Porcupine Tree
The Incident
Fantastic show.
They opened with movements i and ii of "The Incident". It made the Coheed fans a little antsy, I think, because it wasn't instant frenetic gratification, but once PT kicked into the meat of "The Blind House" I saw them start to come around. Perfect way to start, too; "Blind House" ends with two hard off-chords and right on beat Steve goes "Hello" and they kill the lights. It was glorious.
Rest of the concert was just as good. Went through pretty much the entirety of "The Incident", breaking up the movements with stuff pulled in from In Absentia and Deadwing. After the intro, Steve was gracious enough to thank the Coheed fans for welcoming them, since PT was, after all, "in the way of Coheed's performance". (So many people had no idea who they were at all, jeeze.) He also said "since we're both playing sets of similar length, there isn't quite enough time for our usual two hour . . . excess." I laughed. I heard several exclamations of surprise when Steven's acoustic came out; his strings are drawn out at angles to the bottom of the guitar body (a fact I had learned previously).
I did sense a small bit of malcontent because while PT is one of the best bands to grace the progressive rock genre with their (read: Steven Wilson's) contributions, what they are not is a show band. They come to make music and play music and make you think about what you're listening to. They're not there to jump around the stage and knock into each other and headbang. They're laid-back and chill, and though they can and do get hard and heavy they don't feel the need to overplay it. My friend complained to me later that all of Steven's solos were boring because either Steve stood stock-still at the front of one side of the stage with maybe a few pop-and-locks on some licks or he would back up and sort of groove to himself a bit, but it wasn't anything flashy.
And on some level I can understand that. I mean, if you come to see a show and you aren't given a show, that's a bit of a let-down.
But then again, if you have no idea who the band is and you expect to see them put on a show, shame on you. Steve may not have impersonated Yngwie Malmsteen with his solos, but what he played was tasteful and complex (and so was John Wesley—although admittedly John grooves a bit more).
Anyway. Really great show, played a bunch of fun favorites from the two albums I mentioned, got a huge crowd response when he introduced "Trains" (thank you Memphis PT fans for representing), we sang along with pretty much anything we knew, it was great.
After they headed off, I broke away from the front to hit the vendors because I knew it was going to be a hellacious crush of people come the end of the Coheed concert, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to do anything at that point. I gave up my spot at the front, sure, but at that point my ears were sort of thick and I really wanted to sit down. Standing for several hours on end without moving around is really irritating after a while, in more locations than one.
Plus I hadn't heard much of Coheed & Cambria beyond that song of theirs on Rock Band, and I wanted to give them a fair shot at getting listened to before I judged their live performance.
