Great Balls of Fire!

Nickelback-DCU Center-Worcester, Mass-5 March 2009

If anywhere on Earth was hotter than Hell the DCU Center on March 5th would be up for an award. Nickelback cranked up the heat and not from their massive fan following (though I swear the crowd could’ve launched Worcester off the Richter scale), but from literal fire. There were pyrotechnics and there were lots of them! Though the fire show design is supposedly stolen from Creed’s past performances, the pyrotechnics were stunning once you got over the initial fear and flashbacks of the Rhode Island nightclub fire.

Worcester is a 35 minute drive from the outer edges of Ashford, Westford. We left in good timing, as if we’d be heading to Manchester for an evening at the mall. After a near death experience at exit 10 on the Mass Turnpike (driving horizontally at a toll booth never seems like a great idea), we hit Worcester and its terrifyingly dangerous roads. This wasn’t a good trip for driving. Ever seen a six way intersection with one stop sign at the center, Toyota Camry’s and Ford Taurus’s flying in every possible direction? Well, it may well be the last thing you’ll see if you ever land yourself in front of the Salty Dog Saloon in Worcester, Massachusetts. To claim that Worcester has the worst city layout in all of New England would be an understatement. We missed the DCU Center, a large arena usually used as an ice rink, multiple times because of the parking garage’s hidden entrance. But, needless to say, we parked the car (after I forked out a $20 parking fee) and waited in a massive line in the cold for half an hour.

Helicopters were hovering over, a bit discerning given the massive crowd, and as soon as we got to the front where tickets were being taken, we were told we had to walk to the opposite side of the building and wait in the line there. Those with pit tickets had their own special line that, as soon as entering the arena, ushered us directly towards the stage. Talk about star treatment. We waited in the cold longer, watching confused patrons scuttle from line to line, unsure of what to do. Women and men were being separated into two different lines (no one likes a sexual harassment lawsuit), this being an occurrence that many found hard to fathom. Women moved to the men line and men refused to leave girlfriends in the women’s line. I stayed on the side specialized for females and my brother went straight to the males. We apparently were the only ones who realized that this would make the whole ordeal get solved faster.

Inside, the building was huge with a large corridor that wrapped around the whole building, bathrooms and merchandise and concession stands scattered throughout. The bathrooms were immensely crowded and so were the t-shirts stands. After a little delay, we pushed our way to the front of the crowd right as Saving Abel opened with In God’s Eyes. The venue was enormous with a catwalk sprouted from the stage. They played a short set list, including their chart winners 18 Days and Addicted. 18 Days, being about the trials and tributes of the men and women who serve in the military, had the crowd in an emotional state. Several people in front of us were even brought to tears. They closed with Addicted, catching the whole crowd into a cacophony of singing and cheering. Despite Jared Weeks (lead singer) excessively tight leather pants and Jason Null’s (lead guitar) nearly scary trances, they managed to make it into my top five for best opening bands. Not only did the crowd seem interested in the Mississippian five-some, but they sang to almost every song. Rarely is the concert venue anywhere near half full when the opening band sets foot on stage, but at this point, the pit (which extended from stage to the back of the venue, the biggest pit I have ever seen) was packed to the brink. Jared Weeks voice did not crack or shriek which seems common in the modern musical day and overall, they seemed to know what they were doing.

But as much as some people seemed into the band, there were those who did not and there were a lot of “party poopers” at this show. I don’t know if it was because of the general audience that Nickelback attracted (Top 40 crows aren’t the mosh pit types) or because people were only in a poor mood. Regardless of which, no one seemed to enjoy having their “personal bubble” invaded. Brush one finger into someone’s arm and you were asking to be butchered into a slab of raw animal meat. But keeping distance was not an option as the crowd seemed to fill more and more by the minute.

Now, if you have ever been to a concert you would understand this. You hear from various sources (internet, magazines, friends, etc.) that some band is the most amazing thing live, but then, when you see them, it almost feels like you’ve been shamelessly fooled. This was the case with Seether, the South African native band with US rock radio chart toppers. I always enjoy doing a pre-concert Google (or Wikipedia) of the bands I’ll be seeing (if I do not know them well). I have had my little run-in with Seether in the past, but have never been a screaming fan. So after hearing all of these rave reviews I figured that they would be good. I don’t think I have ever been more wrong in my life. They started uneventfully (performing Gasoline) and they ended uneventfully. Shaun Morgan, lead singer and guitarist, looked, well, dead. He was inhumanly pale with sunken in eyes and bright red hair. I normally respect bands, but when people in the crowd were yelling things like “Are you still breathing?” and “Go get some more heroin!” I couldn’t refrain from giggling. Attached to Shaun Morgan’s guitar stand were numerous heads of baby dolls with, what I believed to be, fake blood caking the hole where the neck should be connected. Too bad it wasn’t Halloween. I give credit to the band for producing some good album recordings, but live, they just don’t cut it. They sounded tight, but were utterly boring. Not only that, but they would take an elongated period of time between songs, to which people in the crowd were yelling in response “Get a move on!” The drummer, John Humphrey, disappeared for nearly half the set, preventing the band from playing most of their planned set list. Instead, we had to settle for little known early songs and a poorly planned out Pearl Jam cover. Only the true diehard Seether fans would’ve loved this show, but as it was obvious from the tempered screams and the audience’s restlessness (at this point actual fights were breaking out, cops were searching the pit for someone, and the teenage girl in front of my brother threatened to _____ his _____), no one wanted them to stay on stage much longer.

Out of their whole set, only three songs got some form of a response: Broken (which took twenty minutes to convince everyone that Amy Lee would not be there taking into account their messy break-up and Evanescence’s current studio sessions), Breakdown, and Remedy. When they got off stage and the stereo broke in Faith No More songs, we were sighing in relief. After the tension that had culminated during Seether’s set, people began to calm down at the prospect of Nickelback soon to take the stage. It was no longer than ten minutes that Chad Kroeger (lead singer and guitarist) was strutting his stuff on stage, playing the opening riffs to Something in Your Mouth. A giant screen situated on stage lit up simultaneously with the pyrotechnics. I was having a heart attack at this point, fire being one of my greatest fears. I hid behind the people in front of me the first few times the fire sparked, but after some desensitization, I relaxed and just had fun. Almost every song on their set list has been Top 40 at one point or another with a few exceptions. Doing a better job than the Kings of Leon themselves, Ryan Peake (lead guitarist) stepped up to the plate and blew the crowd out of the water covering 2008’s Use Somebody. Shaun Morgan came to the stage almost half way through the set to perform Filter’s Hey Man, Nice Shot and would have made Richard Patrick proud. Nickelback continued to ‘wow’ with Daniel Adair’s lung collapsing drum solo and a t-shirt cannon, a consumerist’s haven. Not only did the band sound amazing and have a great stage performance (even without the pyrotechnics it would have been stellar), but they were funny. At random intervals Chad Kroeger and their roadie would tell stories of late night debacles and crack inappropriate jokes (at one point causing them to ask a woman in the front row to cover their children’s ears) and even revealing that the recording of their first album, Curb, cost an unnecessary $25,000. This is what sky-rocketed them up into my top five on my concert chart. We jumped on command to Too Bad and turned to the end of the cat walk where they performed half of their show without a second’s hesitation. Everyone was loosening up and calming down. Nearly everyone was transfixed by Nickelback and their basically perfect performance. As I have said before in my Linkin Park review, some bands deserve the fame that they get. Nickelback is one of the few Top 40 bands I have seen shamelessly and loving every second of it.

They ended their set with an Encore of the Kings of Leon cover, Someday (if that doesn’t sound familiar a quick YouTube will bring memories fleeting back), and Animals. Nickelback ended with a bang (literally from all of the pyrotechnics), but people were absolutely rabid and hungry for more. The DCU Center was about 40 degrees hotter from the consistent use of pyrotechnics and it took a good 15 minutes for anyone to even start to think about moving away from the stage. I never normally say this, but even you hate Nickelback, they are one of the few bands out there that you will love if you see live (no matter how many flaws you try to pick out). Yeah, you may hate them like many do (and if you do, please come find me with the reasoning), but them live is better than sleeping for fourteen hours straight after a sleepless 48 hours. The only thing I warn is if they are coming closer (or preferably nowhere near Worcester) then take advantage of the opportunity because a concert in Worcester is the equivalent of your hand in a meat grinder, painful, terrifying, and could very much allow you to bleed to death. But I have no regrets and take my advice or throw it out. Regardless, you could very well be missing out on something truly good.

Rating: 5/5
Set list- Something In Your Mouth, Because of You, Photograph, Figured You Out, Savin’ Me, Far Away, Hey Man, Nice Shot, Gotta Be Somebody, If Everyone Cared, If Today Was Your Last Day, Rockstar, Burn it to the Ground, [Drum Solo/Guitar riffs to Fight for All the Wrong Reasons], How You Remind Me, Too Bad, Use Somebody, Someday, Animals