Minus the Bear encountered a bunch of problems at their concert in Madison on Thursday. One band got pushed out of the lineup by the sponsors. Then, Portugal the Man, who actually drew a significant chunk of the crowd, had to pull out because their van broke down in Chicago. Thus, the people that traveled showed up for an 8:00 show that got pushed back to 9:30 due to unforeseen circumstances.
Club 770 is literally a cafeteria by day. It's placed in Union South and has a capacity of like 450. Well, I'm pretty sure they overflowed this place because there was absolutely no room, but due to our early arrival my friend Jenny and I were able to get front row. Worse than that, there were kids that were clearly on acid or something of that nature jumping around and into people, even before Minus the Bear was on and the Big Sleep had the stage. There was a drunk girl that I couldn't shake that kept playing drums on my back and trying to get me to dance crazily (Her name was Regina). Jenny found this hilarious, and due to my extremely muscular back I was able to tolerate it.
Once the Big Sleep was off, everyone tried to rush to the front. It was basically like trying playing Red Rover for an hour-and-a-half. I am a small guy of 5'6" but I was not letting anyone through. Jenny, on the other hand, got pushed out. She was gone before I knew it, something I felt terrible about. She ended up watching the show from the side. The reality was, I could not have gotten out if I tried, so we kept communications by text message. The entire concert was spent with the entire weight of the crowd pushing against the front row, causing them to be constantly bent over onto the stage that was only a foot-and-a-half off the ground. It was also really tiny and I'm amazed they got five members on it. It was like clowns in a clown car.
During the second song, probably over the previously mentioned pushing, a fight broke out about 5 feet to my right. Cory, the bassist, jumped out. He had clearly been uneasy about the pushing right off the bat. It's funny, because last year at the Lussier Teen Center, Cory had to keep kicking kids off that ran onto stage. Anyway, Cory jumped out, then Jake, the lead singer, also jumped out to stop it. There was no security, so I guess they felt it was their job, and I guess no one would have been able to see it from the back, so really they were the only authority figures to do it.
The rest of the concert was amazing. They played The Fix (link to the Youtube video of them playing it at the concert), which is my favorite song of theirs, and they played a bunch of songs off the new album. In fact... you can see the entire setlist because with two songs left I asked Cory for it after the concert. At first I didn't think he heard me, but right as the song was starting he bent over and handed it to me. Before the last song I showed him it in case he forgot what the last song was and he laughed. Encores were "Fulfill the Dream" and "Absinthe Party at the Honey Warehouse".
Overall it was an amazing concert. I hope they still come back considering the problems they've had their last two concerts out here. I wonder how they feel about playing small venues like this when they could easily fill larger ones.
I'll make the song of the day Knights, because it has a sweet music video and is the best song off of Minus the Bear's new album, Planet of Ice.
"Knights" by Minus the Bear at YouTube
Oh, and I made it in a couple of pictures. I can be seen in one on Mixtapes|Heartbreaks (although Cory's blocking out my face), and there's this one that the writer of that blog sent to me. Thanks Stacey!
Also, the top picture looks kind of cruddy because I didn't take any pictures with the flash on. I didn't want to blind them because I was literally that close.
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