Concerts are an interesting thing. Most of the concerts I've been to in my life are of the punk rock variety. I've been to a couple of hip hop concerts, and I've been to a couple of bigger, mainstream concerts. Last weekend I went to a Muse concert at the Pepsi Center. This is my review.

The Pepsi Center is not a good venue for music. There's a reason its main purpose is to house Nuggets and Avalanche games. Both of the concerts I've seen there have sounded muted and echoey. I have a feeling the acoustics in the venue are to blame, not the sound engineering, but it could be a combination of both. I realize that in downtown Denver there aren't many places capable of holding enough people for these bigger concerts, but unless the tour is something I'm not willing to miss (such as the Weezer/Foo Fighters tour a couple years ago), I don't think I'll be heading back to the Center anytime soon.

The opening band, Passion Pit, sucks. Their album, Manners, was reviewed very positively, which isn't surprising considering how much people are into synthesizers again. But, for all the fancy terms given to them by critics, they play nothing more and nothing less than disco music. Their stage presence is nonexistant, as they have up to THREE synthesizer players standing on stage, a drummer who I assume is there for show, since they have a drum machine in almost every track, and the world's most boring bass player. I was pleased to see that not many people in the house were really digging them, but their fans were hardcore, singing along and white-girl dancing (it's all in the arms!) to every song.

Muse came on with an elaborate stage set that had them all standing on elevated columns that also played video clips. It was kind of cool, but the stage also made everything seem too rehearsed for my tastes. It was almost robotic. Now the singer will move to the elevated left part of the stage for this song. Now they will move off the columns for two songs. Now they will move back on, and the columns will go back up. They sounded as fine as they could have. Vocals were unclear, but the instruments were rockin. The crowd loved the shit out of them. I don't know that much about them, but they played every song I wanted to hear. A guy screamed in my ear so loud constantly throughout the show that I thought I was going to pass out.

So, in conclusion, big concerts are fun, but I really prefer smaller shows. I don't like to be half a mile away from the band. I don't like the premeditated nature of the bigger concerts. I understand wanting to see a "show" when you go see a show, but I prefer to focus on the music. I like to see everyone on stage together, just playing music, and not making a full-on production out of it. And rap shows are just weird.