Todd and the Liars, The Egg, Albany, NY June 9th 2004

Review by Mark Steinberg (Switch to
)
6/10/2004

Todd and the Liars rolled into the Albany New York's nicest venue tonight. The Egg is a giant concrete bowl shaped building that holds a few different performance spaces. The Kitty Carlisle Hart Theatre (980 capacity but there were about 700-800 people at the show) is a very nice sounding room. Most of the performances that take place in this room are either acoustic performances or low volume bands and don't need the kind of sound reinforcement that the Lairs are demanding on this tour. The Mix was very vocal heavy and lacked the bass response that I heard at the show at Turning Stone Casino almost a month and a half ago. The vocals were very loud and very clear, which was nice. But the texture of the music was lost with such a vocal heavy mix. The show tonight was video taped for possible release and this might have been the reason for this type of a mix. I figure they might want a nice clean ambient sound from the room mike channels of the multi-track recording.

The show started off quite strangely as Todd nearly killed one of the camera men who was blocking his path in between Kasim and Jesse's risers, Todd Shoved the guy and looked very upset for a while with the camera jibs being really in his way and in his face!

The crowd was very subdued and sat for the entire performance, the chatter factor was low except for a quartet of morons sitting next to me in the second center section row B who must have had a lot to drink before the show. This one fool was screaming to his buddy "Kurt" who was sitting on the other end of the venue. The others with him also were quite loud and were screaming a bit. As a sound engineer, I often wonder if people really have any idea how loud they are when you are sitting right next to a 250 pound person who is screaming in your ear at a distance of less than 1 foot. I wish people would have a little more courtesy to those around them that want to listen to the show.

Show wise, this one was off to a slow start. They did however get a bit of steam and I think the overall show was pretty good. At first I was thinking, "Todd's never going to release this!" Maybe he won't! The show I saw at turning stone was MUCH better overall. The band was quite tight and they did FLAW, which I hadn't heard at the other two shows I went to. They also did a killer version of "Love Science" Really good stuff. Todd was in his element in the second section of the show and it was pretty funny to hear 500 plus people singing "Lying Ass Mother Fucker", just absolutely hilarious. "Liar" did send one couple sitting in the 6th row center literally running out of the venue never to return. Some of the folks that sponsor the venue I suppose.

An interesting show tonight at a nice venue, it'll be interesting to see if they actually put this out on DVD.


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