Monday, November 8, 2004

synopsis
Man was that a fun show. Well actually it was pretty odd. Anyway:

I drove to Portland from Eugene (2hr drive or so) to go see Say Anything. The venue was in a weird industrial district by the river, and I would've completely missed it if I didn't see the tour bus outside. There were some young'ins outside waiting but we were really early so we stopped and ate at this cute little diner before the show. When we got back in line there were enough people to get a feel for the show, and it was 90% high school emo kids. I try not to get too annoyed with 16 year old concert goers since I was one once, but they just are so damn annoying.

Inside the place was cool, a pretty small space but good for shows like this. They had a ton of old arcade games that I suck at like centipede and vortex. $1 lost to those machines.

Say Anything had a TON of cool t-shirts they were selling, but they had weird kids sizes only for a couple of the ones I liked. There was a cool purple one that said I'm growing legs and had a white person that looks like the street crossing sign with six legs or so. They also had I "Heart" SA shirts and a green one with a naked chick on it. I bought the red shirt with "my feet are so black and blue" and a drawing of severed feet with high heels on. I wanted the orange version but they only had it in youth sizes. When I asked the guy why they had so many tiny shirts he said "emo". All the super skinny boys there made that make sense I guess.

So I went up to the front of the stage with Rachael and pretty much felt old. I was surrounded by tiny little teens that I think were staking out their turf for the headliners. It wasn't so bad because I could see over them easily since I was like a foot taller. Say Anything came on and I was a little suprised just seeing them for the first time. The singer was a little chubby and had weird scruffy hair, and the lead guitarist had longer scruffier hair and a semi-unibrow. You never really know what guys are going to look like after hearing their music so its always suprising.

They opened with Belt, then played the first three songs off the album in a row. They played passing slowly through a vector, yellow cat and finished with alive with the glory of love (my favorite). It sucked that it was so short, but I pretty much expected it to be as short as it was anyway. I think we actually got one more song out of them than they were going to play; the sound guy said they had time for 2 more songs and the guitarist said they had one more left. There were enough fans in the crowd to demand two more, so I think they added yellow cat.

After the show I got a chance to chat with Max by the merch table, so I introduced myself and told him that they were really good (blah, blah). He seemed suprised that I had their CD, so I told him that I've been trying to spread the word about them (I have) to all my friends. I totally missed a chance to plug my friends website when he asked where I had heard fo them, I wish I would've thought of it. When I told him I felt old here, He said he was 20 but he looks a lot older, more like my age.

Anyway it was pretty cool, I stuck around to lose my dollar on videogames and watched the first 2 songs of the next band then left. I didn't really feel like staying for the headliners, so hopefully they were as lame a the cawd seemed to indicate. Now I'm at school sporting my new shirt and hoping they are the headliner next time.
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