Saturday

Last night we saw Blue October at the “Venue” here in Salt Lake. We had front row spots on the balcony with a killer view of the band !

This old converted warehouse on the west side has a small balcony up above the main floor for those over 21 who which to drink beer. We looked down on the crowd of sweat covered bodies packed together, as we sipped a few pitchers from above watching the warm up group, The Parlotones. This South African band won the International song writing competition last year and has been touring with Blue October. Their music was really quite good and they even had help from the Blue October violinist on one of their songs.

After maybe an hour and a half they had the stage cleared off and the equipment set up for the Group from Texan. For the next two hours front man, Justin Furstenfeld poured his emotions out in some fantastic work. Their lyrics can sometimes be a little on the dark side as they deal a lot with suicidal subject matter.

The band has joined up with the Suicide Prevention hotline for a fund raising session. Justin told the crowd how he had to deal with the issues when he was a teenager and now wants to bring the message out to all about the feelings and experiences one goes through. Some of the songs were actually quite powerful. Not to far off from some of the earlier work by U2 with their political subject matter. The small size of this building made for an up close and personal experience with the band.

I worked just a little more on this one yesterday, painting out the third figure at the top of the stairs and bringing up some of the reflected light in the left wall.

Richard Boyer