Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Appetite For Construction - The Review

Last night Crystal and I made our way down to Ypsilanti, Michigan to take in the Appetite For Construction Tour. It was a tour put together by Relient K and Switchfoot, with a portion of the tickets sales going to Habitat For Humanity. The show was at Eastern Michigan University in their Convocation Center (a HUGE arena-like venue). OK, now that I got the boring stuff out of the way, here comes the play-by-play.

Ruth opened up the show, (they are a relatively new band), and played a couple of unfamiliar songs. No real reaction from the crowd, but that's the life of an opening act. Next Relient K took the stage and put on a GREAT show. Matt Thiessen is always on point, except he looked kinda odd... Something was different. Upon further examination it appeared that he had grown a moustache.The new found hair above his upper lip didn't throw off his singing ability though. He was great! He had 2 mics on each mic stand, one regular mic, and one "old school" mic that had no bass on it so it sounded like it was coming through an old radio. The guy sang his own backup vocals! Amazing.Relient K even managed to sneak in some of their Christmas songs, and topped it off by making it snow. I'm not talking paper snow, I'm talking real wet snow! (I actually think it was more like foam than snow, but it was wet!) Crystal tried to catch some on her tongue. It was a solid set by the guys from Canton, Ohio.Switchfoot took the stage next, opening with the super-popular "This Is Your Life." They put on a good show too, very different from Relient K, but still very good. Jon Foreman went into the crowd a couple times, singing amongst his adoring fans.Jon did this one cool thing where he'd sing into the guitar pickups, making this really weird noise. I can't even try to explain it, but it sounded pretty sweet.Overall, a solid show with 2 solid bands. Definitely worth a couple late nights and long drives. (It's not often you get to see 2 A-level bands in one show.) After the Appetite For Construction Tour neither band moved (up or down) in my standings, but they did impress me.

I took over 200 pictures, the above are just some hilites. More can be found on my Facebook page.