135 – Guster – Tuesday, July 30, 2013 – Prospect Park Bandshell – Brooklyn, NY

This concert, which brought together Guster, Ben Folds Five, and Barenaked Ladies, showed the limits of any opening band.  At their solo concerts, Guster have proven themselves outstanding performers.  I have left their concerts feeling moved my by their music, entertained by their antics, and energized by their rabid fanbase. 

The problem for Guster at this Brooklyn show, though, was that they were an opening band.  It seemed like a lot of the crowd did not know them or did not come to the show primarily for them.  They also had little time to build up rapport between songs because they were restricted to such short sets.  This “Opening Band Problem” is nothing new.  Modest Mouse and The President of the United States of America were actually better than the main band and better than they were on the albums, but every other opening band I’ve been to has not worked.  They always seem destined to be second best.  What made Guster’s failure different was they put on a grade-A concert last time!

Opening band issues were compounded by the fact that I heard 3/4 of the show from outside the arena!  Prospect Park Bandshell made the bizarre decision to only open one entrance for their 7,000-person venue.  So everyone walked to the entrance…to find they had to take a single-file line fifteen minutes in the other direction!  “Come Downstairs and Say Hello” is a deeply moving song; it’s less so when it’s barely audible four football fields away!  Oh well, I’ll have to find solace in the fact that they played “Barrel of a Gun” for the first time in a while, “This Could All Be Yours” is still unstoppable, and they will be much better next time I see them.

Grade: D+