Ten Foot Pole / Venerea

live in Amsterdam, Holland. (2003)

BabaBooey

Amsterdam. Always a great city to hang out in and guess what, Ten Foot Pole was performing with Venerea as their support.
The ticket price was only 9 Euros (which is 9.69 US Dollars) so hey, why not?

After arriving in Amsterdam by bus we went to McDonalds which was right around the corner of the nice looking venue.
The show was scheduled to start at 20:30, however we were done eating at 17:30 which meant we had to kill some time in the cold for about 3 hours.
I wasn't feeling all too well anyway (read: pain in throat, having a cold, snot dripping out of my nose at the speed of light) so we spent most of the time in cd/dvd stores and a book store called The American Book Center which is supposed to be one of the largest source for English/American import books/magazines/comics/guides and stuff like that.

Then after 3 hours of wandering around, finally, the doors of the venue were opening up so we could embrace the sheer delight of warmth. Hoorah.
After we were given an All Systems Go promo cd, we proceeded to the merchandise stand to see if there was anything worth purchasing.
Unfortunately, the shirts looked pretty shabby so we walked to the concert hall and sat down on the balcony "seats".

After waiting for what seemed a ridiculously infinite amount of time, Venerea appeared on stage.
I had downloaded their new cd Out In The Red in advance just so I would know some of their tunes as I had never heard of them before.
I guess they were pretty good if you like their music, I wasn't really into them although I do have to say the sound was much more dynamic than on the actual cd.

While still having pain in my throat I waited for Ten Foot Pole to appear on the stage, which obviously, they did after a short break between the 2 bands.
Now don't get me wrong, I like Ten Foot Pole's stuff on Rev and their later albums such as Plastic but the live show just didn't do it for me.

Sure, it was energetic and they played some good tunes but it wasn't really as convincing as I hoped it to be.
Or maybe it's just because I normally go see bands I thoroughly enjoy such as Flogging Molly instead of bands I just like to listen to every once in a while.

Concerning their setlist, I can't remember all of it. But, among others, they played Broken Bubble, Old Man, Plastic, The Getaway, Nova Scotia, Armchair Quarterback.

Anyway, it was entertaining to watch and listen to but it's certainly not a band I would go see more than once unless you really, really, really like this band.