Rule 32: Enjoy the little things in life.

So let me break it down for you, I recently had the opportunity to see Owl City in concert.  That’s the good.  The bad: it was at my alma mater, the good old Valparaiso University.  Now I wouldn’t say I hate going back to VU, rather the contrary, I go back fairly often to see my sister and a few friends still there.  But I would say I hate being in enclosed spaces with hordes of VU students.  Partially my crowd-strophobia (is that a word?), partially ‘didn’t I finish four years of this recently?’, and partially ‘I hate VU administration’.  But hey, it was Owl City.

Might I say that it seemed like the town of Valparaiso had gone crazy that night?  There were people lined up before 6PM for a 7:30 show.  Note: They weren’t trying to get tickets, all had been sold out well in advance.  Also, it seemed like half the town was drunk, (drivers included).   Valparaiso drivers aren’t shining examples of driver paragons, but this was nuts.  People stopping in the middle of roads for no reason, parallel parking attempted doomed to fail from the start, etc.  Also, plenty of crazy people at BW3’s, but that’s normal.

Owl City

Stopped at BW3’s for food, skipped most of the opening band then headed to the show.  Having elected NOT to wait in line for hours, I walked right in.  Opener played a few songs. Nothing fantastic, but ok.  Sounded like a poor man’s Yellowcard. And then I waited. And waited.  The opener finished around 9 PM, pretty sure it wasn’t until about 9:45 that Owl City came on.

An impressively large group for a band that started out as one guy in his basement, Owl City was quite fun to listen to, and they put on a good show.  Adam Young did a good job, despite being sick.  And yes, his vocals weren’t spot-on because of it, but I don’t blame him for it, not his fault nor his control.  Props to Adam Young and Owl City for doing their best and performing well.  They pretty much ran straight through Ocean Eyes, something I had no problem with. Great album with plenty of good songs.

Wasn’t a perfect show though. To be honest, pretty far from it.  And I mostly blame VU.  Honestly, who holds a concert on a Thursday night, people either have class or work the next morning.  But my biggest gripe of all is the acoustics.  The concert was held in the Union Ballroom, as it was put on by Union Board.  The Ballroom is a big long box with terrible acoustics.  It felt akin to wearing a foam hat.  Everything felt really muffled.  Had I not known the songs, I wouldn’t have understood what he was singing.  Union Board, leave concerts to The Source, they know how to do concerts, and quite awesomely I must say.

To wrap up, it was a pretty good show, not great, but that’s mostly due to the venue and Adam’s illness, no fault lies with the band. I look foward to seeing Owl City again in a real venue.

PS: Thanks to Kylee for the pictures.