The crowd was so lifeless that I felt bad for the band.
There was hardly any applause of cheering, almost no dancing or getting into the songs. But of course, there was plenty of chatter, as loud conversations were happening all around me as the band they paid to see was performing. Almost everyone was on their phones, on setlist.fm to see how many more songs until they could leave, or on Facebook, Instagram, work emails, or texting (and no, I wasn't spying on people, thy were holding their phones up in my line of vision, it was hard to miss). Unfortunately, the crowd at the show was completely dead, typical of audiences nowadays. The weird mix led to a very mushy kind of sound. Also, one guitar player was much louder than the other. I don't know if their lead singer has his vocals turned down because he doesn't sing well anymore, or was having an off night, or the engineers weren't doing a good job, but I could barely hear his vocals. However, the Gin Blossoms suffered from a bad mix. The opening acts of Fastball and Tonic were good, I only knew their hits, but they played all their songs well and they both sounded good. But the theater was packed, so they sold a lot of tickets. The Wellmont Theater is tight, so I spent the evening squished in my seat with two large men on each side of me with almost no leg room.
