On Concerts, Covers, and Saving Jane

This past weekend my college had their yearly outdoor concert, which they unimaginatively name “Woodstock” (we’re in Southeastern Pennsylvania). Among the five bands playing the concert, only two are worth talking about for very different reasons.

The warmup act was a local band called Jealousy Curve. I’m going to talk more about these guys in a few weeks when their new album comes out, but what you need to know for the purposes of this read is they were on right before the headliner, and played a set of solid, balls-out rock tunes in the style of folks like Tool, Stone Temple Pilots, and 30 Seconds to Mars. The crowd for Jealousy Curve was significantly smaller than it would be for the headliner; only about a dozen people, this blogger included, felt compelled to move towards the stage to dance and thrash about in support of the band. But after two uninspired punk acts and a mildly pretentious hip-hop duo, that small crowd was thrilled to have something to get excited about.

Then came your headliner, a band by the name of Saving Jane. You may well have heard of them; they had a modest hit in “Girl Next Door” a few years ago, and they also wrote the theme to “L.A. Ink”. And while I don’t begrudge the band their success, they are for all intents and purposes a one-hit wonder. Now, I’ll admit that I stuck around for Saving Jane’s set not expecting much. But I felt as though even with my dim expectations, the band was a letdown. In their 40-minute set, Saving Jane played 4 complete covers, and also tacked bits of cover songs onto the end of their own tracks. The two most egregious moments were twisting “Don’t Stop Believin’” into one of their originals 3 songs into the set, and in the middle of “Girl Next Door” the band stopped dead and broke into Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me”.

OK. First, dropping “Don’t Stop Believin’” into a song that quickly is the equivalent of a comedian falling back on stereotype jokes to keep the crowd with them. It’s a Hail Mary. It’s an admission of “We’re dying up here, so maybe if we play an unkillable ’80s rock hit you’ll stay with us for a little longer”. And the Taylor Swift thing kind of makes sense, since the two are essentially the same story, but when Swift’s song is a) better, and b) more culturally relevant, it’s a bit self-defeating for a band to tack it onto their own hit. At the end of the show I remembered the covers more than Saving Jane’s own songs. Which is fine, except they were the headliner for this show and when they could have potentially gotten an exciting, albeit lesser known rock act, The Powers That Be at my university opted to sink money into what was essentially a cover band with good-not-great original tracks, based presumably on name recognition. That said, I was done with Saving Jane less than halfway through the set.

But I appeared to be the minority. The masses seemed to eat it up (with the exception of a few of my snarkier comrades). I was floored by how willing my peers were to accept a band that was masquerading as a pop-rock act that should be taken seriously as hitmakers, all the while playing other people’s hits. I’ve had a discussion about this with my roommates, and now I’m going to pose the question to you, my loyal readers:

What makes a rock concert good? When you go to a show, how do you measure its success? Is it whether or not the band played a good set of songs and played them well? Does it matter how well they play, or is it about whether or not they keep the crowd entertained? Or is it some combination?Also, what’s an appropriate mix of covers and originals for a headlining act to play? Saving Jane did nearly 50/50, and it felt both lazy and a missed opportunity to gain some new fans. I already like songs by Kings of Leon, Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty. Give me a reason to like your songs.

My one roommate argued that Saving Jane did a great job, because there was a large crowd (larger than any other band had attracted) up by the stage enjoying the music. I wholeheartedly reject that notion. If I’m putting down money for a concert (which I did, since my tuition indirectly goes to sustaining Student Activities), I don’t care whether or not the people around me are having a good time. I want to be having a good time. Yeah, it’s a little selfish, but if I tell people that Conan O’Brien is going to be performing at my school, get a crowd to gather, and instead offer up a nameless red-haired hobo I found on the street standing up there telling knock-knock jokes, you’d be hard-pressed to call that a good show. But by my roommate’s definition, the aforementioned hobo did just that, since he generated a crowd, albeit through misdirection. Saving Jane did the same thing. I thought I was going to see a modest one-hit wonder play through their hit single and some album tracks. Instead, I got a glorified cover band, the kind which I’d be able to find at my local bar.

Alternatively, my other roommate argued that their mix of covers showed that they didn’t take themselves so seriously that they insisted that the audience sit through a bunch of songs few people knew. I’m more inclined to accept this answer, but at the same time, if that’s the case the band is doing themselves a disservice. Aside from “Girl Next Door” (which they undermined with Taylor Swift’s song), I only remember the band’s covers, and the band’s own songs are just a mishmash of forgettable pop-punk. While it is nice to know that Saving Jane are aware of their cultural relevance, it’s not necessarily a typecast they should be playing into.

Granted I don’t go to concerts that frequently; it’s something I hope to remedy once I’m out of school and have more income. So perhaps Saving Jane’s show is more commonplace than I realize, at which point I’m left a bit depressed and disillusioned. Feel free to share your thoughts and experiences, and I’ll leave with by saying I’m confident that the dozen or so of us that rocked out to Jealousy Curve enjoyed our band far more than the larger crowd that gathered for Saving Jane did.

Saving Jane – Girl Next Door [iTunes]

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