Concert Review: The Presidents of the United States of America, Feb. 15-16, 2014, Seattle

Most people probably remember the Presidents of the United States of America as that punky little Seattle band that injected some needed humor into a dark and gloomy music scene when grunge ruled the airwaves. They had a couple of hits with "Lump" and "Peaches" back in the '90s, and then they faded away, never to be heard from again.

Part of that assessment of our intrepid two-hit wonders is true. PUSA enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight, with their self-titled debut eventually going triple platinum. The follow-up album, II, failed to capture the public's imagination in spite of some great music, and following a compilation album of odds and ends, Pure Frosting, the Presidents' term appeared to be over.

I didn't catch up with them again until I heard that Chris Ballew, PUSA's singer and primary songwriter, was trying his hand at children's music, under the name Caspar Babypants. My daughter was a 1-year-old at the time, and I picked up a Caspar CD to see if she'd like it. She did, but Dad enjoyed it just as much! Chris' light-hearted, catchy melodies and his offbeat lyrics about bugs and other animals -- but especially bugs -- reminded me immediately of what always made me smile about PUSA's music.

So I decided to see what the Presidents had been up to since Pure Frosting, if anything. Turns out they'd done three more albums out of the spotlight, and they had a new guitarist on board, with Andrew McKeag stepping in for original member Dave Dederer.

And best of all, they were still active! Well, semi-active, anyway. For the past several years, the band has organized an annual "PUSAfest" in Seattle, with the Presidents headlining a performance on -- when else? -- Presidents Day weekend.

I caught my first PUSAfest in 2013, and it brought back fond memories to hear the songs I knew from the first three records. As a bonus, the new material I heard assured me that Chris and his bandmates hadn't lost any of their charm, wit, or chops. So I got myself caught up on their catalog -- with Freaked Out and Small, Love Everybody, and These Are the Good Times People -- and before I knew it, Chris Ballew had become a huge part of the soundtrack in our home. Caspar Babypants was playing almost constantly for several months, all while I was absorbing these "new" PUSA albums into my system. 

Well, what a treat to find out that for this year's PUSAfest, the band would be rolling out a new album (it was crowdfunded, and I contributed!), and they'd be doing a special "unplugged" set in addition to their usual performance at Showbox at the Market. (That's Pike Place Market, for those of you not familiar with the area. Showbox is right across the street.)

The Saturday performance at Showbox was actually the second of the weekend -- the guys took a trip down to Portland, Oregon, to play for the fans down there the night before. But as we all know, there's no place like home, and Seattle's Silliest didn't disappoint an enthusiastic crowd.

I got to the venue a little late, having worked a long shift that day, and not too interested in hearing the opening acts. I did get there in time to catch about half of the second band's show, and by that point, the place was packed. Showbox has a seating area, but as far as I could see, all the seats were full, so I half-heartedly wandered down to the floor. I was tired from my long day, and I didn't know how much I'd enjoy the show if I had to stand the whole time, being packed in like a sardine among a bunch of people bumping into me all night. (Don't laugh. I'm almost 43. I'm getting too old for this stuff.)

Well, I needn't have worried. When the Presidents took the stage and the hoots rose up from the crowd, I was no longer in any pain. Music cures all ills.

Things did get off to a bit of a rough start for the band, when, during the opening song -- a cover of MC5's "Kick Out the Jams," Chris and Andrew got their cords tangled. "If only we had roadies," Andrew quipped with a smile, as he worked feverishly to undo the snag while Chris and drummer Jason Finn kept playing. (Jason was rock-solid all night, and I love watching him play in his open-hand style -- left hand on the hi-hat and right hand on the snare, rather than crossing over the left on the snare to play the hi-hat with the right. Open-hand playing is something you don't come across very often, and as someone who's spent some time behind a drum kit, I really enjoy seeing it -- all the more so when it's done as well as Jason does it.)

That energetic song set the tone for the evening, and it was Chris who did more than anyone else on stage to keep the energy level cranked up high. Anyone who's seen him perform knows what to expect, but it's still so much fun to watch: He makes exaggerated cartoonish gestures with his tall, gangly, rubbery frame while he's playing; he chatters and jokes with the audience and his bandmates; he runs across the stage like a kid on a sugar high; he hops around as if he's riding an imaginary pogo stick; he climbs on stools, drum risers, even the drums themselves. And he'll improvise the craziest stories about the songs he's singing. He told us all about how his relationship in the song "More Bad Times" was doomed from the start, because the object of his affection was a 9-foot-tall Amazonian nudist supermodel and he was a hapless little gnome who tried everything, even stepladders. During "Back Porch," he spun a yarn about how his own porch was falling apart and it cost him a fortune for all the materials at Home Depot -- to which Andrew offered that he should have gone to McLendon's, a local chain, and saved himself some money. With a local band, you get local jokes. I love that!

Anyway, the night flew by, and the material from the new album, Kudos to You!, mixed in seamlessly with the older material. Every album was represented except for Freaked Out and Small -- which was not that big of a surprise to me, as I think it's the weakest in their catalog. They also used conventional six-string guitars and four-string basses on that record, and perhaps that makes adapting the songs to PUSA's traditional two-string "basitars" and three-string "guitbasses" a bit of a challenge. In any event, we got a little bit of jacked-up rockabilly in "Poor Little Me" and "Back Porch," infectious poppy melodies in "Some Postman" and "Good Morning Tycoon," and high-octane punk-pop in "Mach 5" and "She's a Nurse." And of course, there were all the cuts from the debut album that everyone expected to hear: "Lump," "Peaches," "Kitty," "Boll Weevil," and "Dune Buggy." As he's done for a long time now, Chris changed the last line in "Lump" to what "Weird Al" Yankovic sang in his spoof song, "Gump." I always find that to be a nice tip of the hat, from one funny guy to another.

A big treat for me was hearing what just might be my favorite PUSA song -- "Volcano," from the second album. It was intended to be the single from that album, but I don't think it went anywhere in the charts. It's Chris Ballew's ode to Mount St. Helens, and how all the "happy campers poop in their Pampers when the mountain becomes a fountain." How can you not love a line like that?

This show marked the first time I heard any of the material from Kudos to You!, which was on sale at the show but also en route to the mailboxes of those who funded the recording. And boy, was I satisfied with what I heard. The hooks and melodies were astoundingly good. I know, from having followed Caspar Babypants, that Chris Ballew hasn't lot a bit of his songwriting talents over the years -- in fact, he may be getting even better. It's a pity there isn't a larger market for such well-written, enjoyable music that consistently makes you smile and forget about your real-life worries. I consider those of us who are still around and count ourselves as fans to be pretty lucky indeed.

One track from the new album, "Crown Victoria," featured a guest vocal from John Roderick, singer of Seattle band The Long Winters. He also sings backing vocals on the studio version of the song. I didn't know the first thing about his band going into the show, but the Long Winters song the Presidents played next, called "New Girl," seemed nice enough. John Roderick handled the lead vocals on that one and then left the stage.

I heard everything I could have hoped for at the Showbox performance, and then some. PUSA's cover of the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star" -- which they originally recorded for the movie The Wedding Singer -- was the unexpected icing on the cake. How do you connect Yes to the Presidents of the United States of America in six degrees or fewer? There you have it. The band also paid brief tribute to the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks by playing, deliberately badly, a few bars of Queen's "We Are the Champions." Chris tried to make up some lyrics on the spot for a revamped "We Will Rock You," including something about the safety on the Broncos' opening play, though the whole thing kind of fizzled out before it got going. But it got us all laughing, and we applauded the effort.

The next night, PUSA set up camp a few blocks away at the Triple Door, a nice little dinner club where I saw Jon Anderson (speaking of Yes) do his solo show a few years back. This was an unplugged performance, and demand was strong enough that the guys added a second show later that night. On the day of the show, I decided on a whim to see if there were any tickets left for the late show, and I managed to grab one of the last ones remaining. I had to sit way at the back of the theater for the late show -- but for the early show, I was seated directly in front of the stage! Wow, what a view!

The first thing I noticed was that Jason Finn's drum set looked like a tiny little kid's kit. Then I saw Andrew McKeag's acoustic guitars: They had six strings each! Now that was an interesting twist. This requires some explanation for those unfamiliar with the Presidents: Chris Ballew long ago got the idea to think outside the box, musically speaking, by taking strings off his guitar. I read once in an interview that he said he found himself doing things on a six-string that were too predictable, and after working with the late Mark Sandman -- well known for his two-string slide bass in Morphine -- Chris landed on the idea of creating a two-string "basitar," which is essentially a six-string guitar body equipped with two heavier-gauge strings. When he and Dave Dederer started the Presidents, Dave played a "guitbass" based on the same concept, only adding a third string. When Andrew joined PUSA, he carried on with the three-string style. So seeing a couple of fully stringed acoustics on stage was completely unexpected!

The other thing I didn't expect was that Andrew's guitars were directly in front of me. Now, I love all three guys in this band, but I bought my ticket deliberately hoping to sit directly in front of Chris Ballew, who always stands stage-right with PUSA. Well, sure enough, when the guys came out, Chris took his seat stage-left, and Andrew sat down in front of me! I had to laugh when Chris commented about how the band was going to mix things up for this show, including their stage placement, and Andrew told him some people are probably upset if they bought their tickets expecting to sit in front of either him or Chris!

Well, it would take a lot to get me upset with these guys, and getting to watch Andrew playing up close instead of Chris wasn't going to do it. This seat was too good, and the night held too much promise.

As Chris took his place onstage, I noticed that he pulled out a familiar-looking three-string electric guitar. That was his Caspar Babypants guitar! I've been to enough of his Caspar shows to recognize it on sight. Those shows are solo performances, with just Chris, his guitar, and a stool to sit on. Considering Chris was now sitting and playing that very guitar, and also wearing the same outfit he seems to wear for every PUSA and Caspar show -- yellow T-shirt, black knee-length shorts, and black sneakers -- I half-expected him to pull out a Caspar song or two for this show. After all, Chris himself has said Caspar Babypants music is really just Presidents music stripped of the amplification and innuendo.

Well, that was not to be, but we did get some treats. "Kitty" got a new, slightly funky treatment that kept a steady drumbeat pulsing throughout the piece, as opposed to the sparse instrumentation during the verses on the original recording. "Lump," which Chris jokingly called "Clump," became a slow shuffle (think of how Clapton revamped "Layla" for his unplugged album). And "Tiki God" from the second album became "Tiki Lounge God," which sounded pretty much as you'd expect from the revised title. That song had actually appeared in the same arrangement, with that title, on their Pure Frosting compilation. Also performed from Pure Frosting was a light, touching little piece called "Sunshine," which I'd almost forgotten about. Chris said he wrote it for his young son many years ago. That made listening to the tender delivery all the more sweet and special.

Once the encore was done, Chris reached down from the stage and high-fived all of us in the front row. Andrew followed right after him, shaking all our hands and thanking us for coming to the show. These guys are class acts!

For the late show, I got the feeling that the guys had expended all their energy on the first performance. Chris made several mentions from the stage that he was tired, and the banter among the band members between songs started to go comically off the rails. "Here's a song we do with our guitars," Chris said at one point, either forgetting what he was going to talk about or having run out of anything else to say. His vamp during "More Bad Times" still involved the 9-foot-tall nudist supermodel, but this time he was "just a tiny little ... Mormon." Not missing a beat, Andrew looked over at him with a laugh and said, "You don't really need to add anything else." There was a lot of talk about taxidermy and cocaine, too. They were punchy. It was hilarious to watch. But the music sounded as good as ever. They even good-naturedly took an audience request for "Jennifer's Jacket," after which Andrew, ever astute, looked out from where the request came and said, "So which one of you is Jennifer?"

There were also bizarre brief segues into "Black Hole Sun" and the theme from The Jeffersons at both Triple Door shows. I have no explanation. It's the Presidents. Crazy is what they do.

The band is currently wrapping up a short European tour. Last year they played Australia. It's great to see that, two decades on, there's still enough interest in these guys that they can play to audiences outside the Seattle area. The interviews I've read reveal a trio of guys who know how lucky they've been to be able to get so much mileage out of just a few hit songs back in the '90s, and they're enjoying it while they still can. How refreshing, in the rock business, to come across three musicians who have realistic expectations and seemingly no ego trips, and who appear to genuinely enjoy playing for people and making their fans smile. We don't have enough of that in the world today.

A Frank Zappa album title once posed a pointed question: Does Humor Belong in Music? Chris Ballew and the Presidents would say, unequivocally, yes. And I would enthusiastically agree.

Showbox setlist:

Kick Out the Jams

Kitty

Poor Little Me

Volcano

Some Postman

Slow Slow Fly

Boll Weevil

Ghosts Are Everywhere

Good Morning Tycoon

Lump

More Bad Times

Tiki God

Crown Victoria [guest vocals by John Roderick]

New Girl [Long Winters song; lead vocals by John Roderick]

Back Porch

Dune Buggy

Finger Monster

Munky River

Ladybug

She's a Nurse

Candy

Mach 5

Peaches

Encore:
Innocent Bird

Video Killed the Radio Star

Kick Out the Jams

Triple Door setlist:

Love Everybody

Slow Slow Fly

Sharpen Up Those Fangs

Kitty

More Bad Times

Crown Victoria

Lump

Highway Forever

Tiki Lounge God

Innocent Bird

Sunshine

Dune Buggy

Poor Little Me

Munky River

Jennifer's Jacket [audience request; 10:00 show only]

Deleter

Candy

Bath of Fire

Naked and Famous

Back Porch

Peaches

Encore:

Body [10:00 show only]

Kick Out the Jams

The Race to the Bottom

sodahead.com

It's amazing how different your world looks when you never turn on your TV. I know firsthand, because I haven't had a cable subscription for nearly a year, and even when I did, I mostly only watched sporting events.

So when I'm on Facebook and I see my friends talking amongst themselves in regard to the latest TV shows, or the newest slice of entertainment gossip masquerading as news, I feel like I'm from another planet. The Duck Dynasty one really threw me for a while. When everybody was talking about the anti-gay comments from one of the show's cast members, all I could think of was how much the title "Duck Dynasty" made me think of Daffy Duck, in "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century." That's what a misspent childhood will do to you.

I could sort of get why everyone kept talking about the hillbilly guy from Duck Dynasty, since apparently everybody watches this show and he's the star. But then there are the manufactured "controversies" that seem to pop up out of nowhere every few months. Those are the ones that really lose me.

For example, Coke ran an ad during the Super Bowl that showed people of various ethnicities singing "God Bless America" in a number of languages. I can tell you that if I'd watched the Super Bowl, I would have found it nice, but probably a bit cloying, and then I never would have given it another thought.

But the next morning, my FB feed lights up with people sharing stories about how the Coke ad sparked a racist outrage!

Uh, OK.

Sorry for my apathy -- it's just that I've been to this show too many times. Remember the Cheerios ad with the biracial family? Never even heard of it, until my social-media hangouts proclaimed that the ad triggered a racist firestorm online.

Or the Miss America pageant, won by a woman of eastern Indian heritage. I didn't even know the pageant was going on, until Facebook informed me of the racist backlash against her victory.

I also remember people talking about the racist meltdown when a Mexican-American kid sang the national anthem at a basketball game.

Seriously, people?

Look, bigotry is an ugly thing. But we seem to keep repeating an unhealthy cycle in which the bigoted reactions to these ads and events get blown out of proportion and become the story themselves. It would be one thing if the nastiness dominated our daily discourse, but it seems more as if media outlets see something coming along that has the potential to provoke controversy, and then they go combing through the Web looking for the revolting comments that they know they're going to find. And then that becomes the story.

The Cheerios ad is the first to come to mind, as the entire dust-up apparently started over some racist bilge that a few knuckle-draggers were spewing in the YouTube comments section. But here's the thing: The YouTube comments section is the cesspool of the Internet. You could find people spewing racist bilge over videos of puppies and rainbows. It's not exactly a representative slice of humanity. 

It's a sad commentary on the state of journalism that so many media outlets seem to go out of their way to hold up the exception as the rule and manufacture all this outrage. But then, what media shop these days is going to pass up some low-hanging fruit to gain clicks, likes, and comments on their pages? And who cares if the bigots, trolls, and bored 12-year-olds who write the offensive posts get way more attention than they deserve? That's apparently beside the point. We all get to rush to our keyboards and denounce the bigotry with one hand, while patting ourselves on the back with the other for being so enlightened. Everybody feels good and goes home. Until the cycle repeats itself again.

Even worse is the frequent implication in these stories that these random bigots are representative of an entire political group. Think about it. Every time a few lowlifes make online comments hostile to some acknowledgment of human diversity, their words get cherry-picked and held up as an example of how backwards conservatives are. There go those right-wing nuts again, with their crazy racist/sexist/homophobic rants. Sites such as Daily KOS, one of the most blatantly Democrats-good-Republicans-bad places you'll ever find on the Web, do it constantly. Others sometimes try to be more subtle about it, but sometimes they can't help themselves, like when MSNBC sent out a tweet proclaiming how a new biracial Cheerios ad -- a sequel to the first one, I guess -- would make right-wingers' heads explode.

Haters gonna hate, and baiters gonna bait.

What's so sad is that stereotyping an entire group of people is the same kind of bigotry that the outlets running these stories claim to abhor.

I think this relentless focus on the bad people also skews our perceptions of any progress we may have made in terms of tolerance and diversity. After all, I'm sure there were bigots going nuts back when Coke ran those nice "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" ads in the '70s. The difference is that the bigots back then didn't have an Internet where they could publicly and instantly share their hate with the world. The Internet magnifies this garbage, and always drawing attention to it just fans the flames, making things look worse than they probably really are. Consider: Do you know anyone in real life, liberal or conservative, who had a conniption over the Coke ad, the Cheerios ad, or the Indian-American woman who was crowned Miss America? I don't.

That's not to say bigotry doesn't exist. It obviously does, and that's not my point. My point is how people so often make things worse by insisting on making a mountain out of a molehill.  

Maybe we could focus instead on things like ... oh, I don't know ... buying the world a Coke and keeping it company.

That's the real thing.

A Case Study in How Not to Treat Your Fans, and When Not to Schedule a Concert

Note that I've blotted out the names of the people involved in this story -- not that they don't deserve to be embarrassed, but because I want for this to be a cautionary tale for other small bands and venues when it comes to taking care of your fans. It's about a failed process, not so much about individual people. Besides, if you really want to, you can look up the names easily enough for yourself.

Ah, the customer-service fiasco in which the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, complete with total communication breakdown. We've all been there, right? And boy, can it ruin even the best day you've had planned.

Such was the case this past Sunday, when I was planning to see Transatlantic in concert.

If you read this blog, you've seen my effusive review of Transatlantic's latest album, Kaleidoscope. This band is a side project for all involved, so there aren't a lot of opportunities to see them live. The only time I've caught them was on the tour in support of their first album, SMPT:e, back in 2000. I was unexpectedly immortalized -- in a manner of speaking -- on the concert video that came out the following year. It was recorded at the Philadelphia show I attended, and between two of the songs, in a good-natured jest, I called out a request for the Yes classic "Close to the Edge," the standard-bearer of all progressive-rock songs. Transatlantic have always been noted for playing covers of their favorite bands, including lots of progressive-rock material, and in fact that show included a performance of Genesis' "Firth of Fifth." Bassist Pete Trewavas heard me and said with a smile, "'Close to the Edge.' We'll do that tomorrow!"

It was a great show -- everything I could have hoped for and then some. These guys are some of my favorite musicians, and their music consistently blows me away. As far as I'm concerned, Neal Morse and Roine Stolt and the Lennon and McCartney of progressive rock.

So naturally, I was thrilled to find out that the guys were getting back together and touring their new album -- and that they'd be stopping in my neck of the woods for a show.

The only thing was, the show was scheduled for Super Bowl Sunday.

Now, I don't watch football anymore, but most people sure do. Who schedules anything for Super Bowl Sunday?

Well, I went along with it and bought the ticket, but I imagined there wouldn't be a huge turnout -- especially given the start time. Here it is, from the ticket-seller's website:

That's right -- 6:00 p.m. That's 9:00 on the East Coast, and Super Bowl kickoff is usually at around 6:30 Eastern. That's 3:30 out here in Seattle. With the extended halftime show, the game would run no shorter than three hours, so they'd be asking people who wanted to watch the game to turn it off, probably in the fourth quarter, and come to the show.

Once the Seattle Seahawks were Super Bowl bound, I sent an e-mail to the event organizer and asked him if he thought the show should be rescheduled. It would be hard enough to fight the big game, but nearly impossible with the local team participating. Here's our exchange.

OK, 8:00, great. That makes things a little more convenient. Heck, with the Hawks in the Super Bowl, even I was tossing around the idea of heading to a sports bar to watch the game.

But then along comes problem No. 2: The meet-and-greet.

The band decided to add a meet-and-greet session for this show. I don't normally participate in things like that, but for Transatlantic, I decided to make an exception. I put down my 50 bucks -- on top of the $75 concert ticket -- and looked forward to getting some autographs, shaking hands, and getting a picture with the guys who have had such a profound influence on me over the past 14 years.

Now, when I bought the meet-and-greet from the Radiant Records website (the label that carries Transatlantic), the Seattle graphic contained this info:

Note at the bottom: "Meet and Greet in Seattle, WA will be after the show. Check in at the merchandise table to the aftershow Meet and Greet!"

AFTER THE SHOW. Not before. After. Keep that in mind as our tale unfolds.

Meanwhile, having heard nothing more about the time the organizer was "probably" pushing the show back to, I decided to peek in at the two event pages that I had liked for the Seattle show on Facebook.

First, notice the start times.

One page says the start time is at 6:00, and the other says 7:00, while the e-mail I got from the organizer said the show would "probably" start at 8:00.

(Feb. 4 update: I've since seen a third FB page dedicated to the event, and it also listed 6:00 as the start time.)

I was going to e-mail the organizer again to try to sort this all out, until I scrolled down the first page and got sidetracked by a note about the meet-and-greet:

Here, in a question someone has about the meet-and-greet, the organizer (the first in the thread) says he thinks it's scheduled for 6:00. In other words, BEFORE the show, not AFTER. But we're supposed to check with Neal Morse or the tour manager to make sure. Two other people in the thread said they contacted the tour manager, and he told them to be at the venue at 6:00.

So why did they even bother to change the show time, if they're still going to make meet-and-greet passholders get there at the time the show was originally scheduled to start? And why was the meet-and-greet now before the show, instead of after? The Radiant site still said the meet-and-greet was after the show.

I posted my own question:

Turns out I wasn't the only one in the dark about this whole thing. Apparently, some people were notified by e-mail of the change, but I sure wasn't.

Just to be absolutely sure, I decided I'd also drop the tour manager a message through Facebook. He and I have some mutual FB friends, so he was easy to look up.

I saw the next day that he'd read my note, but he didn't reply. No worries. They're in the middle of getting a tour started, and I'm sure he's busy.

But I waited for an answer until Sunday, the day of the show, and I still hadn't gotten a reply by the time I left the house.

And I left not knowing if the show was going to start at 6:00, 7:00, or 8:00, and whether the meet-and-greet was going to be at 6:00 or after the show. Had somebody told me that nothing at all would start until at least 8:00, I probably would have headed off to watch the Super Bowl and cheer on the local team. Instead, figuring I needed to get to the venue at 6:00 just to make sure I didn't miss anything, I went out and ran some errands while I peeked in on my phone at the score. After grabbing some dinner nearby, I head over to the venue, and as I'm getting out of the car, clutching my Kaleidoscope LP under my arm in hopes of getting it signed during the meet-and-greet, I see another guy walking back to his car.

"Are you going to the show?" he asked.

"Yep."

"It doesn't start until 9:00," he said, sounding thoroughly disgusted. "Nobody ever said anything."

He got in his car and sped off. I don't know if he headed out looking for something to do for the next three hours or was just blowing the whole thing off. But he wasn't happy.

I walked in anyway, right at 6:00, and I saw probably 30 or 40 people standing around in the lobby, in front of the merchandise table. As soon as the door closes behind me, some guy stands up on his chair behind the merch table to make an announcement: The show is starting at 9:00, and meet-and-greet will be at 7:45.

Are you kidding me?

When people asked why, the first reason we were given was the Super Bowl. But then there also seemed to be a problem with the stage. It had evidently been dismantled midweek for another event, and putting it back together was slowing things down.

Wait, so this stage that had been torn down days earlier was just now being put back together? At 6:00 on the night of the show?

And as for the Super Bowl: Duh. Look, people who love bands like Transatlantic are incredibly devoted. But our numbers are few, and it just doesn't make sense to schedule something -- anything -- against such a huge national sporting event. You risk making your small crowd even smaller. This venue, incidentally, was, I believe, a 300-seater, and the guy standing on the chair said they were either at 75% or 80% capacity.

Keep in mind, also, that this venue was pretty much in the middle of nowhere in one of the northern suburbs. The performance hall itself was in a shopping mall, for heaven's sake. But now, those of us who were there for the meet-and-greet had an hour and 45 minutes to kill, and those who showed up at 6:00 for the show now had to wait around for three hours.

Could we at least go and sit in the performance hall? someone sensibly asked.

Nope, the guy on the chair said. The band hadn't even done soundcheck yet. (So no one is allowed to view soundcheck?)

Can we buy the merchandise? Nope, not till 7:45. It's right there in front of us, and we can't buy it yet.

Next, a woman comes out of nowhere and thanks us for our patience, explaining that the organizers hope 7:45 will give all the meet-and-greeters a chance to get their pictures and move on down the line. I don't know if she was trying to be funny, but she joked about making the entire process an efficient production line, making sure we pushed everyone along so the band could prepare for the show -- rather than, say, hoping that we all had adequate time to say hello and shake some hands and enjoy ourselves. I didn't expect a four-course meal with the band, but I didn't expect to feel herded along for my 50 bucks, either.

And oh, by the way, the guy on the chair adds, since the show is general-admission, it's not fair for the meet-and-greeters to lose their pick of seats while they're off visiting with the band, so we can take your coats and mark a seat for you.

Seriously? This is your solution for saving the VIPs' seats? You had no plan up until this very moment?

"Thank you for being patient," the guy said. "Most crowds would have strung me up by the neck by now."

Ya think?

Well, I'd had enough. I work on the weekends, and I busted my butt to get my work done as soon as I could so I could get ready for a 6:00 arrival. I made sure my wife was OK with watching our daughter by herself for the afternoon and evening. I even blew off watching the Super Bowl with the hometown team in it.

The show was originally at 6:00, then "probably" 8:00, then maybe 7:00, but finally 9:00.

The meet-and-greet was after the show, until it was at 6:00, but the tour manager never confirmed, and it ended up being at 7:45.

Transatlantic puts on long shows -- at least three hours. That would put the end of the show at midnight or later, and I had to get up early the next morning, plus I had a 40-mile drive back home ahead of me. On top of everything else, I was feeling a bit under the weather that day, so I was not in the mood for nonsense.

I was mad. Tired of being jerked around. Not giving it another thought, I ate the cost of my tickets and left. I was thoroughly disappointed by the lack of communication, as well as the lackadaisical attitude the organizers seemed to take to all the confusion, conflicting information, and inconvenience. 

Never have I seen a professional event so poorly organized.

Feb. 5 update: On one of the FB pages devoted to the Seattle show, there was this exchange the day after the concert. Apparently, "An Evening with Transatlantic in Seattle" is the concert organizer.

"I wanted to send an email blast to everyone" about the time change for the show, "but I couldn't quite get to it." Yes, please, don't take 10 minutes out of your day to clear up all the confusion. It's really better to let a few hundred people have no idea when they need to be at the venue.

You can't make this stuff up.

I wish Transatlantic well and hope they had a great show, but with people like this running their affairs and putting on their shows, they have left some upset fans in their wake.  

Next time, guys, try a venue closer in to Seattle with an established track record, like the similar-capacity Triple Door. Communicate better with your fans. And whatever you do, don't go up against Super Bowl Sunday. Not even U2 or Springsteen, let alone a niche-interest prog-rock band, could compete with the Super Bowl.

May this be a learning lesson for everyone involved.