OLP: A night in review

Went to see Our Lady Peace on Thursday night at the Roxy in Atlanta. Can I just tell you? Awesome. Totally. Freaking. Awesome. I have seen OLP a few times before in concert, so I knew that it would be good. But this was amazing. Raine Maida has the most insanely powerful voice in the world. The concert was general admission standing room only, except the seats in the balcony. (But what real fan wants to sit way the hell back there? Actually, I take that back. There was a man in the front row of the balcony who conducted, head-banged, and danced through the whole concert. He looked about 45. I can't tell you how hard we laughed at this man. I wish I'd had a video camera.) My friend P and I ended up in the 2nd row and a little to the right side of the stage. Really great view. So I guess I should start this story at the beginning.

We didn't leave Birmingham until 3:30 PM...which is 4:30 PM Atlanta time. And the concert started at 8. And it takes about 2.5 hours to get to Atlanta from where we are. So we thought we had plenty of time. Of course, we didn't account for the additional time we'd need to be COMPLETELY STOPPED IN TRAFFIC ON THE INTERSTATE and the time we'd need to WANDER AROUND IN THE 'HOOD (Damn you Yahoo! Maps.) There was construction on I-20 which was really not fun except for the dude in the car next to us. Honestly, I wish there was some way that I could show you my imitation of this man. You know that dance where you put your hands out to your sides and you kind of shake your shoulders....I don't know if it's called shimmying or what. But this man was doing it...while poking his lips out as much as he could. Might I add the fact that this man was about a 300 lb. black man? Because that pretty much makes the mental picture what it is. Hi-frikkin-larious. We spent the whole night doing imitations of this man.

That is, until we were driving all over the worst parts of Atlanta. I have never been in shadier places in my life. And the whole time we're having to stop at gas stations and ask for more and more directions. Because Yahoo! Maps completely sucks. Do not use them. Then when we get into the city proper, P is rolling down her window striking up conversations with anyone and everyone she can get to. If you've never been to Atlanta, here's a useful fact: Every street in Atlanta is named Peachtree. Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Boulevard, Peachtree Lane, etc. So you stop for directions and people tell you to go til you get to Peachtree. Makes it really hard to figure out where the hell you are. Finally we were next to some paramedics who told us exactly how to get to the place and the only thing we'd missed was the first opening act, "Pedestrian." We saw half of their last song. Horrible. So I'm glad that we missed them because I didn't want to start the night with an ear-bleed.

The second opening act was "Augustana" who I actually liked. They were pretty good. We got our spots really close to the stage, and we had our signs that we'd made in the car requesting our favorite songs. I wanted to hear "One Man Army" and P wanted to hear OLP's cover of "Drive." There is a man standing directly in front of us who has to be 6'3, huge, and obviously cares nothing about OLP. He keeps yelling during Augustana's performance, "Pete Yorn!" Ass. We appropriately named him "Ogre" about 5 seconds after being there and we hated him through the entire concert. Everytime he went on a beer run, it was like the clouds clearing and I was able to see the stage unhindered. (BTW, beers were $6 a can. WTF?!)

Finally OLP came out. As I ranted earlier, they were amazing. They played about 20 songs so it was a pretty long concert. Raine kept telling us how he couldn't believe we were there and how much he appreciated it since they hadn't toured in 3 years. At one point he did his traditional jumping out into the audience, he snatched up someone's camera, got back on the stage and took pictures of the audience and then himself, and then returned the camera to the person in the audience. Needless to say, P and I were pretty jealous of the camera's owner. But we were sort of glad Raine hadn't come to our side of the audience because if Ogre would've blocked our ability to touch Raine, we would have had to kill him. And we really don't have the money for court fees. The only thing that really bothered me was that I've read several show reviews saying that Raine always prefaces the performance of "Wipe that Smile Off Your Face" with some sort of anti-Bush remark. I was looking forward to that remark. Because I live in the South and those remarks are few and far between in public. But it didn't happen. Instead Raine said something about us looking intelligent and that we must know the words to this song and we sang it. I think it was a total cop out. But whatever.

They left the stage, we chanted their name, and P and I got our signs ready. As I prepared to hoist my request, I took a final glance at the sign. And then I halted the lift. Because my sign requested "ONE MAN ARM." Proofreading is key my friends. And I am an idiot. So Pranathi lifted her sign, which was not misspelled, Raine read it, but they didn't perform the song. Oh well. They did 4 songs during the encore, and then the house lights came on. Sadness.

So all in all, excellent concert, highly recommend. Liked the new stuff a LOT more live. They also played some random old stuff like "Potato Girl" which was awesome. If you can, go see them.