Life's a Gas

But the Strokes show at the Mesa Amphitheatre last night was not. I went semi-willingly as my daughter's Plan B. She knows I'll go to see/hear anything musical, but also knows I'm not a huge fan and was worried that I wouldn't get front and center with her. I had to remind her where I was for the Pogues two nights earlier... Unfortunately, it was about 40 degrees in the Valley last night, and everyone in the organic 'pit' was under 16. Being vertically challenged, I opted to stand and freeze on the first riser, where I had a clear view of the stage, while she muscled her way down front. I watched in parental horror as the crowd took on a life of its own, moving tide-like left and right, crowd-surfing bodies being bandied about willy-nilly over head, then dumped head first back down into the crowd. At one point, Julian Casablancas watched as a girl was lifted out of the crowd by security and commented "What is she, like ten?" The band commented a number of times during the night about it being "kids night" at the show, and someone jokingly asked my kid if she knew where all the big yellow buses were parked. I watched the first half-hour thinking to myself that Casablancas was trying to channel Joey Ramone. He had the clothes, the hair, the stance, the way he held the mike... I nearly bust a gut when the fourth or fifth tune was a cover of Life's a Gas. These guys are an adequate rock and roll band. I can't help but wonder when they are going to develop a personality of their own. My kid reappeared out of the mass about half way through the show and, loathe to admit she was feeling her age, said that after her hair was pulled and she was punched, she couldn't take anymore of the adolescent behavior down front. We spent the rest of the show debating the lighting, which to me felt like a strategy to deflect attention from the thier lack of stage presence. Too much flashing mayhem, backlighting so you couldn't really see the band, and just enough light to see Drew Barrymore stage right; I wondered if the music could stand on its own. When the show was over, they simply walked off stage...no thanks, no good night...as if it was assumed the crowd would call for an encore. It was contrived, and it came off as arrogant. During the last song of the encore, Take It or Leave It, a track from Is This It? which I like, they finally looked like a band that could be a blast. Where the hell was that energy during the entire show? What made me saddest, however, was that my kid was so disappointed by the overall experience. I know what it's like to be that excited about a show, but I can't remember the last time I felt that let down.

As an aside, I thought that event security at the Mesa Amphitheater were a bunch of power-tripping creeps. Two nights earlier, I had encountered some of the best event personnel of any show I'd ever been to, in one of the biggest venues with one of the toughest crowds one could imagine; how did the Nokia in NYC manage it? I'm writing a letter to Mesa management about our own bad experience last night, and I'm disinclined to see anything there again.