Last week on April 19th, 2008 the Honda Civic Tour played through Austin, Texas at Stubb's. Stubb's is an interesting venue, a Bar-B-Q restaurant with a backyard amphitheater which boasts of a general admission of about 2,100 and towards the end of the event the crowd was brimming towards the main entrance gates.
I was there to see the headlining band as I had suspected most others were as well. So it was absolutely surprising to see how excited and "into the band" the crowd was for opening group, Phantom Planet. Phantom Planet was introduced to me as a surf-rock band a few years ago and I was never one to appreciate the Beach Boys so I quickly wrote them off. Before the concert the only song familiar to me was "California" from the band's second album, The Guest. The band found mainstream success with "California" as the theme song for the television show The O.C..
I didn't have the opportunity to secure a set list before the event and all their music was new to me so the only songs that stood out for me were the last 2, "Do The Panic" and "California". Their performance though was truly memorable. One could truly feel the passion in their performance. Right before "Do The Panic" came on the crowd began yelling for their favorite tune, "California". I'm almost certain that I was the only one in the crowd that didn't know the lyrics to song. It was obviosly rewarding for the band to see everyone singing along. The front man, Alex Greenwald managed to persuade the crowd into crowd surfing him towards the back of the amphitheater where the band later signed autographs.
Not only was Phantom Planet able to captivate the crowd I also observed Panic At The Disco tucked away on the side stage singing and dancing along to their set. They conquered the audience and set the bar high for the following bands. Sorry Eva but Motion City Soundtrack didn't rock it like Phantom Planet.
So how does this tie into my electronic / house music blog. Well it actually doesn't but I did manage to hit the band up with several copies of Grooving Like a MuthaF^!*@. Not sure they'll dig it though. When they're not rocking on stage they actually jam to Jay Z, DJ Shadow, the Beatles and Bach.
The line up for the band during the concert:
- Alex Greenwald — lead vocals, guitar
- Sam Farrar — bass guitar, backing vocals
- Darren Robinson — guitar, backing vocals
- Jeff Conrad — drums
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