Rooney/Ben Lee

Best damn $5 concert I've ever seen! The opening act was lackluster. It was some guy from Florida named Jon Rawlston (sp?) who does a pretty average rock act.

Rooney took the stage and opened with "Blueside" from their debut album. The crowd was probably almost a third adolescent Rooney fans with their middle-aged chaperones. Rooney was greeted with cheers and shrieks from the high school kids in the crowd. Their act was adequate. It was mostly note-perfect renditions of the stuff from their first album, interspersed with tracks from their, as yet, unreleased second album. Their between song banter left a lot to be desired. They mostly seemed pleased with themselves because the crowd recognized their songs. They closed with an energetic performance of "Shakin'."

Then, the stage was set for Ben Lee. White flowers and a lone candle decorated the keyboard and drums. Ben Lee came out on stage in an outrageous gold suit ("You should have seen the outfit I almost wore, it was pretty flashy. But I decided to keep it low key."-Ben Lee) and took over the show. He played mostly songs from "Awake is the New Sleep" but he did one memorable song from "Breeding Tornadoes," which, he told the crowd, when he wrote it he knew it was going to be an international smash hit. But then it wasn't. So, he entreated the crowd to indulge him and pretend, when he started the song, that we all thought it was the greatest song of the nineties. When they struck the first chords, the place went nuts. It was such a great feeling to just kind of lose it and get lost in the crowd, even though I had never heard the song before.

For those unfamiliar with Ben Lee, he is an Australian, Buddhist, acoustic rocker. So the concert was all about optimism, beauty, love, and all around good vibrations. The thing is, the guy is so damn charismatic that you can't help but get into the spirit of his music. The last song of his regular set was "Catch My Disease" which was simply amazing.

For the encore, he a call and response activity with the audience. Then, the lead singer of Rooney joined him onstage to do a song they wrote together. Finally, Ben Lee and his backup band left it all on stage with a great performance of "We're All In this Together." This is one of the best shows I've seen in a long time.