Swollen Finger

I sit here this morning, typing, but feeling like I have been beat up. Last night I got smacked in the lip by someone’s head (resulting in a slightly swollen lip), cracked across the bridge of my nose (again by somone’s head), kicked in the leg repeatedly, then got nutted.

What happened you ask? I went and saw Finger Eleven at Legends last night. The crowd was a lot more aggressive than I had anticipated. I had positioned myself about three rows from the barrier, but I had to leave after just a couple songs. There was a fairly large groups of guys that were going nuts slamming into each other, and into the crowd, and it was starting to hurt my wrist. Going just outside the pit wasn’t much better, but at least I could enjoy myself with out too much worry.

How was the music? In a word: wicked. Finger Eleven always has so much energy. They played a bunch of stuff from their new album. Wow! I can’t wait until the 17th to pick that one up. It should be stellar. They also played a bunch of older stuff too. My two favorite songs of the night were Slow Chemical (from the WWF Forceable Entry soundtrack), and Good Times (from their upcoming release). Good Times was the last song from their main set, and I jumped and danced and sang my ass off for the whole song.

Their encore was good too. I loved their mix of old and new songs. Some of the new ones are pretty slow (at least by Finger Eleven standards), but very powerful sounding songs. I can’t wait to get this new disc.

One of my favorite points of the show was when Scott did something completely unintentional. He sings with his eyes closed (who wouldn’t with all those bright spotlights), and only looked into the crowd a couple times. Once though, he was leaning back with the mic stand, then set it upright (all with his eyes closed). He was very intense jamming to the music, with eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, he noticed the mic stand hadn’t settled upright, but in fact had fell forward was resting on the crowd. He grabbed it quickly, smiled and apologized to the people in front. Smiling Pretty funny at the time since he was so intense one moment, then apologetic the next.

Outside of the aggro crowd, and the excellent music, I must say that Legends is still a horrible place to see a band play. The ceiling is so low, that the stage is right on the ground. This means that you can’t see what the band is doing unless you are in the front row. If all you want to see is their heads, then Legends might be alright for you.

The last thing I wanted to mention was that I thought their set seemed pretty short. When they announced their last song was Good Times, I was surprised. I just thought that I was having such a good time, that time past more quickly. Nope. I got back to my truck at 12:45. I know they didn’t start until sometime around 11:15, and was completely finished by 12:30 (I waited while Steve retrieved his sweater from the coat check). Short but sweet I guess.

Almost forgot. I got nutted when security yanked a crowd surfer down. The surfers foot got me. Thankfully it was the last song of the encore. Yeesh.