Great time!
by SDMoose on 7/15/09Tyson Events Center/Gateway Arena - Sioux CityRating: 5 out of 5The headliner was great, and that's the most important part of the concert to me. Good mix of old and new, interesting spins on older songs...and overall just great. I could tell Dexter was trying to save his voice early on, but he really tore it up toward the end. Great show, great performance.
Unfortunately, the opening bands were mixed. I wasn't familiar with Street Dogs before the show, and after their time on stage (they were up first) I was convinced I was buying a CD. The band was also nice enough to hang out by the merch after the show and give away posters which they'd sign, take pictures, sign CDs, etc.. Nice guys to hang out with, good performance, and a very good punk sound with celtic influences and some very good ballad-type songs. The only thing I'd fault them for is that they tried a little TOO hard to get mosh pits going, but hey...they were trying to do their job and get the crowd hyped.
Alkaline Trio was frankly painful to listen to. They started off OK, sounding like fairly generic punk, but as of the second song I realized that they apparently only knew how to play one song (all of the songs had the same generic punk sound, little to no variation) but they played it loud enough it was hard to notice the mediocre vocals and questionable lyrics. The fact that they were on the stage for a half-hour+ was just annoying - I can only listen to the same mediocre song so many times before I find myself wanting to go hang out by the concessions and forget it's happening. I wasn't the only one either, I was actually having conversations with a girl I didn't know about how bad the Alkaline Trio were and was accompanied by many people in my section booing and trying to voice our desire that they STOP PLAYING. I did stick it out, but in hindsight I would've been better off walking out. I'm told Alkaline Trio puts together some pretty good CDs, but based on that performance I couldn't tell...and the performance makes it unlikely I'll go out of my way to verify that claim. On a side note, there were a few people who showed up in our section, looked like they were in their late teens, and were REALLY into the Trio. You know the kind, eyes closed, heads constantly grooving with the (same) tune, bouncing up and down a little, fists in the air pumping with the beat, obviously really into the music...but I honestly wonder if they weren't "plants" of some sort. They weren't around for the Street Dogs, they didn't come back for the Offspring...and given the quality of the band I have a hard time believing they just came for the opening band. In any event, avoid the Alkaline Trio, at least live. If this concert had been ONLY them it would've gotten Zero or One Star (if Zero wasn't an option), if the Street Dogs hadn't been good I probably would've let the Alkaline Trio drag the overall rating down to a Three or Four Star even though Offspring put on a Five Star show.