't smoke pot--how about that?), and I've actually seen them live twice before. BOTH times they played big, huge ampitheaters and both times I was very, very far away. It was cool, but if you're so far away and people are just standing and watching the band play, it kind of takes the edge off the whole concert going experience. I'm not a huge fan of ampitheaters, especially the one that this particular concert was held at (but it was ok...more on that later), but I WILL go to these places to see 311 and thats pretty much the only band I will do that for. Anyway, we almost didn't make it to this concert. A lot of stuff happened. First of all, it was held at the Tweeter Center Chicago, whish is A) HUGE B)not in Chicago, but in Tinley Park, about an hours drive without traffic away and C)a horrible place to hold a concert. I saw Lollapalooza there last year and it sucked. It's basically one big, big stage, a fairly small mosh pit area, pavilion seating for a long stretch, and then a huge lawn area. When full it can seat about 30,000 people I would estimate. It is a HUGE venue. However most of those people either have seats(yuck) or are on the lawn(better, but fartherfrom the stage...a lot farther). So pretty much we decided to go ahead and buy tickets, ideally get pit tickets We went to TIcketmaster and the best seats they had absolutley sucked. It's 311, we said screw it and bought four tickets for myself and three friends. Fast forward a few months. We've arranged for somebody to drive the full hour to the Tweeter, and we're getting ready to go. I go to 311's official message board to see setlists and stuff like that, and I see someone who is selling three pit tickets at face value. I jumped on it and emailed him. There lied another problem: we had four people going originally but only three tickets for the pit. Three of us were huge 311 junkies, and one of us liked them but not as much. Still, it wouldn't have been fair to ditch him. So we tried to sell the three extra tickets to some friends of ours so he could go with them and we could go in the pit. We found two friends that could go on short notice, so we took the money hit for that fourth ticket and went together but watched the concert in seperate groups of three. The lesser 311 fans had crappy pavilion seats and the big 311 junkies had pit tickets right in front of the stage. AWESOME. Skipping a lot of the story so as not to bore you, we almost did not get to go to the concert due to a number of things, be it family not wanting us to be driving home really late, or a cop pulling our driver over and taking her lisence away the day before the concert. That majorly sucked. However, it somehow worked out OK, the guy who sold us the pit tickets turned out to be legit, and off we went to the concert. Now, at least for me and two of my best friends, it didn't matter if we were at the Tweeter Center, which is a disgusting venue to see concerts in. We were just relieved to be there and WAY more relieved to be in the pit, literally four feet away from the stage and the bands. We could see each bandmember sweat. It was amazing, simply put. Anyway, we got there around 6:20. The first opening band, Martin, Modeski, and Wood were playing. Now, the funny thing about 311 is that they play so many different styles of music that they can tour with anybody. MM&W really isn't my style of music. It's three guys just jamming. They are really great musicians, and they dont sing at all, so they are really different. They played their instruments(and there were a lot of instruments) very well but it just wasn't my type of music. The crowd really didn't seem into them at all either. Throughout the set, people were walking around, finding their seats, getting beer, getting drunk and smoking a lot of pot. 311 concerts involve a lot of people getting intoxicated. Don't worry, I didn't do anything...that stuff isn't for me. But hey if you wanna do it more power to you. Ahem. Anyway... We decided to go in the pit later than normal because once we were in there, it would be hard to get back out. So we walked around a little bit, a drunk former baseball player tried to hustle us at this game where it measures how fast you throw a baseball. My friend, a great baseball player, throws about 75mph on a good day. He doesn't even play baseball, he's just naturally good at it. Well this former player, drunk, threw it 85mph. That is insane. But I digress. So we decided to just check out the pit when The Roots came on. We came into the pit and couldn't believe our eyes. I've been really really close to bands before, but not at the monstrous, hulking Tweeter Center(which was actually much smaller, as they closed off the lawn for this show). We were so unbelievably close you could see every detail of the bandmembers as they played. Now, I had heard of The Roots before and heard a couple songs but didn't really know them that well, so I didn't know what to expect. I was pleasently surprised. The Roots play rap music. But they don't just stand there with a DJ playing a beat and rap over it, no. They are an actual band, with a singer(who just raps), a guitarist, a bassist, a keyboard player, and two drummers. They were actually suprisingly, really, really good. Every one of them was good at what they did. The crowd wasn't here for them so they weren't really into them, even in the pit, but they did a good job keeping everyone at least interested. I thought they were great. In the beginning of the set, they played songs, I guess from their new album, but the second half of the set was very experimental and very, very cool. Basically, what they did was every band member had their own solo, so they each took a few minutes where nobody else played while they soloed. They were all amazing. The guitarist played a Tom Morello-style riff, the bassist had a crazy fast slap solo that sounded very cool, and the drummers soloed together...and it was amazing. Kudos to The Roots, an opening band that is worth checking out in the future. Finally, they finished EXACTLY on time...8:10, just like they were supposed to. I've NEVER seen that happen before. So now was the anxious wait for 311. The headliners, the band we came so far and went through so much to see. The pit, which had been pretty well spread out and calm, closed in and pushed forward a bit. Here's where you check out the people around you and see how bad the mosh pit is going to be. If it's bigger, tougher moshing guys, you just have to survive while having fun. If it's a bunch of scrawny emo kids or something it will be a lot of standing around, or pushing for fun. Whoo hoo. Pushing. This definatley looked like a tough crowd. We were feeling slightly nervous(we always do). I was already thirsty, but I couldn't really get out and get back in a good position. And I was four feet in front of where the band plays. I've never been that close to 311 before, and I was so pumped. One of my friends, Matt, who was with me, his idol is P-Nut, the bassist, because he plays bass(and is damn good at it too). He was excited to be able to see him up close and see what he does. I was just plain excited. Well, they took their sweet time setting up, so the whole crowd was getting anxious. Finally, the lights went out and it was show time. 311 is: Nick Hexum-Lead singer, backup guitar SA Martinez-Lead singer, turntables Tim Mahoney-Lead guitar P-Nut-Bass Chad Sexton-Drums As 311 stepped on stage, the crowd did a little push. The push wasn't as bad as past concerts, but in the beginning of concerts there is always a little bit of confusion in the pits as you get used to jumping around and into people. And of course there were the people holding beers in their hands, as if they could actually mosh while holding a beer. In the first couple of minutes, many beers went flying, drenching us. 311 opened with a great song, Homebrew. This is a staple at their shows, but I don't know if they should have started off with this. I think Freak Out is a much better opener. Anyways, after the confusion and the beer settled a bit and people jumped around, they launched into the aforementioned Freak Out and that got people in the moshing around spirit. However, after they finished those two songs everybody was already tired. It takes a few minutes to get used to jumping around, and the body heat in mosh pits make them very hot places to be. What 311 likes to do at their concerts, since they have so many different styles of music, is to play their harder stuff, have people jump around and mosh and get tired, and then play a slower, more chill song so the crowd can rest. This time, they followed their harder songs with All Mixed Up, a more reggae-ish song that was a big hit back in 1997. That's when I noticed something in the crowd that really bugs me. When somebody is in a pit, in the front no less, and they are just STANDING there, not nodding their head to the music, not dancing, not singing along, NOTHING, that bugs the hell out of me. Why buy tickets to the pit then, when you can have a nice seat in the pavilion and let someone who really likes to dance and loves the band have the pit tickets? Ugh. So of course I decided to be a big jerk to them. I believe the next song was a brand new one, a faster one called How Do You Feel?. Since I don't really know the words to the song, I danced to the music, and while everybody was crashing into everbody else, decided to crash into them a couple times. When they turned around and glared at me, I put my arm around them and started dancing, trying to make them have a good time. I mean, the guy looked BORED. At a concert right in front of the stage. So what I did was I tried to say lighten up or something to him, but he sort of pushed me away. So the next song they played, which was Crack the Code, off their new album, I pretty much yelled the lyrics right in his ear until my friend Matt wisely pulled me away. I'm pretty sure the guys left in the middle of 311's set which doesn't make any sense to me at all. And I go CRAZY during concerts. Anyways, now that my attention was back to the band, the crowd was starting to get more into it. After the singalong hit Amber, which is definatley not a mosher, they played a definate mosher song. I'm sorry that I can't remember what song it was, but I was mostly trying to stay alive. See, everyone was jumping and jumping into each other all over the pit, but during the show the only actual circle pit, which can be really painful, opened up right behind me. So I was trying to deflect people and keep myself from goin in. After a while I thought "Hey, if you can't beat em, join em". So I went in and got nailed pretty bad. I forced my way out, grinning from ear to ear and turned my attention back to the band. We were standing right in front of Tim Mahoney, the guitarist. He's a very underrated guitarist, as he proved when he whipped through a Zeppelin cover(don't remember the song, the whole staying alive thing) and Love Song, the Cure cover, which 311 did VERY well I might add. At this point my being thirsty had escalated and I started showing signs of dehyrdation. No matter. I'm not missing 311 because of thirst. Anyways, they played a couple songs I don't know and a couple I don't really remember. The middle of the show is hard to remember for me at this point, but I do know that they played a couple of rarely played tracks, Use of Time and What Was I Thinking from the Transistor album. I was very happy about that. After playing a few more songs, including Don't Dwell and My Stoney Baby, they launched into possibly their most well known song--Beautiful Disaster. What a great song. The pit went nuts. I got hurt. Matt got punched in the gut. However, the crowd in the pit for the most part were real nice, and when they would accidently punch you or elbow you, they would immediatley apologize. But the crowd during Beautiful Disaster got so intense that security had to step in and stop people. They failed miserably and after a while, went away. 311 continued playing on, including a crazy extended drum solo featuring the whole band on Applied Science. They do that pretty much every show, but it gets me every time because the whole band are great at drumming, at least for that one song. Anyway, 311 reeled off a couple more songs, including Come Original and First Straw, another new one, and a few more songs I cannot remember at the moment, I was really really tired, hurt, and severly needing water of some sort, as my mouth was bone dry. I knew however, that the end, and what a great end it was, was near when Nick Hexum announced to the crowd, "There comes a point in the evening where we like to say 'P-Nut, beat that thing'". This is what they say before they play Feels So Good, which is almost always the closing song. The crowd absolutley went nuts over this song. No moshing, but everyone jumping together and shouting the chorus at the top of their lungs: "In your face!/And it feels so good!", and of course, the obligatory bass solo by P-Nut when he 'beats that thing' and kicks major @ss. As they walked off, before the encore, I knew that no matter what, it had been the best show I'd ever been to. A fun party crowd, I lost myself in the music and became really outgoing and crazy and I stood feet away from my favorite band. I loved every minute of it, and I was frickin DEHYDRATED. Then you know that it has been a great show. They closed this particular show with an encore featuring two real crowd teasers. They started off with Creatures(For Awhile), a newer song off of Evolver which really got the crowd jumping. However, the crowd went completely nuts for the next song, which was dedicated to all the old school 311 fans. While I'm pretty young. I've been following them since I started seriously getting into music. Anyway, this next song was Down, a huge hit and great song. A few, about five in all, brave souls crowd surfed. Nobody had done that the whole show, so it was risky. One guy fell right on his head. After seeing the first couple go up, I wanted to do it. I LOVE crowd surfing. I jumped up, and the people in front of me weren't expecting it so I came very close to going down. Man, that would have sucked. The crowd thankfully recovered and I made it to the stage, when a security guard pulled me down. To the guy I accidently nailed in the back of the head on my way there: sorry. After not being let back in the pit after the crowd surfing thing, I met up with my friends and ran out of there as fast as possible because at this point all three of us were thirsty as hell. We ran to a gas station after getting out of traffic, and I bought three bottles of water and drained all of them. We met up with the friends of ours who had the crappy seats, and they said they had a great time but it honestly wasn't as fun as we had it. My review would still have been good, but not as good if we hadn't gotten hooked up with those awesome tickets. to 311: thanks for showin a fan a good time. I loved every minute of it. Even the part where I almost passed out because I was so thirsty. On the drive home, the three of us were really out of it, in pain in many different places and with ringing ears. It was well worth it.  |
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