The Collegian

Issue date: 11/15/04 Section: No Limits

Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett sing and play piano during "Spectacular Views" [Click to enlarge]

Lead guitarist, and red Power Ranger, Blake Sennett rocks on [Click to enlarge]

I usually don't celebrate Halloween. Ever since I was told I couldn't go trick-or-treating I figured Halloween was useless. For eight years I stopped bothering with a costume. But that all stopped this Halloween. I finally had something to do, thanks to my favorite band and yours, Rilo Kiley. They were having a Halloween concert in Los Angeles and I was feeling the road trip itch. So, taking advantage of my dearly departed hair and beard, I bought a loud shirt and became the late Bob Ross. I was set, I had a costume, and I had something to do. Road trip in place, I packed up my '86 Buick LeSabre and set off for Southern California.

The trip itself was six hours, but was worth it. I arrived at the show two hours early to ensure tickets. Luckily, there were plenty of tickets for everyone. Using my aforementioned dearly departed beard, I was able to rapidly age about six months and get into the 21 and over section of the venue, which was considerably less crowded. From there, I sat through three great opening bands.

The most notable of the three had to be Smoosh, which is composed of (get this) two pre-teen girls. Yes, that's right, Smoosh consists of two girls, one 10 and the other 12, and they don't suck. I'd gush more about how awesome they are, but that's for another story and another issue.

After two hours of waiting, Rilo Kiley came on. And to get into the Halloween spirit, everyone was dressed up. The bassist was Mark Twain, the rhythm guitarist was Peter Criss, the drummer was French, and the lead guitarist and lead vocalist were both Power Rangers. Not the new Power Rangers, who have been through about 85 transformations since they first hit the air. I mean the old school, original Power Rangers, which is just awesome.

Now usually, I avoid using superlatives in my articles and reviews, but going against tradition, I'm going to use one twice. This was the greatest show ever, viewed by the worst crowd ever. Rilo Kiley put on a first-rate show. They played the new songs off of their awesome new album "More Adventurous," they mixed in some of their older songs, and they did a piano version of a pop-rock song from their previous album, and they even played another song, dedicated to the city of Los Angeles, that involved every band that was present doing a tap dancing number. That's right, tap dancing.

Rilo Kiley presented all of this awesomeness to us, and the crowd flat out sucked. There's no other way I could put it. And I was afforded a great view of the crowd's suckiness from the raised 21 and over section. The all-ages floor crowd just could not get into the show. After lead singer Jenny Lewis told the story of where and how they got their Power Rangers costumes during a break between songs, the 21 and over crowd started a "Morphin' Time" chant, which was killed after the all-ages crowd didn't pick up on it. But that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was when the trumpet player put down his trumpet during the ending of the last song, and attempted a stage dive which would have been awesome, had it worked. Instead, the all-ages floor parted like the Red Sea and let him fall face first to the ground. (Luckily he was dressed as a football player in full pads, so he came out of it relatively unharmed.) Now, I was about 100 feet from the stage, and I could see him running from the back of the stage to dive into the crowd. Yet the crowd up front apparently was oblivious to this. Like I said, worst crowd ever.

Despite the crowd, the show was still awesome, and well worth me driving 700 miles to celebrate Halloween for the first time in eight years.

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