I’m a 90s alt-rock fan. Most people that get to know me realize this and if you’ve read any of my music reviews on this site, you’ve probably come to know that too. Oddly enough, I missed out on the 90s. Being home-schooled in an ultra-conservative, uber-religious household, I didn’t really get to see many of the movies or listen to much of the music from that era and have only really begun doing so in the last ten years or such.
So it stands that a lot of the bands of that time-frame, I missed out on. In the last couple of years, I’ve been making attempts to catch some of them if the chance arose, as I did when the Smashing Pumpkins played my hometown in August of 2008 and I intend to do when Alice in Chains plays St. Louis in February. And with the reunited Cranberries hitting Chicago, I knew it would be a show I wouldn’t want to miss.
My buddies Andy, Craig and I made the normally 3-hour trek to Chicago in a little over 4 hours thanks to traffic and weather, took a wrong turn off of Lake Shore Dr., ended up having to traverse back alleys and cemeteries to find a parking spot, and made it to the Riviera Theatre half an hour late. Luckily, there were still people streaming in and so the show hadn’t started yet. Unfortunately, it was standing room only and our spot initially wasn’t the greatest (until the fat guy in front of us moved after the fourth or fifth song and we suddenly had a fantastic view of the stage).
The show itself was okay. Don’t get me wrong: they’re the Cranberries and their music in concert is as good as it is on the CD. But for at least the first few songs, something seemed off, as if the band just wasn’t clicking. That changed however and they eventually found a rhythm and pumped out some life into the crowd. Still, the only two performers that seemed like they wanted to be there were singer Dolores O’Riordan and drummer Fergal Lawler, both of whom were much more fun to watch than the rest of the band.
My other problem was, despite doing some new material and some of O’Riordan’s solo stuff, the concert seemed more like a meeting of fan’s expectations than a true show, with the band hitting each of their hits and not straying too far off the beaten path. That kind of bothered me as I would have liked a bit more depth to their set list, much as the Smashing Pumpkins injected into their when they did their 2008 mini-tour (however, “Zombie” right before the encore and “Dreams” as the final song still killed).
Still, despite those slight criticisms and the fact that it was a billion degrees inside the Riviera, the show was still enjoyable. It may not have been the same quasi-religious experience that the Pumpkins produced, but it was still better than some shows I’ve attended (I’m looking squarely at you, Nugent). And based on the new stuff they played, I look forward to them returning to the music scene, should they decide to release a new album.