After attending a great O.A.R. concert in Bloomington a couple of months before, I really looking forward to a repeat. My sister-in-law Wendy, who works at Butler, was kind enough to stop by the box office the day tickets went on sale and got Nicole and I some great seats.
Unfortunately, there was some confusion about the start time because the Clowes Box Office can’t figure out Daylight Saving Time. The Clowes website has one time, the ticket another, and the O.A.R. website another. We pick what we think is the correct time but arrive about 30 seconds after the O.A.R. starts playing; we missed the opening act (Scratch Track) completely. I hate arriving late. What I hate even more is people in my seat.
People in our seats: The Clowes staff decided not to enforce seating much, if at all. We try to walk into our row and there are more people than seats. We’re not going to the back, so we push our way to our assigned seat and tell the two young ladies there they’ll have to fend for themselves elsewhere (they move forward a couple of rows.) Not a great start to a show you were looking forward to seeing.
So how was the show? Well, pretty good but not great. First of all, it started a bit too early. It was way to bright outside to be in concert mood. Also, the tickets were cheap for students and I think most were seeing O.A.R. for the first time. Bands feed off of crowd energy and vice-versa. The crowd started off somewhat low key. Black Rock, with starts-off with a well-known crowd sing-along, started off with weak audience participation that died before reaching the part where Mark Roberg was supposed to jump back in. I swear a sang solo for a bar. A dude in front of me yelled to the audience “you all are lame!” But he wasn’t singing either.
After that, there was very little audience involvement or interaction until the finale of That Was A Crazy Game Of Poker. The band was still great and delivered a clean and enjoyable performance, but they didn’t have much to work with audience wise. The show seemed somewhat rushed and abbreviated and I thought that was a good thing.
I enjoyed the concert, but not as much as I should have. For the beneift of everyone involved, I hope O.A.R. does not return to Butler University.