My First Muse Show EVAR

To my regular readers: This post is mainly for my fellow Musers. If you're not a fan of Muse, or don't enjoy reading concert reviews, you have my permission to skip this entry. :)

Some of my readers may know that I'm a bit of a Muse fan. In case you didn't know, I love Muse with all of my being. They can do no musical wrong in my mind. And that's a lot coming from me, because the list of bands who have yet to write a bad song in my book is a short list indeed...

Anyway, Muse is currently on tour, but they have yet to come near my town. So when they announced that they were playing a show in Atlanta (which is only three hours away from me) and that it was FREE, I jumped on that. I made plans, secured a hotel room (yay Expedia for great deals), tried unsuccessfully to find a traveling companion or two (it wasn't for lack of interest, just lack of funds or time), and designed my own tee shirt on the off chance I might actually meet the guys (it happened before with Bryan Adams!).

On Saturday morning, I drove down to Atlanta. The drive went by fairly quickly, thanks to the Muse CDs I played in the stereo.

Long story of pre-Muse stuff short: I got really bored and seriously considered driving back home, since I went alone I had no one to talk to. I ran into a few Muse fans in passing, but none of the friends I'd made on Facebook. :-( Also there was very limited seating and my feet get tired fairly quickly. But I toughed it out, sitting on benches or raised concrete slabs whenever I found space. At one point I went back to my car to eat a snack I'd brought, to avoid spending $$ on concessions. Oh, and I used a port-a-potty for the first time. The joy of all-day, outdoor concerts!

One more thing--I did meet up with a couple of friends who live in the area later in the evening, so I got to watch the concert with people I knew! :-)

So now onto Muse. Here's the set list:

1. Supremacy
2. Madness
3. Supermassive Black Hole
4. Panic Station
5. Resistance
6. Star-Spangled Banner
7. Hysteria
8. Some kind of jam...?
9. Survival
10. Follow Me
11. Time Is Running Out
12. Liquid State
13. Uprising
14. Man with a Harmonica
15. Knights of Cydonia

I'm really glad they didn't just do an hour set like I thought they'd do (something on the NCAA website made me think that). I would've liked an encore, but I understand that this wasn't part of their regular tour and things work differently.

Highlights from the show:

• The first time Matt sang the word "Supremacy" I screamed it right along with him. Later, the dude in front of me went "I could tell you were a huge fan when you hit that high note!" He could also tell because of my shirt. 
  
• Whenever they showed Dom on the big screen, he always looked like he was having such a good time! Except for during the Star-Spangled Banner. He looked totally bored as Matt shredded away, haha!
• When they started "Supermassive Black Hole" I got all giddy and turned to my friends and said "This was my ringtone!" (Right now it's the chorus from "Resistance.") Then they went straight into Panic Station, which made me uber-happy because those are two of my FAVORITE Muse songs!
• It looked like Morgan was singing during "Survival," but it was hard to tell. Is there anything that man can't do?
• Also during "Survival," Chris's bass sounded flat. I was just standing there thinking "Will someone please tune that thing?"
• I don't know if Matt was under the weather or just not feeling like hitting high notes, but he changed the very last note of "Survival." (For those of you who are musically inclined, instead of singing that final octave he only sang a fifth.)
• The graphics on the back screen of the stage were awesome. At one point during "Survival," the image from the 2nd Law's cover art kind of disintegrated from bottom to top. It was so cool!
• I finally know now that the 2nd Law booklet is wrong in the lyrics for "Follow Me." Matt is definitely singing "I won't let them harm you" and not "hurt/they're hurting you."
• Second craziest part of the show: Many of you have already heard about this, but the power went out during "Follow Me." They were about halfway through and Matt was pouring his heart and soul into it and suddenly there's no sound! Matt made some faces and tried talking into the mic. No luck. So they left the stage while the tech people worked their magic. My friend Tim joked that the power went out because "They didn't have a British plug." He also said he wanted a reimbursement, but since the concert was free...yeah. ;-)
• When they performed "Liquid State" (yay, Chris!) I got really giddy because it occurred to me that this was my first time hearing this song live. I mean, yes, it was my first time seeing Muse in person, but I've watched many videos from this tour on the internet. Unfortunately they always did "Save Me." I'm glad for the switch because I feel like "Save Me" is a bit too slow for a rock concert.
• During "Starlight" I noticed that Chris' bass was red with red lights on the fretboard. I've seen the one with blue lights before but don't remember having seen the red one before. Does anyone know if that's new?
• Craziest part of the show: At the end of "Uprising," Matt decided to go all rock star and start trashing his equipment. First he knocked over an amp (which looked like it was about to push back and fall on top of him at one point) and then stood on top of it to play. Then he decided to throw his guitar toward the back screen multiple times. I'm just glad he didn't throw it toward poor Dom, like he usually does! I took video of parts of "Starlight" and "Uprising" and will add those to this post once they're done being edited by YouTube (gotta take out the shakiness from my excited hand, haha).

And that's it for the concert! I wanted to go in search of the band's tour bus so I could profess my undying love to Dom, but instead I went out to eat with my friends. At the very end of the show, Matt said "See you in September!" so maybe I'll try to meet them then... *starts planning*