[ATTENDED: April 26, 2018] Rituals of Mine
Rituals of Mine was a band I hadn’t heard of. They were opening on the co-headlining Afghan Whigs/Built To Spill tour. I don’t know why Built to Spill played this one-off, solo headlining show in Asbury Park, but I was super thrilled to see them alone. I do really like Afghan Whigs, but it didn’t seem like a double bill I wanted to attend. Rituals of Mine came along with Built to Spill to Asbury Park.
I looked up Rituals of Mine and learned that they used to be called the worst band name ever: Sister Crayon. They even released an album as Sister Crayon and have since re-released it as Rituals of Mine.
Before the band came out, the stage was covered with drums. And Rituals of Mine’s drummer was off to the left. When the lights dimmed, a strobe light started flashing in the bass drum, which was kind of cool.
It turns out that Rituals of Mine is a duo(or maybe sometimes a trio), with our show having Terra Lopez the singer and Adam Pierce the drummer.
This was my first time at House of Independents and I have to say that the sound in the place is amazing. Very clear and perfect. Unless you stand right where I was which was up against the stage. I didn’t expect to get so close, but I was there pretty early so I was literally touching the stage. The house speakers were basically behind me. So for Rituals of Mine, I literally could not hear the music or the vocals.
All I could hear was the drums. Which is not a very interesting, even if the singer is dancing up a storm. Most of the songs I couldn’t really hear her at all, and she had a loud voice.
Terra Lopez was full of energy and passion. She was in constant motion. And the light show was set up primarily as a strobe show, so she looked very cool moving around, flinging her hair everywhere.
She also came very close to those of us in the front–kind of uncomfortably so. There was a monitor in front of me so she never actually got close to me, but the guy next to me she actually leaned on his shoulder and sang to the girls behind him (they were huge fans who knew all the words).
It was kind of cool having the singer really close to us, but I really just didn’t enjoy the set all that much.
And that made me feel bad when half was through the show she said she was so grateful for the energy of the crowd and how we made her feel so good. And then she told us that today was the anniversary of her dad’s death. I felt bad.
But during that song, she sang a bit without the microphone and she sounded amazing. What a voice she has.
Pierce was too close to me as well, and I found him kind of hard to look at (he was also really loud being so close to me.
So, overall Rituals of Mine is one of my least favorite opening acts I’ve seen, but more than 90% of that is because of where i was standing. I have literally no idea what the music sounded like in the rest of the theater.
So, be very mindful about getting too close to the stage. The view is great but the audio totally suffers.
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