Casa De Morrill

This weekend was Big Spring Jam 9. Having been around Huntsville since the first one, I must admit that it really has improved since the first year and actually has some pretty good bands come and play now, rather than just local bands. This year had a better than usual lineup, so Sean and I decided to head down Friday and Saturday evening to see some of the bands.

Friday, we went to see Better Than Ezra and Days of the New. Days of the New was wholeheartedly disappointing to me. I had expected a group of musicians to come out on the stage and play rock on acoustics. Instead, I got a group of guys that could play some decent music but worked too hard at making their acoustical guitars sound like electric guitars. Why not just buy electrics? On top of that, we had to wait like a good 30 minutes longer than we were supposed to to listen to Days of the New and as far as I can tell a good 10 minutes of that was the band standing at the side of the stage smoking cigarettes. How laim.

Better Than Ezra, thankfully, was much, much better than that. They started they’re set just about on time and did a great job. They talked to the audience and joked and encouraged the audience to cheer and such. My favorite part of the whole concert, though, was when the lead singer got to the audience participation part. He said, “We’re going to have some audience participation now. If you know anybody here that knows the chords to this song, then point at them.” Lots of people started to point at various members of the crowd. He went through most of them, asking them if they really knew the chords and most of them said no. But, one guy said that he really knew the chords. So, the lead singer pulls him up to the stage, hands him his guitar and says to start playing. The fan got to play the song with the rest of the band while the lead singer just sang. That guys dream most likely came true when he got to do that. The whole band was really friendly and it was a great song. The rest of the concert was quite good.

There are a couple of things that I look for in a good band/singer. One, they perform just as well on a live stage as they do on their CDs. Two, they treat their fans with respect and appreciation. If it wasn’t for their fans, bands wouldn’t be where they are. Good bands understand this and treat their fans accordingly. Better Than Ezra falls under both of these requirements for a good band. They sound terriffic live and they are really great to their fans, which earns them my respect.