[Lord of the Jovi Realm]

It was only yesterday, it's pretty long (three posts) but hopefullly of some interest to folks here.

Nickelback with Saving Abel and Seether
March 11th, 2009
Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio, USA

<redacted content for DC posting, PM for info>

Summary: Nickelback delivers a GREAT show.

Caveat: if you rely on network TV standards to protect you from possible offense and moral corruption, please avoid Nickelback and this review.

Background:
I am at best a casual Nickelback fan having seen them just once prior as an opener for Bon Jovi at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh 7/23/06.
My wife really became a fan at that show and subsequently bought all the CDs in their most complete multidisc import versions as well as having me grab a few live performances for her iPhone (some quite good). I bought these tickets for Julie for her birthday (Ebay) and we have really been looking forward to the show. I thought these would be ideal seats as we were front row off the floor about half way back, but was forgetting this was a hockey arena (more later).
To save my life I couldn't name a single Seether song and have never heard of Saving Abel before buying these tix. I probably know the choruses to the big Nickelback songs but deleted most of their songs from my playlist after 1 listen. I think the new song with the splitting ground on VH1 is Ok, but the video seems a little lame and it's not as good as other songs I have heard by them. At concerts I tend to look around a lot and take in everything rather than be fixated on the band. I also enjoy recording live bands, all the better if they openly or tacitly approve of fan recordings. In recent weeks I learned that Nickelback was pretty much a stealth situation, though they allow and encourage cameras at shows and there is a plethora of Youtube footage as well. I had planned to record audio as well as video, but read on as to my success and failure

Pre-Show:
Nationwide is basically downtown Columbus, but traffic was amazingly light by 6:10 when we headed to the parking garage. Plenty of officers bundled up against the crazy weather. It was 79 degrees at 5:00pm the day before the show and 38 degrees with 30mph winds at showtime. They directed me past the first parking garage to another that had high enough ceilings for large vehicles. Handicapped facilities seemed plentiful, with about 1/2 the bottom 2 floors of the garage placcarded and expedited treatment as needed at the venue itself. The walk to the venue was "brisk" and we were very happy to get inside, we saw lots of chicks who had dressed in a "concert skimpy" fashion and looked pretty miserable in the lines to enter the venue. Entry was a 2 step process, first there was the lines for the friskers. Three lines at each door, 2 for women and one for men. All were manned by friskers of the same sex as the friskees.
The patdown was pretty thorough and I thought perhaps I would be foiled but security said nothing about my gear. Next are the scanners/tickettakers and then you are in. Tons of beer stalls and a few large booths and a few food stalls on the main floor. I was pretty amuzed at the number of patrons who were literally fall-down, shit-faced drunk. When I realized I had just seen my third in as many minutes in the councourse before the show I started counting and ended up with 9 for the night
Parking: $10.00
2 cheeseburgers and 2 bottled waters without caps which are considered projectile weapons: $22.00
1 Nickelback T-shirt: $35.00
Ok so a few things about merch. They have about 7 T-shirts , 1 long sleeved tee, 3 kids tees, belt buckles, CDs, etc. None of the T's seemed artistically inspired they all seemed to be geared to chicks (understandable with their audience mix), but I didn't see anything that I would buy regargless of my opinion of the band. They did have shirts and CDs for the openers as well. Julie wanted the shirt with poloroid style graphics on the front but it was long sleeved so she opted for the church scene shirt. The other thing that they do horribly for merch is the actual selling. I have seen numerous bands where the entire merch selection is hanging on large boards above the merch booths with prices so that the by the time you make your way to the front of the mob you can say gimme a large #2 and an XL #6 and hand the guy your $75.00 and be walking away in 40 seconds while the guy has moved on to the next customer. It took an actual 4 minutes for the girl in front of me to select and pay for a shirt and she wasn't unique, as you literlly had to get to the front of the line to see the merch behind the sales guys. Very poor management. When people are walking away from the line because they are tired of waiting to buy your product, you need to fix it. Cheeseburgers were pretty good, though strangely their $4.00 water was identical to the $0.13 bottled water I buy at Sam's Club, except I usually let my guests keep their caps as long as they promise not to throw them at me The crowd milling about was a pretty diverse group, everything from young hotties in groups to couples in their early 60's. Plenty of women who took the opportunity to dress as though they were still in high school despite doubling in dress size, wrinkles and delusions about how others will see them since. Surely we all change as we get older and outer appearances are certainly no indication of a persons inner being, but lets be realistic here, if your cleavage has multiple chins then maybe cover that mess up and spare us the optical torture. The funniest part is the apologetic glances from the menfolk shepparding these gems through the throng. I am certainly the not the svelt, bronze greek god I was at 21 but then again I don't wear a speedo in public either. (In the interests of transparancy as required by the new Obama policies, I was never Greek). For those interested you could get a very nice beer in a cup for a mere $7.50. The venue staff was helpful and the venue including bathrooms was reasonably clean. Beer sales must have been pretty brisk as the lines for the mens line looked like the lines for a typical womens restroom. I grabbed these seats on Ebay at a small premium over the standard ticketmaster raping. Though in all fairness Ticketbastard is only an accomplice in the greater conspiracy by Live Nation et. al. Of course this is just a formalization of the less mailigned scalpers trade of decades. Instead of scalpers paying ticket buyers 125% of face for good seats and selling them for 200% to other fans, the almighty LN simply buys up TM and scalps the tickets directly to consumers, sometimes at 1000% of face. A great market that benefits everybody on the business side and only screws the small percentage of fans who actually lucked into grabbing great seats at the initial onsale.
Live Nation makes more money and can afford to pay more to everybody in the concert food chain from artists to venues, though I am guessing the pleasant senior citizen who handed me my dinner on a paper plate shared in the windfall. SOrry got a bit off track there Anyway our seats were pretty decent for watching a concert without having to endure the general admission floor (too old for that chaos these days). Not such good seats for trying to capture a special memory of the concert to share with the world. Since this is a hockey arena the front row is actually very low to the floor and has a very short wall in front of it, hardly ideal for video taping of any kind. Our seats were on the aisle and a pair of security guards were posted so close that they frequently thought it was OK to interupt my ignoring them with conversation. We thought about going to another section and trading our tickets but decided to just stay put and enjoy the show. I left the camcorder in my bag all night. This was also the first rock show I decided to record in 24/96 resolution.
I also was testing 2 iPhone apps for recording concert sound, sadly both failed miserably. I have gotten literally every iPhone app in the app store for recording audio and easily my top pick for recording a quieter concert like my sons high school jazz band show is HT Recorder (9.99) which does an amazing job despite being mono (like all the iPhone apps in the store). However I would not recommend this in any way for a rock show, the meters pegged instantly during the first band which was quieter than those that followed. The other app was a Beta being written specifically for recording live concerts with the lofty goals of stereo 24/96 of a size limited only be free HD space. I was told not to expect much as it is very early, well.....yeah it clipped instantly and remained clipped for the full 2 minutes I tested it before shutting down. OK Enough drivel on to the show!!
We made our way to our seats as Saving Abel were beginning thier set. The T-shirt lines length made us late.

CONTINUED

[Lord of the Jovi Realm]

Opener Saving Abel:
Ok these guys were pretty good, the singer has a nice voice. I recognized one song which they said was the most played song of 2008. It was done well but I was distracted by the thought that I had no idea that it was a big song. I think the advent of the iPod and satellite radio has killed the radio as a viable format, which is really sad for new musicians. In a similar vein I am really bummed at the delay/cancellation of the satellite app for the iPhone. Anyway I really found nothing "special" about these guys, though they were talented. The singer had a nice rapport with the audience. They had a rap about supporting the military and a tie to their song "18 minutes" or some such. Really it seemed very contrived and crafted to elicit a response from the audience, who certainly won't stand mute when asked to "give it up for the troops". It didn't seem sincere but rather a part of the nightly set. More "applaud for us" than a heartfelt sentiment or expression of support or ideology. Granted I didn't pay to see Bono or Peter Gabriel either. I saw a good number of people be ejected by security during this set as we were front row against the floor roughly even with the end of "our giant penis" as Chad later called the catwalk out from the center of the stage into the audience on the general admission floor. The folks with laminates for the VIP tour packages seemed to walk back in front of us constantly throughout all three acts. The guys in Saving Abel seemed to play straight ahead good garage rock without any fancy instrumentation or staging. Good but a bit uninspiring. Without being too harsh, I paid for the ticket and don't think this band added anything to the show except time. The audio mix had a very muddy, rumbling bottom that obscured the vocals quite a bit, it was dirty loud rather than clean loud. In a clever marketing move which surely resonates with the youngsters, Saving Abel announced that if you texted something to them during the show they would be giving a way a Paul Reed Smith autographed guitar to one lucky texter each night. A pretty good way to build up your database of spam targets without pissing too many of them off.
Seether:
Again I am not familiar with this music but have heard of them. They seemed a little more relaxed being on stage than SA had and while they didn't seem to spend much time in banter,they instead shot from one song to the next with an inspired fury. Shawn the lead vocalist (and guitarist) has a crazy powerful voice tailor-made for soaring over arena rock at high volume. Nice intonation, not just an exercise in higher, faster, louder. The improved mix was much appreciated as while the bass was still loud and driving it was punchy and articulate, which let the other instruments lay in the groove and make a great pallette to background the vocals. My main criticism is the unrestrained use of feedback. Both guitarists seemed to revel in producing deafening, painful feedback at the break between each song. Maybe they are tuning using harmonics or sacrificing tone nuggets to some dark guitar deity but regardless it is ****in annoying and painful to experience. If Tyson punched me in the head I could sue for a nice payday but these two didn't even apologize.
I recognized three of the songs in this setlist and look forward to listening back to them and might pay them a little visit in iTunes to pad thier coffers.
I really enjoyed these guys, and would probably see them live as a headliner at a reasonable price. Definately a great opening act. During the Nickelback set , Shawn from Seether joins the band onstage to sing "Hey Man Nice Shot" by Filter, and shows a vocal power that is truly amazing. Seether had a digital clock onstage on a monitor stack which seemed really funny, like the band might turn into pumpkins if they ran a minute or two late, but their set was very tight and fast. They Rock!!!
Nickelback:
http://homepage.mac.com/sambora/paragon/opening%20salvo.mp3WOW !!!
It starts with a threefold stunning attack on the senses. Simultaneously the PA music cuts out, the lights go black and the flash bangs hit a trio of staccato blasts and then the indoor fireworks light up the night. All that production goes into announcing that you will now get to see a video countdown to the beginning of the concert Clearly excess is just a rough starting point for these guys in a 2 hour party that has suprisingly few lulls in the white knuckle roller coaster ascent to Nickelback telling us how they say goodbye. Throughout the show it is evident that spending a little time with marketing showmen Bon Jovi has yielded some awesome dividends. The High Def video is displayed on giant moving screens with interwoven videos, stage footage, audience snippets and graphics that tie together the whole show as a package and make every seat in the house a great seat. There area also a pair of HD sidescreens that displayed stage footage throughout. The lights are amazing, they use giant UFO chandeliers that move up and down as well as tilting from side to side and lighting up internally as a well as with rotating spotlights below each pod, all in every color of the rainbow. They fire off fireworks indoors and send gouts of multicolor flames skyward intermixed with showers of sparks. Oh yeah, smoke shoots out of the floor too





CONTINUED

[Lord of the Jovi Realm]

They Kick off the madness with
- SOMETHING IN YOUR MOUTH - the crowd is on thier feet in an instant and lovin' it, the video screens have various vixins lookin' pouty and seductive. The song begins and ends with fireworks literally and the vocal effects in the break portion are flawless. Nothing like blatant sexual innuendo at top volume to kick things off and set a tone Chad asks "with something in your what?" and promises to keep the the rock coming fast before launching into the only real downer of the night for me..
- BECAUSE OF YOU - I didn't already know this song and it is kind of crappy compared to most of their other stuff, and the backing vocals by Ryan sounded awful, which is wierd because he did a great job throughout the night and on his solo spot in the encore, maybe problems with the monitors? In the later portion where Chad sings through the effects mic it sounded really ****ed up like Boba Fett on valium, anyway next up...
- PHOTOGRAPH - Chad mentioned that boobs were coming out after only the second song "getting things off to a good start", then proceeded to call COlumbus a cow-town in a backhanded way. He waxed poetic about high school for a bit bofore kicking it off. This is one of their big hits and they do a great live version full of energy that gets the whole crowd up and singing along, the video work on this is fun too, they run a moving photo montage of the band and crew from the past with intercut scenes of Columbus, and in the end the montage fades back and resolves into a photo mural of the 4 band members faces made of a thousand little pictures, very cool, this would be a great image for their T-shirts.
- FIGURED YOU OUT - aside from loud drunken conversation nearby this is another great one that the crowd loved, truely a classic tune, it doesn't get much more blatant than this during the "freckles on your chest" the cameras flashed momentarily to a girl trying to flash the audience. And Chad changed the lyrics to include Pete and Mike in the lurid storyline and proclaimed "oh my god that looks gay" with much laughter. He starts to change the names again later in the song but breaks out laughing.
- SAVIN' ME - very nicely done with the addition of Timmy on guitar, great vocals by Ryan and Daniel as well. At the end of the song Chad goes over to Timmy to tell him that his brother, who is a member of the crew, is growing a great 70's porn mustache and proceeds to bring the brother out for verification on the big screen for everyone. "Kinda freddie mercury but in a creepy way, it's awesome though". The drunks near me had their own running commentary throughout. Chad also read a few signs in the audience "pull my ****ing hair" and "I still want your hard stuff".
- FAR AWAY - another slower tune and very well done, the whole crowd sings along. Timmy plays guitar and keys on this one. The effects mic is well done.
- HEY MAN NICE SHOT - lead vocal by Shaun from Seether - the pre-song banter is pretty juvenile but the song itself is great, the vocal strength is brutal. The drunks begin to sing a song that Nickelback already played, dipshits. The mix was dead on perfect and actually seemed to suit his vocals even better than Chad's. He changes the lyric to Hey Chad Nice Cock at one point.
- GOTTA BE SOMEBODY - their new rock anthem, sure to fill stadium PA systems at some point in the future. They did a good job, but the song is kinda lame to me. Most of the audience seemed to know it. "Whenever you get to see a wide variety of breasts on a daily basis, that's when you know you have a good job" - Chad Kroeger, 3/11/09
- IF EVERYONE CARED - a great song with new video footage that chronicals some great humanitarian people and groups including Bono, Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela and others with gripping factoids about each as they moved along and ended with an inspirational quote.
- THIS AFTERNOON - For this song the band moves out onto the small stage in the center of the arena. Daniels drumkit is durably bolted to a rack and flips up out of the stage, where it has been hanging upside down under the stage for the entire show so far. The guys play this in a mostly acoustic fashion like the studio cut. It is a very different sounding song from most of the NB catalog that I am familar with (which admittedly is pretty small) but a catchy fun summer fun type song. Audience reaction was mixed, they were going apeshit for being so close to the band but for the most part didn't seem to be singing along. Chad mentions that Ryan's parents are in attendance moments after commenting on the quantity and quality of the breasts being exposed in the audience.
- ROCKSTAR - A return to the big hits seemed to re-inspire the audience as they sang along and cheered wildly at the various rock and roll memorabilia that popped up on the screen. Artists ranged from AC-DC to Elton John with stops along the way to visit Jethro Tull, Kid Rock, Aerosmith, The Stones, MC5, Def Leppard, Staind, Bon Jovi, The Who and dozens more. The collage showed tons of backstage passes, concert photos and concert promo posters all the way back to the early 70's. It seemed like an homage to friends, mentors and idols. Julie excitedly pointed out to me that there were 5 different Bon Jovi passes (all of which she has in her collection) and 3 pictures of the band in the collage, it appeared that Kid Rock and Nickelback memorabilia ran second and third. Truly a concert song if there ever was one.
- THE T-SHIRT JAM - for this bit of the show the band riffs aimlessly and plays a bit of some Metallica while 4 members of the crew use high powered paintball guns modified to fire a rolled up T-shirt into the upper decks of the stadium, firing 30 or so shirts into the audience while the band plays. Tonight they wore Ohio State Buckeyes gear and the crowd loves it. You can hear the shirts fire off like little mortars.
- BURN IT TO THE GROUND - I think this is another new one and I like it pretty much, it is high energy and had the crowd on their feet.
- THE DANIEL RISETH - this is drum solo unlike anything I have seen at a rock show since Greg Bissonette circa 1985ish with DLR, Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan. This guy is a great drummer and he can sing too. tons of talent. OK his drum set on the main stage has a huge exhaust manifold coming out of the front of the drum riser with flared pipes stretching across the width of the stage that end in upturned sweeps about 8' above the stage and each about 2 feet in diameter, at various times during the show they spew fireworks, flames, smoke, and maybe lava and pixie dust too. During his solo the entire riser drives forward to the base of the catwalk and then the drum platform rises up out of the drum riser base (it is actually a scissors lift) to a height of about 12 feet or so then begins to rotate back and forth. All the while the lights are goin crazy and the video shows all his effort, it even has good closeups of his pedal technique. The band breaks into 30 seconds of heavy power chords to help him finish it off.
- HOW YOU REMIND ME - the crowd sings it for him and they love every minute, afterword Chad passes out drumsticks in exchange for breast exposure , security caught a video taper somewhere above me and brought him down to the rail in front of me to frisk him and confiscate his recordings, they did a thorough full hands on pat down, groin included, turned out all his pockets, took the DVD from his camcorder and the memory card from his phone as well as his extra DVDs. I was a little wigged out and very glad I had left my recorder in my jacket.
- TOO BAD - the boys finish out the main set with another crowd pleaser though Chad has by this point done enough talking between songs to qualify for a spoken word Grammy, the effects mic is killer on this one. They end it with another barrage of fireworks.
Encore Begins with...
- USE SOMEBODY - Ryan takes the small stage by himself to sing this Kings of Leon cover very ably. Unfortunately I hadn't turned on my auxilary battery for my deck so the recording cuts off halfway through this song. At the end of the song Chad ****s up the chords and Daniel gives him some grief and tells him he is fired before they start..
- SOMEDAY - again Timmy joined them on guitar playing a 12 string intro and the crowd was exhausted but sated.
- ANIMALS - the piece de resistance of the evening was the closer and one of their biggest hits, with smoke shooting up out of the stage the boys left us in a rain of sonic thunder in their signature " this is how Nickelback says goodnight" which is a beastly cacopheny of aural rage followed by a salvo of proxy canonfire courtesy of the pyro crew. As the lights faded the arena was illuminated by several thousand cell phones all fighting to capture one more moment of a night to long be remembered.
Fast Facts:
approximate show length: 120 minutes
encore break: 4 minutes
total Chad talk time: 19 minutes , seriously!!
total talk time of drunks behind me (each): 1 hour, 15 minutes
ranking amongst all shows I have seen for video and effects: #1 (out of more than 200), Bon Jovi has better screen footage but this is tops overall.
ranking amongst shows I have seen for audio quality (fidelity): top 10, up there with Sting 91, Peter Gabriel 02, Bon Jovi Pittsburgh 00, Kid Rock 02
overall show ranking 1-10( 10 being best): 10
Total cost for 2 people: $327.00 and worth it.






See ya on the road
Dave

[Panda]

YAY! I see them live on April 2 with Seether!!! Now I really can't wait.... thanks for the review....


But they didn't play Leader Of Men.... my favorite song.... I hope they play it in Calgary.... but the setlist will probably be the same.

[Kathleen]

Let's see - first things first. My first 24/96 recording was Bruce last summer at Giants so I guess we all are moving on LOL. You're gonna love editing the sound and downsampling - but it takes forever - even on a superfast machine. Of course Bruce has no openers but he puts on a 3+ hour show - so those files are enormous.

I'm glad you enjoyed it - I wanted to go after seeing them in 2006 but so far never have. One thing that put me off was their insistance on keeping every opening show EXACTLY IDENTICAL. A little variation would have been nice - especially for those of us that go to multiple shows.

And I remember a discussion on this board about how a few people were offended that a family show like Bon Jovi would have such a crude bunch as openers. I got into it with someone (I forget who - I don't hold grudges) when I asked when Bon Jovi ever advertised themselves as a family show?

I told my husband that you were going as your wife had become a big fan. His comment was - Oh - she likes abuse does she

I hope you share the show - with a review like that I love to hear it.

[SamboraQueen21]

Thanks for the review. I saw them open for Jovi at Giants and saw them headline a few years back and they were great. Last time I saw them they had the footage of rock stars during Rock Star and Bon Jovi were not in the montage so I am glad they have added them to it!! They have been doing that T-shirt thing for like 5 years now though lol!

Im debating to go see them again with Hinder and Papa Roach this summer. Probably will!

[Thomas Anderson]

Thanks for the review and pictures. I saw them in Dublin and Manchester last year and it looks like the same basic stage setup, but the UFO things appear to be new. Last time they opened with 'Animals', which works well with the fireworks, so it'll be interesting to see it as a closer this time - and I loved the video for 'If Everyone Cared' too. I'll be seeing them in London at the O2 (haven't been there before) at the end of May, so I'm looking forward to it

[Irishshin]

Really glad they have This Afternoon in the show, its my favourite song from the new album

[Thomas Anderson]

Originally Posted by Irishshin

Really glad they have This Afternoon in the show, its my favourite song from the new album

I thought your favourite was "If Today Was Your Last Day" Well, in another 10 or 11 weeks or so and we'll be seeing them I doubt either of us will present a review as big as this though lol

[Dicanio]

What a great review!

Im also going to the O2 at the end of May and am now looking forward to it even more!!