Vol. 4 Episode 47.5

My Bloody Valentine at The Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St Paul MN on 11-1-2013.

Again, I took my father-in-law to see this concert. I got the tickets on the preorder day thanks to my local radio station, 89.3 TheCurrent, who clued me in to the password to get the tickets early. I thought that it was strange that there was no opening act. This concert was not sold out by any means.

We showed up at the venue a little bit late. We took a peak at the merch booth. They were selling mainly t-shirts along with the album that I already had. After that we were trying to figure out why we couldn’t get up to our seats the first song started. I asked why the balcony seating was closed off. The security guy I asked just said that it was changed to standing room only. I can only assume that meant that they didn’t sell enough tickets for the concert to allow for the balcony to be opened up. So, all seats were converted to standing room only. When we went in I looked up and saw that all of the balcony seating was covered. There were some folding chairs available. I had never been to a concert at a big venue on standing room only. I have always had an upper view so I could see what was happening on the stage. I like the upper deck view and, after this concert, will always try to get seating in the future.

We were late so if there was an opener we missed it completely. The first song from the group started playing as we walked in to the auditorium. The first song from the set was Sometimes from the album Loveless. It is really insane how loud such a quiet soft song could be. I was glad that I got my ear plugs in before I went into the auditorium. It was so loud that my clothing was flapping in the music. There was so much guitar switching happening that there was always dead time between songs. There were five members playing music. Off to the left there was a vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist. Next was the lead female vocalist/guitarist. Then there was the bassist. And, Kevin Shields, the leader of the group, off to the right. In the middle behind everyone was the drummer.

They played a lot of my favorites and a few B-sides. They played New You from their latest album MBV. I love what the bass guitar sounds like in the studio version but here the bass was completely lost in the din of noise. The beauty of the song still remained though so I still enjoyed the song. About half way through the set they played the most recognizable song Only Shallow. The song was so loud and distorted that I didn’t recognized it until the vocals started. I still don’t think that the music was ruined but it certainly gave a new light to the idea of loud. The B-sides were Honey Power (from Tremelo EP), Cigarette In Your Bed (from You Made Me Realise), Thorn (from You Made Me Realise), and You Made Me Realise was the last track played in the set. This last track toward the end of the song was just a solid wall of sound blasting. The song just basically stopped on one note and the band just played as loud as they could for a couple of minutes before going back in to the rest of the song. It was truly amazing.

At one point the drummer came out from behind the drum set and played guitar with the rest of the members. There was a drum track playing that allowed him to do this. at this point there were five guitars being played. It made such a cool buzzing sound during the song Wonder 2.

This was the loudest concert that I have ever been to. The promoters were handing out earplugs to everyone who entered the concert because they knew that it would be so loud that you would damage your hearing if you didn’t wear them. How’s that for being safe and responsible?

Thanks to My Bloody Valentine for making the stop and thanks to The Roy Wilkins for having them.

Track listing:

Sometimes

I Only Said

When You Sleep

New You

You Never Should

Honey Power

Cigarette In Your Bed

Only Tomorrow

Come In Alone

Only Shallow

Thorn

Nothing Much To Lose

Who Sees You

To Here Knows When

Wonder 2

Soon

Feed Me With Your Kiss

You Made Me Realise

I think that I got the track listing right. I checked with the local paper web site and found that they were missing Thorn. I recorded the concert but it is so loud that it made it hard to differentiate songs from complete and utter distortion overload on the microphone that I was using. You can check out the Startribune track listing here and what they had to say about the concert here.