Billy Talent are the worst fucking band I have ever seen live.
Hands down and without a shadow of a doubt.
Ah, come on. Nobody gets his foot up on the monitor like that Billy Talent dude
Anyway, I saw them live in 2005, and they were fucking awesome, nailed it, EXCEPT for the fact that he mocked the audience and heckled them.
New Brunswick is a very rural area with a lot of hicks and they listen to the music you'd expect them to.
We're pretty hill people. A lot of people just like to sit in the stands and watch the show with a hit dog or something... moshing never took off. We're more into hippie shuffling. I know a lot of NBers who move to Ontario and they're dancing to bands and people are like, "Why are you dancing?"
ANYWAY.
He was obviously not enthused with the whole idea, and kept calling people up to the front, presumably for circle pits or some shit, and the crowd was like, "Nah, bruh, I'm cool," and he launched into a tirade about it.
"Maybe if we played some Nickelback songs, we'd get you guys up here," he said, "Maybe if I played some fuckin', Pantera or something."
I was more than impressed with the set, but not with the 'tude.
After the show, I went up to him and I was like, "You know what dude, we listen to more than Nickelback and Pantera out here."
He was all like, "Yeah, I know, I was just joking."
I said, "No, no, man, but seriously, if you can't get the crowd moving, that's not the crowd's fault. It's your fault. Maybe you should have booked a 500 capacity instead of a 6,000 capacity. Or maybe if a crowd reacts in a way that's different than you anticipated, you roll with it. But I paid $35 to see you play tonight because I like
your music,
not because I'm a Hickelback."
He looked me in the eye and said, "You know what, you're right. Sorry about that."
Damn right you're sorry, foot-up-on-the-monitor fuckboy.
Who I really wanted to meet though was Eraserhead himself, Ian D'Sa, to this day someone whom I consider to be one of the most capable and original guitarists there are. He signed my ticket and my CD booklet, both of which are framed on my wall to this day. Some bitch took a photo of me with him and said she'd email it to me but of fucking course she never did.
He told me I had a cool shirt. My Jawbreaker shirt. George Pettit and Dallas Green and (if I remember correctly) Cody chesnuTT all told me that shirt was cool. Damn. Love that shirt.
Then I took a cab over to the pizza place where the rest of my family were already eating because they didn't want to wait in the Canadian-January cold to meet fucking Billy Talent.
