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Dashboard Confessional
Mar. 2nd, 2004 08:32 pmDashboard Confessional @ The Hi-Fi Bar, Monday, 1st March.
NME called Chris Carrabba the wettest guy in punk rock. NME have a point.
Sure, he's got the skinny arms covered in tattoos, the black Elvis hair, and a history of playing in Florida hardcore bands. But he writes pretty little indie rock songs about first love and its inevitable demise. They're not even particularly innovative songs.
What saves them is their emotion. Pure. Raw. Heart-on-your-sleeve and fuck-all-the-cynics honest. Frankly, they'd be sappy, except Chirs Carrabba is so goddamn passionate about them.
As is his audience.
There's this thing that happens at Dashboard gigs: the audience know all the words. They sing along. To the point where Carrabba steps away from the microphone and lets the crowd carry the songs.
D/C are famous for this. Every article I've read mentions it. And the live DVD that came with the last album showed it in action. But that is in America, D/C's home turf. I had no idea if they were that popular in Australia, and I doubted it would happen here.
Because I am stupid.
The Hi-Fi was sold out. Packed full of young kids in trucker caps with their jeans falling off their arses. I felt old. And this was the over-18 gig.
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andricongirl and I caught most of the Blueline Medic support gig (they played a punked-up cover of Tori Amos's "Precious Things"), then sat around drinking out of the plastic cups and griping about kids these days. Then the lights went dark, the audience roared, and Chris Carrabba wanderd out on stage with an acoustic guitar.
The crowd went nuts. And they knew every single word.
I was already feeling like an outsider, being ten years older than everyone else there. But that was nothing compared to being surrounded by people in state of rapture, yelling out lyrics to songs I'd never heard before. I felt like an atheist in a Southern Baptist congregation.
Carrabba played the first few songs acoustic, then the band came out. They played for about an hour and half. The audience seemed to know every song. Carrabba said several times that they were adding to thier set list on the fly, because they were having such a good time. People in the audienc screamed and danced and more than a few shedded tears.
I'm not going to claim D/C are the best or most important band in the world. But the songs have have an emotional directness that's undeniable. I understand why the young audience were so moved. I wasn't quite in the same state of ecstasy as the rest of the crowd. I didn't know the songs as well, and I'm too old for songs about teenage romance to feel so important to me.
But it was still a damn cool gig.
NME called Chris Carrabba the wettest guy in punk rock. NME have a point.
Sure, he's got the skinny arms covered in tattoos, the black Elvis hair, and a history of playing in Florida hardcore bands. But he writes pretty little indie rock songs about first love and its inevitable demise. They're not even particularly innovative songs.
What saves them is their emotion. Pure. Raw. Heart-on-your-sleeve and fuck-all-the-cynics honest. Frankly, they'd be sappy, except Chirs Carrabba is so goddamn passionate about them.
As is his audience.
There's this thing that happens at Dashboard gigs: the audience know all the words. They sing along. To the point where Carrabba steps away from the microphone and lets the crowd carry the songs.
D/C are famous for this. Every article I've read mentions it. And the live DVD that came with the last album showed it in action. But that is in America, D/C's home turf. I had no idea if they were that popular in Australia, and I doubted it would happen here.
Because I am stupid.
The Hi-Fi was sold out. Packed full of young kids in trucker caps with their jeans falling off their arses. I felt old. And this was the over-18 gig.
andricongirl and I caught most of the Blueline Medic support gig (they played a punked-up cover of Tori Amos's "Precious Things"), then sat around drinking out of the plastic cups and griping about kids these days. Then the lights went dark, the audience roared, and Chris Carrabba wanderd out on stage with an acoustic guitar.The crowd went nuts. And they knew every single word.
I was already feeling like an outsider, being ten years older than everyone else there. But that was nothing compared to being surrounded by people in state of rapture, yelling out lyrics to songs I'd never heard before. I felt like an atheist in a Southern Baptist congregation.
Carrabba played the first few songs acoustic, then the band came out. They played for about an hour and half. The audience seemed to know every song. Carrabba said several times that they were adding to thier set list on the fly, because they were having such a good time. People in the audienc screamed and danced and more than a few shedded tears.
I'm not going to claim D/C are the best or most important band in the world. But the songs have have an emotional directness that's undeniable. I understand why the young audience were so moved. I wasn't quite in the same state of ecstasy as the rest of the crowd. I didn't know the songs as well, and I'm too old for songs about teenage romance to feel so important to me.
But it was still a damn cool gig.
