How To Disappear Completely

Tilly and the Wall @ Paradise Rock Club

So a friend of a friend gave me two tickets to Tilly and the Wall last night. And so, not ones to pass up free tickets of any sort, even if the only Tilly song I had seriously listened to was Rainbows in the Dark, Evan and I went to check them out. After all, a band that was named after a children's book has got to be good, right?

Well, we were thankful the tickets were free.

It wasn't that the quintet from Omaha itself was a bad deal. In fact, they were quite good, especially since one of their musical "instruments" was a tap dancer, Jamie Pressnall, who clicked out the drum beats with her heels on a mini stage.

It wasn't that there was a horrible opener. Well, one involved bad mixing/sampling with a vocalist sporting muffin top, knee brace and a chain mail headpiece. The other opener, however, was extremely good, resembling what might happen if Panda Bear and Geologist ever struck out together.

No, what killed the evening was the sound technician, who apparently was either 1) a sadist or 2) utterly deaf. The guy didn't know how to mix anything and apparently thought oppressive house music at glass-shattering decibels was a good idea for intermissions. Good thing I didn't go in there with an arrhythmia. We wondered how anyone could hate music so much. The second opener band pleaded with them for better mixing. And eventually they got the lower register frequencies fixed only to have the mikes jacked up for Tilly. It wasn't as bad for me, who was simply relieved the tortuous house music was finally over, but Evan was withering in pain over the upper range voices (Tilly has two female vocalists). We eventually cut out after about a half an hour of Tilly.

I almost stopped at the box office to ask who the sound tech was and plead with Paradise to fire him/her. The most fun Evan and I had was standing outside the 'Dise waiting for the Green Line and watching the bouncers change the letters on the marquee to tell the world that Wolf Parade was sold out for Saturday.

Some things may be free but I suppose you get what you pay for.