Went to see Hall and Oates in New Orleans last night.
Have seen them many times as they used to hit college towns at least once a year back in their heyday. Great catalog of songs. Always a good concert.
Until now.
One of the worst concerts I've ever seen. Watching people leave was like being at a Mississippi State football game when they're behind in the fourth quarter. When the concert started, the row we were on was completely full. By the midpoint of the concert we had the row entirely to ourselves. It was bad. Sad to see people fleeing like that.
What went wrong? Pretty much everything.
1) The acoustics were terrible. The mix was really bad. Some things you couldn't hear very well at all, others blared out. For instance the sax guy (who looked really old and creepy) was doing his solo stuff but it could barely be heard. Then you'd get this ridiculously loud blast of a couple of random bass notes. Darryl spent a good portion of the show complaining out loud about the sound. Ended up with a noisy muddle that obscured the sound that made the band Hall of Famers.
2) Darryl. He brought back memories of the stilted oddity that was David Lee Roth when I saw him with Van Halen a few years ago. Odd hand motions, weird grimaces, fidding with his ridiculous hair. He changed up the way he did almost every song. One of the things people enjoy doing is singing along. He made that near impossible by altering pitch, changing cadence. He'd extend every song with some god awful riffing. I swear I could have done it as well or better.
3) The frost. Darryl and John claim to be having fun and that their friendship is solid. But there was absolutely zero interaction between the two. They almost pointedly ignored each other. Hall introduced and lauded every member of the band (some of whom were pretty technically terrible) but never once mentioned Oates by name or really even looked his way.
I love seeing the 80s bands. Styx, Journey, Def Leppard, Toto, Boston, Elton John, Crue, Poison, Duran Duran, Foreigner all put on energetic, technically tight (for the most part) enjoyable shows. This was just painful. I'm going to try to block it out of my mind. It's like seeing an old friend who's let himself go. I'd rather just remember them as they were.
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