Last night was the first of the two Beirut shows I’m going to this week. I was super ridiculously excited to finally see them live, with even more anticipation added because it looks like they are breaking up or changing form or doing something random and this is my only chance to see them as they are.

We got there slightly late and missed the opening-opening band and most of the opening band The Brunettes. What we did see was awesome though, I really like that band and afterwards I bought one of their albums from one of the lead singers. I really think that band members should do merch as much as they can, it just makes you like the band so much better when the members are nice and talking to you.

Finally Beirut went on. Let me say first that I don’t think any of the problems I had with the show are Beirut’s fault. The main problem was that the sound guy at The Grand Ballroom sucks. He sucks more than any other professional sound engineer I have ever had to listen to. All of the sound was flat, according to both bands nothing was in the monitors, he made Beirut sound boring and like they were on a really shitty old radio. Plus he actually had the mic levels up so high that they squealed a few times. I can’t ever remember hearing that happen at a show this size before. I’m guessing that’s why Beirut only played for about an hour or so, they were probably not very motivated to go on given how bad it sounded.

Even still I love their music and they played all my favourite songs, so I’m hopeful that they can kick that sound guy out and make things better for tonight’s show.