PBR and Bud Lime and Coeds Oh My!

So last night my SO and I went to see a show at the Majestic down in Madison. Small theater.. maybe 300 people or so. Standing room only, but they had a full bar close bye so at least if you had to stand for 4 hours you could get beer easily. Now this theater is right at the end of State St. in downtown Madison, which is basically the UW campus.

The guy we went to see is not newer on the scene and I expected it to be a younger crowd, but with the exception of the couple that was probably my parents age that were not to far from us, it was pretty much wall to wall college kids. I felt rather old .. and I suppose I am over a decade older than a 21yr old college kid.

This bar had about 12 beers on tap plus a large selection of stuff in cans and bottles. You would think that with all those selections maybe people would get some decent stuff to drink. They had Guinness, Capitol Amber (local brew which is quite good) among many others. Yet the majority of them were walking arounds with 16oz cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and some Bud Light with Lime concoction. No.. I don't mean they had a wedge of lime with their Bud, it's actually some kind of flavored beer.

What they really need to do with Bud Light if they are going to flavor it is.. well.. give it some actual beer flavor. That would be a start in the right direction. :P

The opening act was very good. Erin McCarley was her name. Very talented. Was just her and a guy on the keyboards. If you know who Regina Spektor is, she reminds me of her.. just add an acoustic guitar. Check out this video to get a feel for her sound.. definitely worth a listen. VID HERE

It was pretty much the first time I have seen Mat Kearney. He and his band are very good and the concert was fun. The sound system there at the Majestic was unfortunately not very well tuned to their sound and while I know some will mock me for being too old, its really more of an audiophile thing. I like to be able to understand the lyrics, I want to hear the notes of the guitar solo. The rythym of the song was moving at that volume, but unfortunately high notes or busy sections of the songs were just reduced to feeback filled noise. It was not that it was loud that was the problem, it reminded me of someone who takes a cheap home stereo, cranks the treble to full and then turns it up far louder than the rig can handle. It lost so much sound quality on the vocals and the melodies that I at one point wished he would just stop singing so I could at least enjoy the music.

Fortunately, towards the end of the show they seems to have dialed him in a bit more and he did more songs with the acoustic guitar / piano and it was much better. I really enjoyed the last few songs he did and he got the crowd involved. It was a lot of fun.

The best part though was the drummer. If you have ever seen the movie 'Knocked Up' or "Strange Wilderness" you will know who I am talking about when I say the dark haired skinny stoner guy. As soon as he came on stage, I thought to myself that he looked just like that guy and later on in the show I leaned in and yelled that fact into J's ear and she said she had the exact same thought when she first saw him. Anyway, it was fun to watch this guy play the drums:



Speaking of drumming though.. I stumbled across a couple of clips from Carter Beuford who is the drummer for Dave Matthews Band. He put out a DVD called 'Under the Table and Drumming' and it is pretty amazing to watch him play. Check out the rythyms he is knocking out in 'Tripping Billies' .... just incredible.