I read the review in Wednesday’s Press of the Faith No More concert, in which she gave them a reasonably glowing review. Bollocks. Now I’m by no means suggesting Ms. Anderson gained financially by writing such a report, but clearly we were not at the same concert.

I think perhaps The Press should hire me on a freelance basis, send me off to all the concerts for free, then get me to write a non-biased, honest review of the performance. And pay me lots of money. I’d do a far better job.

I’m a big Faith No More fan. By which I mean, I have a collection of their biggest hits on my iTunes, and would count most of them among my all-time favourite songs. By my own admission, I only know the commercial hits, not their more obscure work off their other albums. In which case it’s fair to say I’m certainly not a die-hard Faith No More fanatic, but I was excited about this concert and hearing some of my favourites performed live. Apparently I expected too much (hard not to after the recent Green Day tour).

The first five songs I had never heard in my life. I have no idea whether they were new or old. They seemed to consist of Mike Patton trying to prove he can scream with the best of them (I couldn’t make out the actual words), and the guitarists making what could best be described as random screeching noises. The acoustics in the Westpac arena are not suitable for that kind of sound, obviously no-one warned them. Sound check anyone? I was prepared to hear some new songs, but by the fifth song I was ready for some hits. Finally they pulled out Evidence. But throughout the whole concert they were kind of few and far between and I was starting to get edgy (I only counted 8 songs I knew). There was too much I didn’t know and I couldn’t relate the screaming, screeching noise with the Faith No More I know and love. I wasn’t enjoying this as much as I had hoped, and I was starting to look at the ceiling and wishing I was back at Green Day with Billie Joe & Mike rocking the stage. In short, I was getting a little bored. I’m fairly sure I wasn’t the only one, there wasn’t a lot of energetic jumping up and down (always the sign of a good rock concert) and the applause at the end of each song, while loud and appreciative, was short-lived. I, and many of the people around me, stood reasonably still for much of the time. That gave me a sore back, cramp in my left foot and a bad case of the grumps.

Come back tours should really be banned unless the band can actually pull it off. And the band members should wear black. These aging rockers dressed in white, cream and pastels, including their trousers. Mike Patton had his hair slicked back in some kind of Antonio Banderas Zorro style. I don’t know the image they were going for, but to me, they all looked completely ridiculous and perhaps better suited to a jazz bar or whatever genre of musician wears a white suit (wedding singers?).

What Ms. Anderson describes as Mike’s banter with the crowd, to me seemed forced and strained (and sparse, to say the least), and it certainly didn’t create much crowd response or interaction. I’ve been in louder, more energetic and happier crowds at Opshop concerts.

So time went by, and as they launched into another long instrumental, I was almost ready to leave. A nice warm bed was actually seeming like a better option. But I thought I would hang in there for the encore as surely they had to pull out something brilliant for that. Well, they did a 2 song encore which at least included my favourite, Stripsearch. Then they left the stage again and we all kind of looked at each other and went, “Huh? Is that it?” The lights didn’t go on, so we stuck around figuring they would be back for a second encore. Perhaps we’d get another big hit.

Well, no. They came out, thanked the crowd, and after some disorganised pissing around, went into another instrumental. We shuffled our feet, tried not to look bored out of our skulls and waited patiently (we were, after all, still fans, if somewhat disappointed ones). The instrumental finished, the band walked off stage without so much as a goodbye, the lights went on, and it was over. We nearly fell over in shock.  One guy near me yelled out, “You Suck!” and I have to say, I was close to agreeing with him.

I almost ran to my car in my desire to beat the carpark traffic, get home and put the evening behind me.

In conclusion, I was left with ringing ears and an overwhelming sinking feeling that I will never again enjoy a concert as much as Green Day. Boys, you have ruined live music for me.