Keep in mind, I've seen a lot of concerts, from some of the best I know, including Ozzy, Rob Zombie, Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, QotSA, and Soundgarden, among others. There is some pretty damn stiff competition, and nothing I've seen compares except maybe - MAYBE - Queen.
The venue was actually really cool - it was a smaller one, but with a decent amount of room, as well as a balcony above, and while the first band was in there were maybe only three or four rows of people, by the time The Darkness was on the place was packed to the brim - somewhere between 400 and 600 people would be my guess just off the top of my head. I didn't think to get any pics before, but I have these from in between Foxy and Darkness, to give you some idea:
So the first band was not amazing, but had some really good skills, and it's one I'll have to keep an eye on. Their name was Crown Jewel Defense ( this is the one song I'd heard of theirs before) and the singer was really a good showman, going back and forth with the audience all the time. Pics:
And then Foxy Shazam came on:
Foxy was absolutely astounding. Pure energy and bat**** crazy with it. Like, I've seen performances where the singer is jumping all around and maybe the other members do the occasional stunt, but this was that on crack. The lead singer was jumping and rolling all over the place, including jumping on the shoulders of the guitarist mid-solo(with the guitarist not missing a beat) and standing on the back of the seat of the keyboardist for simultaneous headbanging, or the keyboardist crawling out into the crowd and surfing on top of them a short bit while he plays his keyboard, the guitarist doing repeated flips, and the trumpeteer dancing all over the place. It was absolutely manic, but the music did not suffer a bit - the performance was spot on and the talent was all there. There was so much personality in the performance, not to mention that Eric, the singer, constantly interacted and talked to the crowd, that I was amazed.
Antics:
<- He asked a crowd member for a cigarette, someone tossed him a pack(and a few lighters got tossed) and this was the result.
-- Joyrock Fresh from my first justified ban. Ever!
Finally The Darkness came on. At this point, it was hard to get pictures because the place was packed and the crowd was going insane. I managed these:
At this point it was hard to think anything could top Foxy, and to be honest I'm not sure Darkness did, but that's not a slight on them because the performance they put on was golden, plain and simple. Foxy was god-tier, but The Darkness likewise put on one of the best performances I'd ever seen, pure uninhibited rock mixed with great personality(on multiple occasions the singer would take notes from the audience and read them, and his final solo was spent riding on the shoulders of one of the security guys through the crowd.
In short, I'm not certain I'll ever see a performance to top this.
I got lots of videos too, will get to uploading them shortly.
-- Joyrock Fresh from my first justified ban. Ever!
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http://img.imgcake.com/nio/81edpngej.png edwardsdv and swordz9 are basically the comedy heel tag team of this topic, why would people be taking them seriously?