The Gig

By Nick.

Lately the other proprietor of the blog has been giving me some grief about how few comments I have on my posts. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that I am so hip and cool that no one who reads this blog can understand my ultrasophisticated musical taste. Or something like that. Anyway...
Possibly the hardest task in writing is to review yourself. This can go in one of two equally bad direction. The first is to come up with some sort of prideful listing of your accomplishments:"I did this and this and this..." No one wants to read some guy who talks about himself the entire time. The second trap is to come off with a feigned humility, with something like "Well, I went and did such-and-such, but it wasn't very good, because I'm bad at everything. I'm even bad at Dynasty Warriors." (By the way, if you are bad at Dynasty Warriors, then you are probably a complete and total loser. My condolences.) The only way to avoid this trap is to let someone else review you. This is hard when it comes to a concert review, but I'll try.
The event that I was performing at was a "Teen Night" (sounds suspicious) at the local mall, which was comprised of an open mic and a fashion show. It had been a long time since I had played an open mic, and now that I had learned the lesson to never perform Johnny Cash songs in public, it was time to dust off the old six-string and head back out into the world.
When we arrived at the event, we were about halfway through the fashion show. This consisted mainly of people walking down a catwalk while some guy talked loudly about their rhinestone-studded clothes and ended every presentation with "She's buying this outfit for the low price of $200." Behind the stage I could see a drum kit, and it looked like a band was going to play, which was weird, given the fact that it was the mall.
I went backstage and using a combination of threats and bribes, was able to get myself squeezed in to the lineup.
The first singer to get up and perform was a fifteen-year-old-looking girl whose name I did not catch who was singing some karaoke. Halfway into her first song, I realized she was performing a piano rendition of Lady GaGa's "Poker Face" (Which is a very innapropriate song.), so I exited the scene.
The aforementioned fifteen-year-old girl's sister was slated next, and I caught the last strains of "Lead Me To The Cross" when I got back. A bit of a contrast with "Poker Face", I thought.
After her, one of the girls who had been a model in the show got up to sing and play guitar on a song that she wrote "for a guy she liked." Let's hope the guy liked girls with strained sounding voices. After that effort, and a karaoke song that she performed, it was time for yours truly to perform. You can find the video of my lackluster performance of the Beatles' "Across The Universe" on Central Mall Texarkana's Facebook page. That's all I'm going to say.
My performance ended to the sound of thunderous applause. This was because I was introducing the next band, Like Tyrants



This was the inaugural show for the band. This was also the the part where my mom left. Like Tyrants is a Hardcore band. For the uninitiated, Hardcore is what happened when Metal and Punk had a child who sat in his parents's basement and played Dungeons and Dragons all day. The first song that they performed sounded like incoherent noise, partially because of the fact that none of their microphones were working. Their next song had working vocals, but was dragged on like most hardcore songs do. The vocals were run-of-the-mill Emo/Hardcore, except for the lead singer's extremely annoying high-pitched scream, and the entire band seemed amateurish. The worst problem, though, was the singer's lack of stage presence: He had the entire catwalk to work with, but he remained glued to the one spot. This was unforgivable in a genre where theatrics usually (and in my opinion, should) take the place of musical talent as the main draw. A charismatic vocalist like Matt Shelton from the Wedding, for instance, would have taken advantage of the unique setup.
I can't complain too much. There are so few places to go see a concert in Texarkana, especially if you're under eighteen, that having something like this in the Mall was a welcome break. I eagerly hope that the Mall hosts more events like this, and look forward to attending and reviewing them. Just please book something other than only Hardcore bands