Sevendust

Tonight was one of the most fun nights I’ve had in a while, but it also made me realize so many things about the people in our society. Let me explain for you. Last night, Jeff, Jared, Berg, and I went to see Cinder, Closure, 30 Seconds to Mars, and Sevendust at the Del Win here in St. Joe. When me and Jeff got there, there must have already been about 300-400 people in line to get in. Thankfully, Jared and Berg had gotten there much earlier so we moseyed on up into the front of the line with them. We got in and made our way right up to almost the front for the first band.

Starting the night off was Closure, a new emo rock band. This is their first tour ever and I think they sounded very good. Pretty standard emo rock fare, but I like that. They said they’d have a disc coming out next year sometime through Interscope records and I’ll be looking forward to it. With the was that radio rock has taken off in the last year or two I could see these guys making it pretty big on the radio, but we’ll have to see come next year.

The second band on the bill was Cinder. These guys had a pretty good nu-metal sound, but their stage presence was so annoying. The bassist had a tremendously annoying head twitch that made me wish his head would snap off every time he twitched his head. The vocalist walked around like he was God’s gift to rock music, flaunting his crotch to the crowd and gyrating it at every opportunity. He was really annoying. I didn’t mind the guitarist mainly because he just stood there and played and looked like he was having a good time.

The next band up was 30 Seconds to Mars, a band I was heavily looking forward to seeing. I knew that all of the girls at the show were there for no other reason than to see Jared Leto, but that was fine because there weren’t too many of them trying to get up in front like at most concerts where band members are teeny-bopper icons. The first half of their set they played almost in the dark, which was cool for all of a minute and then it was just annoying. The second half they played in the light and tried to really get the crowd into it (and they did for the most part), but I thought their sound was very weak live. I absolutely love their cd, and it is one of my top 5 discs of the year, but their live sound was definitely lacking. I still enjoyed watching them, and it was cool that Jared came up and sang right in front of me in the crowd. All the girls were trying to touch him, but I was just enjoying the fact that he was inches from me.

After 30 Seconds to Mars finished we were treated to over an hour of downtime, for reasons unknown to the crowd, until about five minutes before Sevendust came on. A roadie came out to tell us that the show would go on but there was a slight delay because of a death in the family of one of the band members. This was quite a shock to me and I kind of actually didn’t want the band to come out because death is something very hard to deal with. They did come out, however, a short time later. They broke into “Black” but Lajon was definitely not into it and he was not even singing all of the verses. You could also see the tears on his face. The band paused after “Black” and Lajon told the crowd that his younger brother was killed earlier that night. He was physically straining to hold back his emotions and I felt so bad for him. He went on to say that his father told him on the phone to do the show anyways, even though he didn’t want to, because of his brother’s passing.

The rest of their set consisted of many of their less heavy songs with a few heavy ones thrown in, but lacking their heaviness mainly because you could feel the pain Lajon was in. Many times during the show he broke down appealing to the crowd, telling them that he felt lost and didn’t know how to feel. Anyone who claims that heavy metal music contains no emotion only needed to see this show and to see the tears on Lajon’s face, and the tears of many of the crowd members (myself included). They put on very heartfelt renditions of “Angel’s Son” and “Xmas Day”. Lajon could not even bear to sing most of “Xmas Day” except for the portion of the chorus where he sang “You mean everything…” As the tears streamed down his face and he sang from the deepest part of his heart, expressing so much loss, I couldn’t help but be moved, myself, to tears.

This was by far the most emotional concert that I have ever been to and I can only wish Lajon God’s graces in this time of loss and remember this concert and what it meant to him to be able to sing. “Music heals” I heard someone in the crowd say and I know that this is true. Music has always helped me heal and I know that no matter what type of music someone listens to, we all share a common bond in the mutual appreciation for the universal language of music.