. Jillian\'s or Milly\'s in manchester would have been a better choice. But who knew.
Well, they\'ve sold out Stone Church several times before, so a lot of us knew it would sell out. The Stone Church is the best venue they play. The other venues you suggest are a poor fit for the band. By your logic you might also say, "Oh man, I had no idea Phish would sell out Great Woods...they should play 5 miles down the road at Gillette Stadium, it holds 3 times more people." Umm...no. But you do have a legit reason to beef that you might not know about...read on for that....
Anyhow, here\'s what I can tell everyone about the show. The show was not taped and it didn\'t occur to me until mid 2nd set that I probably should have appointed myself on setlist duty, so that\'s kind of up in the air too. The show and the crowd both raged. Hard. By second set the whole place was one big undergraduate wastecase. Very much an upstate New York vibe as opposed to a CT/Boston vibe. They definitely shredded OE in second set and encored with Tunage, nice 15-minute encore. Nothing else really stood out for me... not that it didn\'t rock cause it totally did, but there were no sandwiches or bustouts or totally new/different jams, or anything else that would have made tapes indispensable.
I definitely have to comment on the crowd size. By now we all know the show was sold out. There were no tickets online as of 48 hours before the show and there were no tickets at the door. However, the room was
25% full. As in,
75% empty. The crowd raging up front was 12 wide by 6 deep. Beyond that, there was virtually nobody... maybe 10 people sitting at the bar and a couple of others traveling to/from the bathroom. You could have
easily fit that crowd of ragers into the room another 3 times over. This very venue has been
far more packed for The Breakfast in the past, and I\'m sure it would have been last night had the venue not stopped selling tickets. The guilty party here is either the venue management or the local fire-code people. (Definitely NOT the band, so don\'t even go there.) I can\'t imagine why any venue would choose to sell less tickets than it is allowed to, so I\'m sure the Church sold every ticket they could. Can\'t blame them for not wanting to break the rules. It\'s probably the fire-code crew. I\'m all for safety at shows, but this was just silly. There are lecture-hall classes down the road at UNH that have way higher density than this show did. Imagine if 25% full was really the universal safety standard for capacity... you\'d have Bob Kraft building an 80,000 seat stadium just so 20,000 people could go to a game, and every school would have to build a lecture hall for each 25-person class.
Stone Church is still awesome. If anyone wants to beef about getting blindsided this time, fine. (Although this is not the first Stone Church sellout so you should have been getting tix in advance.) But next time at Stone Church, no beef allowed no matter how few tickets they sell. You\'re a serious Breakfast fan, you\'re on the message board, you\'re in the know...get your tickets in advance!