alas, seth cohen was MIA

status check - interesting
background ambiance - inflatable mattress, well, inflating ...

god forbid i leave you without something to read during your workdays ... reliable - that's the kind of service you've come to expect - and i've come to provide - with victoria publishing. we aim to please.

so. sooooo, even. interesting experiences today all around. in this episode, our heroine embarks on a search with her punk brother and a touring guitarist, basks in the sunshine of boston common, misses bonding with a "rock star" over our mutual love of caffeinated goodness by five minutes and finally realizes the shift in her attitude about a long-loved band. to top it all off, she winds up sharing probably too much information about it all with her readership.

yep. i was busy. i suppose it would be smartest to start at the beginning of the list and work my way through. i have a feeling this will be a long one. prepared? feel free to grab a drink or something before you start. i'll be here when you get back.

ok, we're all set now? let's go.

after meeting up with my brother (always a high point to any boston trip) and enjoying vegetarian goodness (delightedly per normal), i thought i'd be smart and find the roxy ahead of time, as i had never been there before. figured having the navigationally savvy tom with me would be a bonus. except for the fact that the roxy is one of the most discreetly labeled places i've encountered. which means we walked right by it without realizing.

pondering our next course of action (and cursing tremont for turning sharply at a corner - the corner of tremont and tremont? honestly now ...), we encounter a guy wearing a very gavin degraw-esque newsboy-like cap, looking confused. he asks if we know where the roxy is ... and he joins our search party.

through chatting, i learn that the cap is there for good reason. he's gavin degraw's guitarist and he's trying to get to the roxy for soundcheck. i laugh inside, temporarily banish my cartman voice and instead ask how the touring's been going and whatnot. very nice guy. ultimately, we turn in a complete block and get back to just before where we all met up - lo and behold, the roxy's right there. whoops. he asks if we're coming in, i decline, since i'm sure my brother wouldn't have been keen on joining a pop-rock fest. instead i get to introduce tom to honeydew iced coffee and we chat while lying on the grass in the common during a glorious early autumn day. works for me.

so after leaving the brother type and enjoying dinner, i head to the roxy. since i don't want to be there too early and just stand around waiting for the doors to open, i decide to get coffee. i walk back up tremont, right into an unrecognized or unacknowledged walk-by from the averi guys, get my starbucks and return to the line of gavin degraw fans that stretches down two full blocks. girls in front of me freak mere minutes later when their friends arrive and announce that they just met gavin at starbucks, where he was "so normal, just getting a cup of coffee. he's hotter in person." i snicker (see beth? i can snicker, too).

ultimately i get into the venue, get the first of a couple of $7.50 drinks (which made me think how right dennis was that night at metronome) and enjoy the show. order: tristan, averi, walter, gavin. for sake of not going back and forth between the performance list, i'm mixing up the order of my descriptions. c'est la vie - just figured i'd provide warning.

tristan - great. very short set (five songs, i believe? "evaporated," "guest check," "toxic," "love love love," "better"), but she was on and i'm definitely enoying her performance. people next to me are rude during the set, but that is their problem. i'm just singing along.

walter - when a tall professional basketball player starts busting out a cover of "she will be loved," he's got my attention. the best part is that he would make maroon 5 proud. i'm quite impressed with his set, very impressed with his voice.

(did you notice that, after the first paragraph of this story, i switched from past to present tense? that, dear reader, is an attempt to make sure you're right there with me in the reading process. see? i want us to be on the same page here.)

gavin - i don't quite know what to do with myself. it's my third time seeing him perform, although i did leave about three songs in back in june. i'm not expecting much of anything - other than an early departure from the roxy. get to beat everyone else in the coatcheck line.

instead? i find that a personality has sprung up suddenly. he's mixing things up, he's adding riffs - it's no longer just listening to the "chariot" album really loud with a bunch of people around. i'm actually enjoying myself. i'm even singing along.

but i'm also feeling very out of place. because, for whatever reason, attending a gavin degraw concert is, i realize, much like winning a walk-on part on a wb drama. it's just this complete package of pretty gloss. the lights are lovely - heavy on blues and purples - and gavin somehow seems to be in very close proximity to you, even from a spot quite far back. the band tends to move right from one song to the next, and the audience is just singing along to every single word. waving arms back and forth, dancing along ... and the audience is composed of the lovely beautiful young people. everyone who wanted to be on "the o.c." or "one tree hill" is at this show and they're all rock-casual chic. abercrombie guys galore. one girl? wide-necked black three-quarter length sleeve shirt. red straps underneath, a sash to match around her waist. wearing capri cargos with camoflauge print, stillettos AND a beret. ???

i don't want to be an o.c. girl. although if adam brody happened to be here, i'd be cool with further ruining seth cohen's relationship with summer and later discussing rilo kiley or bright eyes. but he's not, so i'm just feeling awfully old. i focus on singing, doing my thing and saying hi to the people i run into - including a hi-bye conversation with chad that i begin and quickly end (the end part comes from tonight's realization. see below).

which leads me to averi's set. they perform very well. they're all locked into the same mentality and are definitely into the extended jam, which is a good call. stu and michael wail away and are fantastic (but then again, they always are). chris keeps the bass anchors steady, while matt's typical matt - just damn good.

chad's appears to have decided to gradually move away from the rhythm guitarist/singer role to the frontman role. in previous sets i've seen lately, he's gone guitarless for a couple of songs. tonight it's about a third of the set. i'm still not into it - less walking around stage, more playing, please. and do NOT do the "reach out and touch the hands of adoring fans trying to grasp at you in any manner possible." i'm laughing hysterically when that occurs.

his singing is pretty on tonight - the middle earth cold voice is long gone. my jaw drops when he starts teasing silk's "freak me" during the final song ... then i'm signing along laughingly. there's something about seeing chad perrone sing "i wanna lick you up and down til you say stop" that defies explanation. funny as hell and he knows it.

"despondent" is not in the setlist, but "flutter" is back - and he remembers the lyrics this time. bonus. "for better or worse" is sounding better each time i hear it ... something that leaves me feeling perplexed. i love the song, but i want to hate it sheerly on the basis of principle. or, rather, sheerly on the basis that i wish the change that prompted the song never took place.

whenever i've heard that song lately, it prompts me to reflect for a moment, but it really gets me for some reason tonight.

***insight into my mixed-up mind about to commence.***

while pleased to see averi doing well, i've just been really angry/frustrated/disillusioned/etc. with what i've seen over the past ten months or so. and most of it has been prompted by chad. the other guys have always been nice (for the most part) when i had the opportunity to say hi to them, but chad was the one band member i spoke without outside of the whole band thing. he was nice, funny, thoughtful - and it seemed like he wanted to get to know you when he spoke with you. he'd write emails to you to say thank you for coming to a show because it meant a lot to him to see you there.

and to top it all off, you realized that averi was the first band you were really following as they grew. you knew they'd be able to avoid the traps that other bands encounter on the way up.

he's changed - and the band's changed with him. the rest of the guys (again, for the most part) are still very nice, but chad's trying to do this whole frontman thing, rather than being a member of averi. and it seems like they're letting him. he's getting full of himself and now you realize that to him, you're just another person who will go to the shows and sing along, but also one more person to say hi and give a one-armed hug to before moving on to the next person.

now don't go saying it - i know. the more fans you have, the more people who come to a show hoping for an opportunity to say hello. the more photo requests (amusingly, with all the shows i've attended, i've never had a posed photo taken with anyone in the band), the more autograph requests, the more demand. i know this and acquiesce that some compassion needs be present from potential cynics. but there's a difference.

there's no denying the autobiographical aspect of "for better or worse" - "the person i was could go by another name, he's a stranger to me now." for a long time, the fact that those lyrics were accurate just pissed me off. i wanted him to go back - to be the nice guy i remembered and to sing for the near-overwhelmingly kind band of five unassuming guys i first heard years ago (although they could maintain the current musical growth and development).

tonight, however, i realized that i'm not angry about it anymore, just sad about the whole damn thing.

i'd love to be able to just go to an averi show, rock out and sing along, then say, "hey, cool" and not have some of the memories i associate with each song. a large piece of me wishes i'd found another band to play the benefit concert two and a half years ago, that i'd hadn't learned anything more about chad than what i would see onstage. i could have seen the band in boston at some point anyway, right? i wouldn't have had to watch it all shift.

"and i can't change things, i can't change anything, but if i could, maybe i would and maybe that's wrong."