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Niagara Falls, NY- Well the show began with little fanfare. People shuffled in and out, eagerly awaiting the arrival of Aaron Lewis, the front man for Staind. The lights dimmed and about twenty minutes later, there appeared the man of the night. What was his agenda? To make a concert hall into a huge living room where you could hang out with your dorky brother as he tried to show you all of his new discoveries as far as his favorite guitar chords/songs goes. The result, an awkward evening where bad musical taste and good talent went awry.
I’ll give it to Lewis that he has a great voice, if not a little monotonous, yet distinguishable and a very wide range. He came out very non – pretentiously in a t-shirt, pants, sneakers, and cap, bantering the crowd a bit, providing a disclaimer that he was just getting over a cold…and that’s exactly where he left many of his fans, in the cold.
He was more interested in the sound of his own voice spitting out absurdities such as, ”I don’t practice. Practice is for pussies,” and “ I have ADD,” and “I’m pussy whipped,” than playing the songs that his fans had come in search of. I’m not easily taken advantage of, and neither were his fans. They came to hear Staind and what they left with was a horrible smorgasbord of Reo Speedwagon, Neil Diamond –“Love on the Rocks” which actually sounded pretty good, to a lot of unfulfilled requests because he would try to play a song to appease a fan, but realized that he didn’t know it. Examples would be, “She Fuckin’ Hates Me,” “Dazed and Confused” (which he screachingly mocked), Weezer, and hideous versions of Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” and “Rockin in the Free World,“ to which the crowd basically asked him to stop. He knew that he was blaspheming Young as well, so I wonder what he was trying to prove? Oh, and I have to state that he covered NIN’s “Hurt” in a very calibrated way – note, Cash has the only right to cover this song, dead or alive.
The fans were screaming for Staind songs, but he told them that they’d have to wait until the end…the end of what? It seems that he was more into the banter, and less into the music. It took him forty-five minutes to play his first six songs…and no, they were not seven minutes long. He seemed to be more focused on talking, yet he paused during one of his songs while a couple to his left were laughing, and later on, he harangued the people to his left for talking during his performance. He tried to come across as funny, but he was mainly arrogant and self absorbed throughout the night.
For those who came to rock, they were monumentally disappointed. Granted this was an acoustic show, it lacked the heart and spirit needed to satisfy the audience. I know that Aaron could do better, and have to wonder if that cold he was getting over impacted his less than stellar performance. In fact, Aaron Lewis said it best when he declared , “I’ve already wasted a lot of everyone’s time.” And Aaron, that may have been your truest statement of the night.
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