So Friday night I went to see Melissa Ferrick at the Double Door, and it was one of the best and worst concerts I’ve ever been to at the same time.
Best because of the performance. Melissa is always really awesome, but she just threw it into another gear Friday. I go to a shitload of concerts, but very rarely do I see someone as on their game as she was. She fuckin’ rocked.
Thus the reason it was one of the worst concerts I’ve ever attended was even more of a waste.
Half the crowd wasn’t even listening, and they were talking so loud that despite the fact that I was only about five feet from the stage, the conversation drowned the music out on some of the quieter songs.
Melissa eventually got so pissed she actually went out into the crowd and stood on the bar at one point, apparently asking for at least a little respect. I’ve never seen a performer do that before, and frankly, I wish she had done it before.
I’ve never seen a crowd that inconsiderate before, even at one of my shows, and I’m a fuckin’ hack compared to her. And these people paid a fucking $15 cover to get in!
I know the Double Door is in the middle of Wicker Park (a highly yuppie-infested area of Chicago) and it was a Friday night, but still, I’ve been to there for several other concerts and have never seen anything even remotely like this.
The one good thing to come out of all this horseshit was that Melissa channeled the anger she felt into her music. She has a song called “North Carolina” (3rd track, but it’s much better live) and she just about spat the first half of the chorus at the fuckers in the back:
Drown out the voices
Drown out the noise
Drow out the bitterness
That I have stored
And there’s really nothing better, in my book, than an artist meeting indifference with an even better performance. The audience at this show will always piss me off, but nothing can erase how good a performance it was.
Anybody got a bootleg?