I'm sorry, I can't hear you, I've got Bob Mould in my ears
The show on Tuesday was great.We ended up getting to Neumos rather early because there was some confusion as to what time the show actually started. The website said 8pm and the tickets said 9:30. We decided that it would be in our best interest to arrive somewhere in between, so we showed up around 9pm. We'd never been to Neumos before so we had no idea what we were in for. When we first got there we wandered upstairs and promptly got lost. I'm sure there's people who go there all the time who wonder how in the hell someone can get lost there, but we did. Eventually we figured it all out and made our way down to the floor. There were hardly any people there at that point so we just stood around talking and listening to the 80's music they were playing. At Neumos there's this mural on the wall behind the stage and it's basically a view of the room from the stage with this big freaky clown face peering out. I was starting to get rather concerned that I was actually in a cheesy 80's horror movie and that the clown was going to come off the wall and go on some kind of murderous rampage. It didn't help either the first time I went to the bathroom and walked in and it was pitch black before I turned the corner. Yeah, freaky.
Eventually people started filling in an by 10pm the opening band came on stage. Needless to say I don't have a single good thing to say about them, so I won't. I'm not even going to bother mentioning their name. Shawn and I decided it would be best to go back upstairs and find somewhere to sit away from the loud annoying music.
Finally that trainwreck was over and we decided to head back down to the floor. We decided it would be best to stay at the back of the room because we didn't want to be too close to the speakers, and the floor was a wee bit elevated back there, and since we're kinda on the shorter side we didn't have to strain to see the stage.
Bob Mould finally took the stage at 11pm (half an hour after my normal bedtime might I add) and started the show off right with some Sugar songs from Copper Blue. He then went into some of his new stuff from Body of Song which honestly translated quite well live. I was ever so slightly concerned as there's a bit more electronic undertones to it, but it ended up being some of the best stuff he did all night. He also went into some old Husker Du stuff, which really got the crowd excited. I feel as though I got to see three bands in one at that show. It was great to hear a Sugar song and then a Bob Mould solo song and then a Husker Du song. It was a great experience. And he played Hoover Dam. I was terribly happy. He finally ended the night, after coming out for a second encore with 'Man on the Moon'.
As Shawn and I walked out of there we became aware of how badly our ears were ringing. I can't even explain it, but the ringing was so loud. Honestly, I hadn't noticed that it was any more loud than any other show I'd been to. Shawn said he could tell right away. We were stupid and didn't get ear plugs even though we'd talked about it numerous times. Our ears were still ringing when we fell into bed well after 1am. In fact the ringing was still there the next day, I swear I thought my hearing would never go back to normal and that I'd done permanent damage. Thankfully things seem to be getting better today, when I woke up there was only a slight ringing and my ears don't feel as if there is a bubble in them. I swear, I couldn't hear my boss talking to me from the hall outside my office yesterday, but I could hear the bubbles in my soda perfectly. It was strange.
Anyway, we had a great time. Thank you Bob Mould for a great show!
