Muse At The Verizon

This video is from when they played in Austin, but the stage is the same and basically the same show. You guys have no idea how utterly amazing this show was. I mean seriously, top 3 of my favorite concerts of all time. The thing is about this kind of concert too is that it's so different than all of the other stuff that I attend.

We were back in adventure mode with no tickets before pulling up to the venue. We walked up and found a dude offering tickets for $60 a piece. This felt steep given that the face value was $32. To tell you the truth, we didn't ask as many people as we probably should have about if they had any extra tickets to sell. However, he did have good seats and being that our group was 4, it was going to be hard anyway to find someone getting rid of that many tickets all together. So we paid it, but knowing what I know now, I would have paid double that. The seats were really, really good and the show was mind-blowing.

Upon entering the venue I pulled out the contents of my pockets. The woman checking what I had in my pockets poked at my hand and asked what 'that' was. Thinking she was referring to the pen I always have on hand because that was a problem before at another show, I was like, that's a pen. But then I noticed she was pointing at my keys, more specifically, to the vial of consecrated olive oil. All of the sudden I felt way self-conscious because I tried just telling her it was a vial, then she wanted more specifics, so I finally told her exactly what it was. I don't know why, but it just felt really funny. I guess I was just embarrassed to be put on the spot, but cool at the same time to think how unusal that must sound to someone not in the church, that I hold the priesthood and can bless the sick. Anyway...

The opening band was Juliette Lewis and the Licks, who sucked more than licked. You might recognize her from such films as Starsky and Hutch - she plays Vince Vaughn's girlfriend. Yeah...their music was weird and had nothing catchy or interesting about any of it, but it was funny to see a movie star in a band with her weird vocals and stage presence. Props to her though for even pursuing that avenue, even if I didn't care at all for the crap they produced. On to the main event...

Muse opened with Knights of Cydonia. Awesome. I can't remember the next one, but then Hysteria came on and I just couldn't believe how freakin' good they were in show. Those first 3 or 4 songs were just unreal. So much energy and they were just so cool. They would do a spotlight on Matthew Bellamy as he would do solos. He had on a red suit and he just had such a cool presence. I love when the lead singer carries with him the most energy and a ton of charisma. It was just so cool. There aren't enough words to describe just how good they were. They sounded great, but I think what I dug on the most that you won't get anywhere else is just hearing them rock out and build upon the original song. It had such a raw sound to it with their heavily distorted guitars. It was just so awesome. Great visual effects. Everything about it was so good.

I had heard they were really good live, but was not at all prepared for just how amazing they would be. And I'm not completely in love with all of their music, but even the stuff that I don't necessarily love, I thought was SO GOOD live. It was a really cool experience. Toward the end of the show he was playing and during one solo he just kicked over a big speaker. You see that on TV or something like that and it just looks silly, but with all that energy it just felt like so natural to see him do that and all I could think to myself was, "hell yeah, kick some more stuff!" The whole night was so cool. We didn't even have to deal with the rain that was forecast for the evening. And I had some great company, just good times all around. I couldn't have been more pleased about the evening. I have literally thought several times since the show, "was it really as good as I remember it?" It certainly was.