May 2005, Culture Room, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
There’s a delicate balance with bands as they try to figure out where they stand. There’s the bands playing smaller rooms who, at some point during the tour, realize they should be in much bigger ones. Then there’s the bands playing bigger rooms to suddenly diminishing crowds (think Spinal Tap). You always want to see the former, because the latter can be sad.
During Snow Patrol’s 2004-05 jaunt through America, touring on the strength of 2003’s Final Straw (2004 in the U.S.), it was a band clearly in the former. Final Straw, with its four singles and relentless spirit, was a break-out album for the Scottish band and hit the demographic — 18 to 34 — that means success in the United States.
You’re never sure with American audiences (see Oasis) — you can be the biggest thing where you came from but nothing just 100 miles away. But early on in Snow Patrol’s set, as Gary Lightbody sang the ending refrain from “How to Be Dead,” the crowd of 500 or so was loudly singing along. I’ve grown up with South Florida audiences, and they’re always a tough room, and yet here, Snow Patrol had them. Lightbody lit up, he knew this was just a start of something big.
I would see them years later, in a room six times this size, as it roamed the world on another hit album. But there’s nothing better than seeing a band on the cusp of wider success in a tight room with 500 fervent fans.
This show was meant to start the band’s tour through America, with an original date in September 2004. But hurricanes inundated South Florida at the time, forcing the show to move to this later date. Lightbody greeted the audience by asking if everyone was OK, which was a nice gesture, but it got me thinking what this show would have been at the tour’s outset.
At this point of the tour — nearly nine months in — the band had clearly gotten into a routine.
But if it did, it didn’t show.
The set was heavy on Final Straw — as it should be — with “Spitting Games,” “Chocolate” and “Wow” in full display. The band’s shining, epic ballad “Run” was as massive live as it sounds on the album, a six-minute crunch of guitars and soaring lyrics. I was with my wife Kristen, and during the song she held up the phone for a friend of ours to hear.
Opener Athlete proved the perfect choice for Snow Patrol, as the English band was touring on its sterling second album Tourist. Tourist is the album Coldplay should have made to follow up A Rush of Blood to the Head (you know, before Gwyneth Paltrow destroyed the band), a selection of alt-pop wonder with a killer song (“Wires”) and a lasting ballad (“Twenty Four Hours”). I remember lead singer Joel Pott as an earnest and interesting frontman who was clearly into his art.
This was one of those lucky shows where I can say I was an early adapter, seeing a band before the masses take it over. In my many years of shows, those are the ones to cherish the most.
