Columbia, SC - 10/9/2000
- Elbow Room
By Dallas Bentley
A friend of mine took off from Athens kind of late and missed the first twenty
minutes of the show as a result of a late start and confusion finding the
venue. Anyway, apparantly Euphone played before and were steller. We came
in as Pillars was just getting started. From a brief glance at the set list
during the show I could see that the setlist was much like that of Nashville's
with the show ending with Seven and The Rising Tide.
As far as the performance goes, they were really in sync and energetic, (at
least the three principles). Jeremy went nuts during J'nuh. The venue was
small and there were probably short of 125 there with the stage tucked into
a corner to your right as you walked in. In fact, the blue light from the
computer monitor of the guy at the door would flood in the venue every two
minutes or so as the band played. Kind of distracting to those watching and
possibly to the band. All the same, it was better than the show I saw in Atlanta
this summer.
I got the opportunity to talk to the band after the show, (my first time),
to my pleasure. Dan and I talked about the possibilty of the Radiohead matchup
and he said, "That would be unbelievable, but I don't know if they've
even heard of us before." He also commented at how interesting there
new album is. He chuckled when I mentioned it was a cross between old Radiohead
and Air. Jeremy said that he would presumably keep playing bass on the albums
unless some fated bassist fell into their laps, but he didn't seem too optomistic
about that. He noted that they had done a psuedo tryout thing before the recording
of How It Feels and that just didn't feel right so they would probably refrain
from that in the future.
William, who hung out and shot the bull the most with me, cracked me up when
he started talked about the whole Sub Pop debacle. Saying they chose the weirdest
venue and smallest crowd to record the live album. To paraphrase, he surmised
that the one chosen was the best of three less than spectacular shows. He
also compared the Seven video to a "poor man's a-Ha" citing that
they ran out of money by the end of production. That killed me.
I asked Dan about the
"chile" and he said "it's growing." Then, I inquired as
to why they chose Time Bomb over Virgin. He said it really came down to the
slice they got from album sales. He said that was the major deciding factor.
Virgin would have been great because they would have gotten more exposure
and reached more people, but they just wanted too much money. He seemed pleased
with Time Bomb.
Wondering whether they would try any videos, I asked William about them. He
said the band wants to do them, but Time Bomb is of the opinion that none
of the tracks from The Rising Tide are video-friendly if you can call it that.
He wants to do a very artsy type vid for Faces in Disguise, which I agreed
could be a good track to put pictures to as well. I jokingly asked him why
they didn't play "I'll Stick Around," to which he replied "I
don't know man, maybe we should have." Also, we started talking about
the whole Sub Pop thing after I asked him whether the record copy of Diary
I bought at the show would go to Sub Pop. He said they had bought a bunch
of them off Sub Pop and the money would go to SDRE. I guess I should have
known that anyway. I commented that lp2 was getting to be my fave album slightly
more than Diary, to which he excitedly replied, "Why, alot of people
tell me that! It's such a weird album. That's really your favorite? It's weird
because I get that alot."
One thing I should have asked Jeremy was what the deal is with the skit thing
at the beginning of Tearing In My Heart. Maybe next time.
Dallas Bentley