[ATTENDED: June 19, 2017] Gary Jules
I wasn’t aware that there was an opening act for Barenaked Ladies until I received the email that the show would be moved inside and that Gary Jules would be going on at 7:30. Normally I like to get there for an opening act (I mean we did pay for the act, right?). So I looked up who he was.
If you search Google videos, 8 of the first ten hits are for “Mad World.” This is a cover of the Tears for Fears song (which I really like). Jules’ cover strips everything out of it and makes it really slow and really, really depressing. The original is certainly dark but with the synths it’s more ironically dark.
I listened to one other piece by him and decided that, no I didn’t need to see Jules. And I couldn’t think of a worse opener for the manic intensity of BNL.
So we had a bite downstairs while he played. And when we got upstairs we realized that we should have come for his set because it’s the only way we would have gotten close to the stage.
I don’t know how much we missed, but when we settled in, he played “Mad World.” He explained that it had been used in some TV show and joked that every fourth note he received was a suicide letter. So he said the next song he wrote as a follow up (he never indicated (that I heard) that “Mad World” was a cover, which is kinda cheesy) was for his newborn son. A love letter. When a TV show heard it they decided to use it in a scene where a family has to pull the plug on a terminally ill parent.
So we could choose: loving birthday song or farewell to dead parent song. After hearing it I would also choose dead parent–it is slow and depressing.
It was odd that he himself was so charming and amusing after these songs.
The third and final song that we saw was about drinking, with a rousing chorus that all of the drunks in the audience enjoyed singing along to, but which reminded me so much of every other wise-man-in-a-bar song that I just couldn’t get into it.
So, despite getting stuck in the back, I think it was a wise choice to show up late.
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