Before you nitpick: This was for a review column, thus the lack of paragraphing.
Matchbox Twenty are a band with a career spanning over ten years, with countless top 40 singles and high-charting albums, so a lot was to be expected when they played the Vector Arena in April.
Thirsty Merc opened for them, and they were pretty good. I had seen them a couple of years ago, and they have made huge progress in their stage performance and sound, I was very tempted to go out and buy their album. The lead singer (sorry, I don’t know his name and CBF googling right now) is so talented, playing guitar and keyboard. Maybe i’m just easily ‘wowed’. Then they finished, obviously, and we waited for the headliners to take the stage. During the show I took loads of notes (who does that?) but you have to understand that I have the worst memory, I only just manage to remember my best friends’ birthdays, and I wanted to make it absolutely certain that I didn’t miss anything. However, Matchbox were quite unforgettable, cliche, yeah. You may be getting frustrated (I am) that I constantly write nice things about whatever I write about, but there’s no point in denying that Matchbox 20 were one of the best bands I have ever seen live, & i’ve been to a fair few shows in my life. To begin with, Rob Thomas had extremely polished vocals, every note was crystal clear and he’s, what, 39 years old? He’s still hot. Shut up. The thing I enjoyed most about the show was all the ‘rule breaking’ that occured. Mothers who attended with their 12 year old daughters must have been shocked when Rob said the “F” word. But the plain fact is that there is nothing they could do about it, unless they wanted to go Tana Umaga on their asses. I say Evs, get over it, watch some clips of Mindless Self Indulgence on Youtube, then you’ll be shocked. But the big tough persona that Rob Thomas put on didn’t really buy for me, especially when he said that their piano sounded like “ass”. At one point during the show, Rob also did the whole “light up your cellphones” thing, that has slowly taken over the traditional lighting of the lighters in packed out venues, but cellphones are so pretty! It also proved a point that no matter the rules, chicks are going to stick phones down their tops anyway. The actual set was great, they played all the favourites such as 3am, Unwell and Disease, which I still have in my head at this very moment. They also played Let’s See How Far We’ve Come, the first single off their latest album, Exile on Mainstream, however, with each gig there are always going to be the negatives, and maybe i’m just nit-picking but here are the downers about Matchbox. I was really upset when, the next day, I looked at the videos I had taken and discovered that their sound was not the best. The drum kit was turned up so loud, it was louder than everything else which is really sad as the guitars could not be heard that clearly and the overall sound was distorted, obviously. 7UP costed $5 per bottle, plus they took the bottle lids off you so that you couldn’t ‘hurt’ anyone else with it. Personally, it’s a bit pathetic if you get K.O’d by a bottle lid. And last but not least: I didn’t know the words to the majority of the songs. Make sure you really like the band before you go, otherwise you’ll feel like a dick when everyone else is singing along and you’re not. My mum paid for the ticket (thanks mum!) so, as a struggling student, I wasn’t going to say no to free stuff. Overall, the show was pretty good and I would definitely recommend you go next time they’re here.
Date published: TBA
Tags: 20, 2008, auckland, ausm, AUT, Debate, jess, jessums31, live, magazine, matchbox, show, twenty
