The! Matthew Good concert! Was! Amazing!

And because it was my first concert EVER, I must document and share it with you. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a camera. We called ahead, they said, “no cameras” and apparently, I am one of those goody-goody concert rules followers (mostly because I was like, well, if they say, no, I better not, LEST THEY CATCH ME AND CUT OFF MY HANDS!), so I didn’t. And then when we got there EVERY SINGLE AUDIENCE MEMBER had a camera, I swear. Not cool, Empire Theatre! But it’s probably for the best because if I’d had a camera, I’d have watched the entire concert through the lens and that’s not what concerts are for. Unless you are a professional concert photographer or something.

I went to the concert with my mom because we are like the Gilmore Girls except way more awesome. But because people can be such judgmental jerks about being BFFs with your mom and I didn’t want to deal with the looks, I told anyone who asked that she was my older girlfriend instead.

The seats were amazing. Six rows from the front on the right side (aisle seat FTW!), and while I didn’t bring a camera, I DID bring a notepad so I could write out the setlist. Which I did. But I also ended up writing commentary about the concert WHILE I WAS AT IT. It was like ConcertsWithoutPity or something. Who does that? Apparently I do that. So I’m going to share my notes with you to make all that scribbling worth it. If you click the pictures, you will be directed to their flickr page, where you can read photo notes about every single thing I actually wrote, if you’re interested. You know you are.

(FYI: I ripped all the pages out of the book to scan them and got them mixed up, so I think the songs are out of order after a certain point, but oh well.)

That’s not a Motorola advertisement. I just had a Motorola notebook. Anyway, that was my first observation of the evening, written while The Spades played (ETA: The Spades were great). My first STUPID observation of the evening, but whatever. I was stunned by the First Time Concertness of it all. Loud? At a plugged concert? GET OUTTA HERE. I shared it with my mom because if you can’t share your stupid observations with your mother, who can you share them with? Obviously, she knows and appreciates that I’m a foul-mouthed Rory Gilmore. I debated putting this one up on my blog because of the swear, but then I realized if you times that word by 84, you have the number of instances it pops up in Cracked Up to Be and now you know.




First songs: Champions of Nothing, A Single Spark Explosion (whoops, apparently I have spent since last October thinking this song was called A Single Spark Explosion, how embarrassing), Odette, Weapon, The Devil’s in Your Details and HELLO TIME BOMB. Hello Time Bomb!! Matt noted this was the first Hello Time Bomb no one stood up for (I think maybe the formality and coziness of the theatre kept everyone sitting, because they totally enjoyed the song). You might notice that there is a frowny face by Weapon. This is because the two empty seats in the middle of our row got filled at that point. We all had to get up, shuffle out and let the latecomers in. In the middle of WEAPON! Concert starts at eight, people!

I know. I am so unforgiving.

Avalanche. For some reason I decided if Champions of Nothing got played, Avalanche wouldn’t, so I was thrilled to hear it. Why the frowny face again? Because those people that showed late? Decided TO LEAVE THEN! I had to get up in the middle of AVALANCHE! I had “jerks!” written there to express my annoyance, but I scribbled it out because I started thinking maybe they had a family emergency, in which case, I would be the jerk for calling them jerks. Oh, Catholic guilt complexes.





Born Losers was AMAZING. Definitely one of my favourite Matt Good songs and it just exploded to life with the band. Everyone stood up for Load Me Up, and then Put Out Your Lights came on. Both were excellent.

Do you know how many days leading up to the concert please play Blue Skies Over Bad Lands was my mantra? Many. I wanted to hear this song so badly, I can’t even tell you. There’s a blog entry in the archives devoted to this song, that’s how much I love it. I think it is my favourite Matt Good song of all time, in fact.

… So it just figures when the first notes struck up, I turned to my mom and said, “I know this but I don’t what it is!” In my defense, I think my brain snapped. I wanted to hear it so bad that when I finally did, I JUST COULDN’T COPE. But rest assured, when I realized…

I was able to stop being beyond excited for five seconds to write, “stfu ppl behind me.” Ah, what I pleasantly passive-aggressive concert-goer I am.





Blue Skies Over Bad Lands so stunned everyone by the time it was done that there was a pause before the applause. I was so thrilled, I was still writing about it when the next songs played, Black Helicoper and I’m a Window (both excellent–everyone stood for I’m a Window). It was also here that I noted the curly haired guitarest was both “A+” and “hot.”





I really wanted to hear the newer material, so I basically lucked out for this show. 99% Of Us Is Failure was incredibly powerful with the band. The keyboardist was amazing. After it was finished, it was acoustic time. I was crossing my fingers for Generation X-Wing, but got Apparitions instead. I really can’t complain! My first Matt Good show included the song I was obsessed with during my tween years. I honestly can’t think of being 12 without thinking about the Apparitions music video and how sad I was for the janitor (it ~*emotionally scarred me*~). He went acapella near the end and it was very intense.





Three encores! We were a very spoiled crowd. I suspected Giant would be the first song. The dude behind me was screaming for it. And then Matt Good walked back onto the stage and… Giant! This song is truly high school, just so you know. There’s something energetic and youthful and COMPLETELY AMAZINGLY DARK AND CYNICAL about it and if you write YA novels you should probably listen to this a few times or you’re doing yourself a disservice as a writer and shame on you. SHAME! I’m serious.





Everything is Automatic was awesome. The audience was encouraged to sing the chorus. I didn’t. It was better for everyone that way, believe me. Not that they would’ve heard me, but on the off chance that they could, I didn’t want to be responsible for any ear bleeding. I am responsible for enough things as it is, like ruining my sister’s wedding.





And ending with She’s in it for the Money, which I was dying to hear with the band. It was incredible, and the pure white lighting that went along with it gave me chills. I kept making notes on the lighting throughout, like, “excellent use of yellow and blue during the fifth bar of song X.” I think this might make me a big geek?

Matt himself was a great performer–clever, funny and entertaining. He bantered with the audience, which made for some moments full of lulz. The band was fantastic too. They were extremely comfortable with each other (at least it seemed) and really brought the new material alive and did the old material justice with their collective talent. It was a fantastic show.

… And that was my first concert ever!

I had a great time (obviously) and I’m pretty tired. Watching people rock out is exhausting, you know! Probably it is even more exhausting than being the people who are doing the actual rocking out. I’m sure if you asked Matt Good that–or really, ANY live peformer–they would probably agree with that assessment and go so far as to say their own tiredness could not hold a candle to mine etc.

SO. The short version, for those of you who couldn’t read this long and (future) Pulitzer Prize winning blog entry:

It says great night. I know it looks like GREET RIGHT but whatevers, you try writing in a darkened theatre after you’ve just seen a really awesome concert. IT’S NOT EASY! But also you should greet right, too. That’s an important social skill to have. Never say “goodbye” when you mean “hello.” How embarrassing! Greet right and stay in school, kids!