By Georgia Lundeen
The concert started off slow with the opening band Easy There Tiger. However, they slowly eased the listeners into a fast-paced dance. There set was a little dull at times, and they didn’t really interact with the audience at first. For a little while, it felt as if they didn’t care or know that there was an audience. However, near the end of their set they seemed to relax slightly and the drummer began to try and interact more with the audience. There was just something missing from their performance that I can quite place, and other members of the audience were seemingly having trouble getting into the music, too.
Deal Casino started off strong with the song “My Gun” getting the crowd dancing right off the bat. This was their second time playing at the Paris theater. The crowd was slightly smaller than the first time around, but this did not seem to bother them. They danced across the stage showing the audience this is what they are truly passionate about. They effortlessly transitioned from song to song cracking jokes in between. Even though they did experience some technical difficulties at the start they managed to preserver through them and just accept the chaos of it all. Throughout the chaos they kept the crowd dancing an engaged with the music. Old and new fans alike came together to dance along to one of their more well-known songs Red Balloon. Near the end of the set they created a mini sing along with the audience. They talked about how they came up with the idea on their last tour after playing in Portland. The taught a section of the lyrics from “Color TV” to the audience, and it was honestly one of the coolest things to be a part of. The audience had a lot of fun singing along with the band and trying to copy Joe Parella’s dance moves. It just brought the whole audience together.
The Happy Fits started their set off strong feeding off other energy of the crowd left behind by Deal Casino. They faced a different type of technical difficulty than Deal Casino. The Paris Theater had been playing their music before the show and in between the different sets. They opted to just laugh it off and crack jokes about it the entire time. They also faced technical difficulties of other sorts too. Near the end of their set Calvin Langman’s cello string broke causing Ross Monteith and Luke Davis to have to improvise to the best of their abilities. They ended up playing a song off of one of their earlier EP. It was really cool to see these guys play because you could just see how much playing meant to them. Even though it was a small audience, they did not mind they cracked jokes that it was cool having more than five people at the show. They are truly about playing good music, and having fun in the process.
Overall this I would highly recommend seeing any of these bands. All carried themselves differently on stage and interacted with the audience in their own unique manner. They all displayed extremely different sounds that somehow came together nicely into one coherent concert. Despite all of the technical difficulties, this was still an amazing show and showed how much these band care about playing. None of them let this get in the way of putting on an excellent show.