Switchfoot at the Copernicus Center

Copernicus Center

Last Wednesday my best friend won four tickets through q87.7 to see Switchfoot at some place called Copernicus.  Yeah, I hadn't heard of it either.  Some place on the far north side of Chicago just a hop and a skip from the I90 exit at Lawrence Ave.  It was actually a very beautiful place that housed a decent number of people.

Seeing Switchfoot last night was probably the most... intriguing kind of concert that I have been to.  In fact, as my friend put it, it seems more of an event than a concert.  The whole thing started with a movie screening.

Yes, that's right, a movie screening.

The movie was a documentary about the band's world tour and how it had inspired a great transformation in their outlook on music and life.  The thing is, it could have been an interesting movie but it was just so boring.

Soooooooooooooooooooo boring.

The whole movie basically consisted of them doing various things in different and interesting cultures...I wish.  The movie was actually mostly about them surfing.  I'm not kidding.  A movie about a band's world tour and playing music around the world was completely littered with scenes of them surfing at different beaches around the world, or talking about surfing, or talking about how great it was that they got to surf with some famous surfer dude that I don't know.

I don't know how they messed up making this movie interesting.  They were going to different parts of the world and exploring different cultures.  Yet, every time they moved to a new location, it was all the same shit.  Just clips of them surfing.  It was all interchangeable.  When the South Africa portion in your movie seems the same as your New Zealand section, it makes for pretty boring shit.

I know the band is named Switchfoot which is a reference to a surfing stance.  Still though, no one cares about Switchfoot because they can surf.  They care about Switchfoot because they're talented musicians.  So I don't know why the director of this film felt the need to have so many surfing scenes.  It would be like if Green Day's Bullet in a Bible was nothing but the band racing around in go-karts.   It would be interesting for like three minutes and then get really old.

The 90 minutes it took this movie to end felt like an eternity.

Switchfoot at Copernicus Center 9/25/2013

But enough about that.  Let's get to the performance (which was ironically shorter than 90 minutes long).  Like I said, it was intriguing.  The band was not at all like the alternative grunge band that I thought they were.  The whole concert was feelgood, lighthearted jams about how life is good or that life is going to be good once we change the world.  One or two songs like that is fine but, a whole concert?  Not really my thing.  Though, they did play "Dark Horses."  That song was cool.

What was just really a shame was that they didn't play "Meant to Live."  I mean, what????  I don't know why they didn't play their single most popular song.

On the contrary, one thing they were good at was connecting with the audience.  Sure, it was a pretty tame crowd, but the singer was able to stand in the crowd and sing.  Pretty cool for the hardcore Switchfoot fans in attendance.

Overall, the show was very low key.  It would have been alright if they just played music and there was no movie to bore us at the beginning.  One thing that you can give Switchfoot is that they are about as far from being a sellout as you can get.

I can't say that I'm a fan of this new and incredibly laid-back Switchfoot.  I wouldn't make the effort to see them again.  It's just not my thing.








Copernicus Image:  http://copernicuscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Copernicus-Theater.jpg?dbfc6c
Switchfoot Image:  http://image.pollstar.com/WeblogFiles/pollstar/1006211247256990960_728483_v3.jpg