TV on the Radio/Wilbur Theater

I guess a lot has happened since I saw TV on the Radio a full 2 years ago (at literally almost the same date) just after the release of Cookie Mountain in Brooklyn. I remember the crowd being wild, the music being insane, and the hipsters being ironic. Although there was still a fair share of hipsters, the crowd was noticeably "less alternative", not to mention slightly older. Additionally, the venue was a lot stricter, so perhaps the absence of mysterious puffs of weed gave the show a more mature feel.

This show was at the Wilbur theater in boston. My enjoyment of the show was probably a little impaired by the fact that there were two different types of tickets available, balcony and floor, and that i was way up in the balcony seats in what was probably a really intimate show. it was also impaired because another friend who was going to see the show was literally touching the stage while giving me the finger and making a "look how close i am, suck my dick" motion. ah well.



Quite honestly the opener, The Dirtbombs, were one of the highlights of the show.
a lot of openers piss me off because they try and upstage the main band, and pretend that the crowd is there to see them. particularly awkward is when the opening band stops singing assuming the audience is going to fill in the lyrics, and then are met with an awkward silence. The Dirtbombs were thankfully conscious that they were the opener, but yet still maintained high enthusiasm and the crowd was really into them. Randomly during the show one of their two drummers put down his drumset into the crowd and just started playing there, which was funny and probbaly really cool for people standing there but sort of awkward in retrospect. I guess that's something you can only get away with when you're not that famous/ surrounded by hipsters who would never dare show enough enthusiasm to run their hands all over his body in a Jonas Brothers prepubescent fashion.

The first thing I noticed when TV on the Radio got on the stage was how different their overall appearence was. Their look was a lot more clean cut and almost preppy compared to Tunde Adebimpe's wild afro of 06. Perhaps it was because I was not really in the crowd of dancing people, but the tone of the show seemed much more subdued than prevoiusly.

To be honest, I was a little dissapointed with their set. I'm not too crazy about Dear Science and nearly all the songs they played were from that, which is understandable and predictable considering they're trying to promote their new album but still annoying. Additionally, their old songs they picked were somewhat odd choices, like "A Method" The crowd seemed to want more old songs as well. Even when the newest single "Golden Age" came on, the crowd was enthusiastic at first but the hype quickly died down as the song progressed. I found their rendition of "Staring at the Sun" to be particularly dissapointing, because they sort of adopted the whole "all you have heard this song 32987899873427923 times so therefore we don't need to play this well" mentality.

One highlight of the show was "Wolf Like Me." Everyone was dancing for it, including me, precariously leaning over the nosebleed balcony. Don't get me wrong, many of the songs were performed well, but few of them were powerfully dance-y enough to make me want to brave falling down into the assholes who managed to nab the General Admissions tickets. Another awesome thing about their show was the transitions between songs--a lot of the songs blended into eacho ther in rad ways.

Even though I have a lot of complaints, keep in mind my objections are partly because of my "I must whine" Jewish prerogative. It was all in all a sweet show, although not as good as it could have been, and not necessarily the most memorable concert of my life.



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