the Unexpressed Advantage

So if you read this blog you'll find the following comment from shannon

I too love Mutemath not only musically but because one of my good friends, Darren King, is in the group. That’s right he’s from good ole’ Southwest Missouri. We used to hang out in HS and we always joked that we should get married because that way I wouldn’t have to change my last name (my maiden name was King). I actually saw him in a coffee shop in Springfield over Christmas break. Oh and Greg Hill is also from Springfield and I used to hang out with him every so often. So there you go…I’m pretty much famous now.

Which could sound a little bit cheesy except for tonight it became the coolest of the cool.

As you can discern from the post I linked above, I'm pretty keen on mutemath. I heard their non-vocal sound extravaganza on the Conan O'Brien show some time ago, and liked it alot.

Then I got hold of their cd from Dave Lim and I really liked the band a lot. Great vocals, good sound, good groove. A solid band. No surprise that they have 144,000 friends on their myspace page

So I was pretty excited for all that to culminate tonight when they played in Vancouver at the modest venue called Richards on Richards. Perfect place for me to watch a gig. Not to big, you can see the band, cool overhang balcony and the potential for good sound with the right sound technician.

I sent out an email to everyone I know and told them about the concert. Not many took me up on it.

Alas, I guess that was a good thing, since when I went to buy tickets the show was already sold out. I would have been bummed but…

...turns out that Shannon really does know Darren King and Greg Hill. And apparently they are really big fans of Shannon and her Husband Lucas. This result in us being placed on the band's guest list.

So all of a sudden the four of us went from people who wished they had tickets to a sold out show to people who were going in as guests of the band for free.

Thanks Shannon, Thanks Darren.

It doesn't get much better than that.

That is, until the show starts.

As I mentioned in my post, I expected Mutemath to be a great live show. They were more than that, they were a perfect live show.

The sound was phenomenal. It took me a few song to find a place where I could stand and see the band, but when I found my place it was money, dead center of the speakers with a nice pole to lean up against. I found a few other good places, but the bouncers kept telling me I couldn't be in those places.

The show was awesome, really awesome. They played their loud and fun tracks first, and then transitioned into the songs with vocals that all the fans knew; this way we could sing along as the concert drew to a close. The crowd was awesome. They even waved their cellphones at the band with the screens lit up, I guess this is the new form of "waving the lighter."

When they played their most popular songs, it was interesting to see how many camcorders, digital cameras, and cell phones lit up to video tape the band. I guess I didn't really realize that everybody in this day and age has a camcorder of some type at arms length.

The thing that makes this band great is their musical tightness combined with excellent showmanship. They often get invovled in each other's work. The guitarist was top notch but he also moseyed over to the piano now and again. The lead singer has songbird perfect vocals and also makes great use of his ancient rhodes piano, which every member of the band was standing on at some point of the show.

The bassist was killer, especially when he busted out the stand up bass and wowed us with that. It was beautiful. He also spent a good amount of time getting invovled with the drummer. At one point the bassist was hitting the crash, then the giant bass, then his own bass guitar followed by a sweet slide only to start the whole process over again. At one point in the show everbody was drumming.

This was made easier by the fact that Darren King the drummer had at least 100 drum sticks at his disposal that the whole band could use to engage in massive percussion solos. Although he made good use of these sticks himself, often breaking them and sometimes simply throwing them away.

Darren is a phenomenal drummer, like nothing I've ever seen. He has an insane ability to bring in off beat licks that somehow still fit in the song, super high speed runs, and creative activities like turning the rhodes into a drum with the microphone stand as a high-hat.

He also has destructive tendencies, at the finale he basically single handedly destroyed the stage, cutting his hand in the process, and throwing a tom drum into the lighting apparatus behind him. If that wasn't enough, he grabbed one of the florescent bulbes out of the apparatus and broke it over his knee. Kind of a strange way to end, but the crowd loved it.

They close the show with "Reset" which was a joy for me since it was the song that first captured me some time ago.

Simply, Mutemath rocks. I"m excited to hear their next studio effort. They have the ring of Sting's vocals, the musical prowess of a young U2, and the energy of the Dave Matthew's band. In my opinion, there's no place for this group to go but up, and I'm gonna keep singing their praises until you buy their album.

check out their myspace page, their video on the Mutemath page, and then go buy their songs on itunes. You wont regret it.

For me, it was a night to be remembered. My best concert experience in years. And I can't wait to see them again. – dan.