mixed bag
by Rob on 9/18/23The Wellmont Theater - MontclairRating: 3 out of 5The night was a mixed bag. The Wellmont Theater is tight, so I spent the evening squished in my seat with two large men on each side of me with almost no leg room. But the theater was packed, so they sold a lot of tickets. The opening acts of Fastball and Tonic were good, I only knew their hits, but they played all their songs well and they both sounded good.
However, the Gin Blossoms suffered from a bad mix. I don't know if their lead singer has his vocals turned down because he doesn't sing well anymore, or was having an off night, or the engineers weren't doing a good job, but I could barely hear his vocals. Also, one guitar player was much louder than the other. The weird mix led to a very mushy kind of sound.
Unfortunately, the crowd at the show was completely dead, typical of audiences nowadays. Almost everyone was on their phones, on setlist.fm to see how many more songs until they could leave, or on Facebook, Instagram, work emails, or texting (and no, I wasn't spying on people, thy were holding their phones up in my line of vision, it was hard to miss). But of course, there was plenty of chatter, as loud conversations were happening all around me as the band they paid to see was performing. There was hardly any applause of cheering, almost no dancing or getting into the songs. The crowd was so lifeless that I felt bad for the band. After the Gin Blossoms performed their biggest hit "Hey Jealously"the crowd scrambled for the exits, despite the fact that the band had 2 more songs to go. At the end the place which had been packed was about half empty.
So a poor mix and a bad crowd tainted the evening, but the bands were good overall.
