MxPx In The Venue

Mike Reid and I went to a concert Friday night with the express purpose of seeing MxPx and Lagwagon. I hadn't been to this place (In The Venue) before in Salt Lake, and I had heard good things about it, plus these are two bands that I really enjoy live.

First, the show took us a little while to get there. Turns out that my concert buddy had his first real test of the school year and he didn't do as well as he liked. As a result, I ended up just dropping by his place because he hadn't called me back yet, and I found him in his darkened room, lying on his bed in a pool of self-pity. We didn't end up making it up to Salt Lake until about 8:30pm.

It took us a little while to find the place because it didn't actually have the name listed anywhere on the outside. I was supposed to have tickets reserved for me by the PR person for MxPx because I was going to be writing a review for them. Turns out they weren't there, but luckily for me I had bought tickets previously. We saw Mike Herrera from MxPx outside the venue, but didn't talk to him because we were unsure that was his name. When we got in, it was basically a bar with a corner stage that had metal poles right in middle of where the pit would be. The sound was bad; the people running the show couldn't seem to accomodate any of the band's requests. The lights blinded the lead singer, and the microphones for the backups seemed to be switched.

Lagwagon themselves were good. Joey told some stories that were pretty entertaining. Guitars, bass lines, drums are all really impressive with them. As Lagwagon wrapped up, Mike and I started to get excited for MxPx to get on stage. As it turns out, the lights came on, people started filing out and that's when we realized that we had missed MxPx. So we were especially glad that we didn't stop Mike to talk to him because he had already finished by the time we ran into him.

In any case, I don't think there is anything more fun than live performances. The energy that you feel at a concert, or watching anything on stage for that matter, is just so unique. It's authentic. There's no editing. People hit their notes or they don't, but they almost always do, and I think that's what makes it worthwhile in the first place.

Also, Tat opened up for both of the bands. Obviously we didn't hear anything from them, but I visited their Myspace page following the show and they sound pretty decent. Plus the girl is hot. They had a pretty cool sound, and in the wake of Paramour, it sounds like they will have an audience here in the states.

*Photos are actually from the same show that we were at, which is kind of cool. Pulled them from the MxPx website directly.