01-12-2009 Set Your Goals

Supports: Fireworks, Broadway Calls; Venue: Melkweg, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Tuesday evenings are not the most popular evenings for visiting gigs. Though, when I went to Melkweg, Amsterdam (The Netherlands) I found a huge queue. Most of them for the biggest stage which would host a famous Dutch singer. The smaller stage had less people in line, in fact I got told that I was number 18 by one of the waiting fans. The smallest stage was hosting some punk bands this evening.

Fireworks was the starter of the evening, but hardly anyone had entered the venue yet. The guys were enthusiastic though, maybe a bit exaggerated in the words they spoke to the few people that were in already. These Americans were far from being original, but instrumentally not that bad. Nice starter, but at some point most of the people were done with them due to the desperate attempts to ask the audience to participate. When the band announced they were looking for people to host them in the evening I heard all sneering comments around me which were in Dutch, so they probably didn’t got understand by the band. Summarizing it came to the point that the people were waiting for the headlining rather than seeing the support act, which music wise would probably hit a younger audience than the core of the visitors.

The band Broadway Calls seem to be able to hit more people. Their music is more comprehensive compared to Fireworks. The vocals of their vocalist seemed to be more steady also. The band kept more speed in their performance and used their energy more for the onstage rocking than talking to the audience all the time. Pop elements are in the sound and catchiness sneakily peeks over the shoulder of Broadway Calls but stays far enough away to call this a chart licker.
This band was more pleasant to watch and have not heard anyone complaining about them either this time. Seems like Broadway Calls made a better impression on the audience.

When headliner Set Your Goals entered the stage, the venue was a lot more crowded than where it started with. It was not a sold out gig, but nicely filled. It was obvious that this band was where the people came for, from the first song on the audience changed from being static to being quite explosive. Set Your Goals is slightly different than the previous bands. The stage is filled with besides the instrumental backing, two vocalists who switch their duty in singing more often than singing at the same time. This causes the chaos that suits them quite well. Even though there is not too much space on stage there is quite some activity going on there, every once and while a fan climbs on it to do some crowd surfing which was amusing to observe as hardly any of them got caught, but nevertheless the same guys did this over and over again. Most of the visitors seemed to know the songs on the set list quite well. After about one hour, the band leaves the stage and most of the visitors rush out after that as well, to make sure they get home well on this dark Tuesday night.