Buzz

Better Than Ezra

Ok now I’m only two days behind on the blog.  You know, it’s funny.  After I get caught up, nothing will happen all month and this blog will go back to being boring.  I’m working on Day 3 pictures of Voodoo right now.  All I have left to sort through are A Perfect Circle and The White Stripes.  It’s going to be difficult picking favorites there.  I may have to expand the set to 20 pics each instead of my 10 pic limit.  At work today I decided I was going to say a few things about each performance on that artist’s section of the VMX coverage page.  HOPEFULLY this will all be done Monday.  I’m going to bust my ass on this project at work so that I can send a thank you letter off to 360 Media and give them the link.  But enough about that.  On with the Better Than Ezra concert wrap-up:

Better Than Ezra @ Deja Vu 11-07-03
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The band was making the trek back to Monroe from Athens Georgia Friday night for a concert presented by FM 102.  It was a cold and rainy night in Monroe.  The band was about 20 minutes late taking the stage.  The place was packed despite lagging ticket sales early on.  BTE took the stage and began to rock.  After the 2nd song, lead singer Kevin told the crowd that he had a brand new song that he wanted them to hear.  He then broke into Good which had me laughing out loud.  Good was their first hit single from their first album, Deluxe.  They dedicated Special to a group of girls that drove from Athens to see them play in Monroe.  Talk about devoted fans!  Kevin is from Monroe and you could tell he had a lot of fun at the show.  They played all of their hits including Extraordinary, King of New Orleans, Rosealia, and Desperately Wanting.  At one point Kevin started singing I’m sorry Miss Jackson...he did the same exact thing at Voodoo so it didn’t surprise me that much.  When he asked the “fellas” what was cooler than being cool, I yelled out “ICE COLD!” and laughed histarically.  Somehow hearing BTE cover Outkast just hit me in the funny bone.  Even funnier was Kevin saying “You should see Tom (Bass) shake it like a Polaroid picture!” They played a lot of new material that they are tossing around.  Kevin said that they had recorded two performances at the House of Blues for a DVD that is set to be released soon and an album was in the works for the beginning of next year.  During one song, Kevin pointed out that many of the songs that he writes are about people he knew growing up and since he was playing in his hometown those same people were probably in attendance.  After they had played for about an hour and a half, Kevin said they would usually go “backstage” and come out to do an encore but since there was no backstage, it would mean they would have to go out in the cold.  So they just kept on playing as if all the encore crap had happened, we just had to pretend.  He asked the audience for requests but didn’t play anything too interesting.  All in all it was a great show.  Kevin asked who attended Voodoo and got a few cheers.  At the end, he invited everyone to a secret show in Jackson Mississippi the following night.  Having enough of a smokey bar for 2 hours, I promptly left after the show and didn’t stick around to meet the band or get autographs.

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