Paul Revere and the Raiders at the Arcada

I have to admit, Paul Revere playing
a keyboard with the front of a Mustang
attached is pretty comical

On Sunday I saw Paul Revere and the Raiders at the Arcada Theater (a place that has essentially become the gathering place for classic rock bands and musicians that still perform).

I must say, this concert was a bit of a disappointment.  In fact, during most of the show, the thought of naming this post, "THE WORST CONCERT SINCE 1776," was a frequent thought.  However, the conclusion of the show was fantastic enough to where I could cut them a little slack... but not too much.

I will start with what was good about it first.  The warm-up band, The New Colony Six, also dressed in Colonial American garments and played classic rock.  They weren't bad.  They sounded good and put on a solid show.  My personal preference would have been to not have so many cheesy songs about love but that was the relative norm back in the 60s and 70s.  Overall, The New Colony Six were solid.  Certainly not bad at all.

Paul Revere and the Raiders started off the show with quite a bang.  Instrumentally speaking, Paul Revere and the Raiders are a much more talented and energetic group than The New Colony Six.  The ending to the show was also full of energy.  Essentially, the beginning and end of the concert was fantastic.

But the middle, oh man, the middle...

I think the whole concert they only played about 6 complete songs (over about a two hour period).  They would play one song and then sit around and tell stories and jokes for about ten minutes (on average).  It felt more like I went to a filming of David Letterman except that no one would say "We'll be right back after these messages" before playing the music.  Oh and the jokes were terrible.  They were really just God awful.  Instead of going on a great ride, Paul Revere decided it would be better to go on a lack-of-comedy routine.  The worst part is, he would only tell two different jokes the whole time.  He would tell the "I'm old, I don't know modern technology joke," over and over along with the "I'm old, I need surgeries all the time," joke.  It was not only not funny but really boring.  Here's the thing, the jokes could have been spectacularly bad where you're just fascinated by how bad they are but they were unremarkably bad in a way that made the whole thing really boring.  At one point he went on a twenty minute joke about how he didn't know the difference between the TVs at Best Buy.  Needless to say, it wasn't funny at all and the whole thing was just the one joke.

The worst part is that it seemed the audience generally found the show funny.  Maybe it was because it was relatable since most of the audience was about 30 to 50 years older than me.  But I think that even if I was old, I would have found it unfunny.  It was really just dumb.

Overall, the show was really boring and I wish that I stayed home and did homework instead.  I'm really just glad that I didn't pay for the ticket.  My parents were the ones who bought it and the price for our seats on the balcony were seventy bucks apiece.  That show wasn't even worth five, in my opinion.  I wouldn't recommend going to a Paul Revere and The Raiders show to anybody.  Until they decide to quit their stand-up comedy act and actually start playing music, their show, quite frankly, sucks.  I wouldn't say it was as bad as Best Coast since the songs that they played were really good (contrary to Best Coast's boring set list) but this show is definitely one of the worst big name acts I've seen.

They say that Paul Revere put up one lantern if the British were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea.  If I were the British, I would make sure he would have to put up two because then I could drown myself before I would have to endure the artillery barrage of bad jokes and the lead balls of boredom.