When shAAka took the stage, there was no one in the pit and nearly no one at The Blind Pig. It was 9:30 on a Thursday night and while the bar next door had a line snaking down two flights of stairs, The Blind Pig was currently deserted. Still, shAAka started with an explosion not a whimper. They are a local band and entirely UM students. However, unlike many student-bands, they’ve moved past the hey-man-let’s-get-together-and-jam stage and have started to come into their own sound. While in terms of originality they still have room to grow, they certainly have the rock part down and they can hit it hard. But they aren’t entirely a bang-as-loud-and-fast-as-we-can kind-of band–they have their softer, mellower moments and they can sweet-talk you as quickly and deftly as they can blare their guitars. Not too long after they took the stage, more patrons poured in and were drawn towards the stage. By the time shAAka’s set had ended, The Blind Pig had several dozen patrons.
This being the night that it was (Thirsty Thursday, that is), most of that night’s crowd were sporting M’s on the backs of their hands and were here to enjoy some music. While the back part of The Blind Pig had began to somewhat fill, the bar part was devoid of anyone–except for, perhaps, the occasional individual getting a pop.
We didn’t have to wait too long for amateur eyes to get on stage. Despite being the “headlining” act, they played second and the night had three more bands left. Now, listen, there was still not much of a crowd for reasons already stated–maybe 40 people, if I’m being generous–and it can be hard to play to a crowd so small, especially when you’re not a big name that everyone knows and loves, but instead just some band from Saline, Michigan–by all means, amateur eyes should have put on decent show, but not much more.
Instead, they killed it.
Their founder and vocalist is John Pederson, a former Michigan student and someone who clearly still has friends and connections in Ann Arbor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that within this meager crowd were individuals who obviously adored the amateur eyes and could sing along to every song. But even without them amateur eyes still would have put on an amazing show. For starters, John Pederson is clearly a guy currently doing what he loves and his gratitude for the audience simply being there and letting him continue to follow his passions was palpable. But it was more than even that–Pederson doesn’t just get into performing, he gets into the music, the crowd, the energy and he increases it exponentially. Many more times than I could count, Pederson jumped off the stage to hug someone or dance around or to hold his microphone out for someone to sing along. At one point, he managed to successfully crowd-surf, which is quite feat when an audience is that scattered and unpacked. And he wasn’t just everywhere off-stage; he was everywhere on-stage too. He was possibly the bounciest musician I’ve ever seen, always jumping and hopping from place to place. He’d twirl around with his microphone or sneak up behind the guitar player and hold the strings as the player strummed. He was burning like a sun in the furnace of a supernova.
Yet the show never lost its sense of intimacy. Part of this can be attributed to amateur eyes’ music, a style they call “honest rock.” With lyrics like “You’re going to find something you don’t like about yourself in me” and song titles like “how to convince yourself that you’re happier alone,” the music itself conveys a sense of opening up to the world and exposing your tender insides. Of course, also, like I already stated, the Pederson’s earnestness and desire to be one with the crowd kept the show feeling like we were all in this together. There were also moment like the one pictured above, where it was just Pederson playing an acoustic guitar and singing a new song that he wrote “after someone I cared about hurt me.” When the show finally, sadly ended, Pederson jumped off stage and to a stack of CDs against the wall, which he chucked into the crowd and then passed out each one individually to everyone there because, as he said, “nobody buys these anyway.”
If you ever have an opportunity to go to an amateur eyes show, take it. Even if you’re not big on their music (but how could you not be), you won’t regret it.
Next up was another student band, a rock-duo called Dead Legs. Their loudness and the way they go all in on their instruments made them a bit of a shock after amateur eyes. I give them credit for accomplishing the sound that I presume they are going for, but that isn’t the sound for me. I could appreciate their music as something to head-nod to, but partially because we weren’t feeling it and mostly because we had 9 AMs, we decided to leave towards the end of their set. Unfortunately, we missed Fallow Land and Air is the Arche, the latter of which we were really looking forward to. Overall, a really great show despite the lack of crowd.
