 Media Credit: Emma Racioppo
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The fall concert was verging on the status of Boston College urban legend when the Undergraduate Government of BC announced the upcoming performance of Hellogoodbye and We The Living on Sept.13.
The announcement was issued with the understanding that this concert would act as a test run for any future endeavors. If this is the case, then the likelihood of a fall concert in 2008 does not seem probable.
Conte Forum almost echoed with the emptiness on Thursday, making the crowd that came out to see Third Eye Blind seem massive in comparison. The problem with the event was not that Hellogoodbye is an unpopular band; it just isn't popular at BC. Most people were not willing to pay $20 to wait for the one song they knew: "Here (In Your Arms)."
Even the students who did attend the concert were not familiar with the majority of the band's set list. The songs that would have elicited group sing-alongs at any other venue - "Oh, It Is Love" and "Dear Jamie…Sincerely Me" - received barely a peep from the audience in Conte.
The members of Hellogoodbye have to be commended for attempting to engage the crowd as much as possible. Their jokes and dialogue were strangely limited to dissing various Boston schools; for example, "How about those jackoffs at Northeastern. They think they're so hot, but they're so not." Regardless, they danced and jumped around the stage like they were in front of a packed house at the Avalon.
The band was energetic throughout the night, gave a shout-out to the Jesuits, and even invited a student in the front-row onstage to sing one of its more popular songs, "Touchdown, Turnaround." Unfortunately, that lucky audience member could not seem to recall any lyrics except the words from the title. At one point, lead singer, Forrest Kline told the crowd, "Only a couple songs left," but it felt as if he were saying "Hang in there, almost done."
The last song, unsurprisingly, was the one everyone had been waiting for. As soon as people heard the beginning of "Here (In Your Arms)," they immediately started cheering and dancing like they had not done at any other point that night.
The members of the audience were so excited to be able to sing along (or, more likely, they weren't up to their normal standards of observation), so no one seemed to notice when an extra verse was stuck into the middle of the song. I am still not quite sure what Hellogoodbye was singing, but a few lines deviated from the recorded version of "Here (In Your Arms)."
The concert ended promptly at 11 p.m., and both the band and the audience immediately made their exit. There was not even a pretense of an encore. Unfortunately for Hellogoodbye, and any hope for future fall concerts, the night could have been better.
A few logistical changes would have made a big difference. Conte Forum just does not emit a concert atmosphere, especially when there are only a few hundred people filling up a fraction of the space and audience members are not allowed to move from the area just in front of their seats. If the performance had been outside and the audience had been able to stand in front of the stage, then the whole tone of the night would have improved.
We can only hope that the UGBC will be kind enough to give the fall concert another shot.
