Great concert, poor promotion

On Sunday, November 2nd at the Campus Center, I attended a concert that featured The Score, Thieves and Villains and Nightmare of You. I have been a fan of Nightmare of You for a couple of years now, and I just find it somewhat disappointing that I had to find out from a friend of mine in Manhattan that they were playing here tonight. If it wasn’t for her randomly mentioning it in casual conversation over AIM, I never would have known about it, probably not even afterwards since there were less than twenty students at the concert, none of whom I knew. My point is that I really do think that when events like this happen on campus, students should be made aware of it. They shouldn’t have to find out from friends who don’t even live here. There really should have been more promotion, because I didn’t see any posters around campus.

Anyway, I want to use this blog entry to talk about my concert experience, not to rant about that. The concert was, in my opinion, amazing. Admission was $5.00 and was paid before the concert began. Nightmare of You was the only band I had heard of prior to attending the concert, but that turned out to be ironic, because I enjoyed the first band, The Score, the most. I loved the energy in their music, and all of their songs were extremely catchy. Of course, I was under the impression at that point that there were only two bands playing and therefore assumed that it was Thieves and Villains that I was watching, so when their set was over, I headed over to the merchandise table to buy the Thieves and Villains album that they had for sale, only to discover later that it was the wrong band, but it was okay, because even though not nearly as good as The Score, they were good as well. What’s also really exciting is that The Score’s album, Songs for a Halfway Home, will be available legally for free download in a couple of weeks, as the band’s frontman pointed out at the concert.

The second band, which I eventually discovered was Thieves and Villains, was also good but not as good as The Score. Although their music was also energetic, it didn’t have the same power, emotion and melodic catchiness that The Score’s music featured. Also, (which was actually a problem for all three bands) the sound system obviously wasn’t adjusted correctly, because the bands’ instruments were too loud and therefore drowned out the frontmens’ voices, making them difficult to hear. Their set was short, as they only played a handful of songs.

Lastly was Nightmare of You. I recognized a few of the songs, because, again, this was the only band that played that I had heard of beforehand, and they therefore influenced me to go to the concert initially. In fact, when I went, I thought they were the only band playing. However, even though I also enjoyed Nightmare of You, they were also not The Score musically. The Score was definitely my favorite set, and I am now very excited for the album to be released online.

Again, however, I’m sure that there were students on campus that like at least one of the bands that played and would have loved to have gone but didn’t because they didn’t know about it. In the future, even if it means having the concert in a larger location than the Campus Center food court (a band called Out of Hiding is playing here Wednesday in the Hewitt Union Ballroom, and it’s a free concert), events such as this really should be more heavily promoted so students actually know what’s going on and are aware of events such as this. I’m sure that it was advertised somewhere, but if I didn’t see it, then it wasn’t made obvious enough, because I love music and am constantly looking for opportunties to hear new bands, as I’m sure other students do as well.