Thirty Seconds to the End of the Set List

A Concert Review

Thirty Seconds to Mars 
San Jose State University Event Center, Oct. 11, 2013

A year-and-a-half, maybe two years ago I made a promise to myself. I said, "nate, you really like music, and you enjoy seeing bands you love play live, but you always balk whenever they come through for concerts, usually using ticket prices as an excuse. Yes, the ticket prices are high, but you can afford to go to the occasional show, and you will enjoy it. So, when a band you love comes through town, buy a ticket and go to the show!"

That philosophy has netted me exactly two concerts, Silversun Pickups and Thirty Seconds to Mars. I passed on Garbage (because I didn't notice the show until several weeks after tickets went on sale, and I didn't want to pay full price for way-ass-back seats since i've seen them three times already), Norah Jones (because $200 for the festival was a price I was not willing to pay), and Jack White. Kind of. I ended up seeing Jack White (and Regina Spektor!) because my wonderful and talented  cousin Lilly Mae got me in. I also got to see the Foo Fighters and Weezer (who are both excellent live bands) because my wonderful and talented friend Nick passed on tickets to me.

But this post is about Thirty Seconds to Mars' concert.

I've been a fan of TStM since the beginning. Literally. I saw their debut cd in a listening station at Warehouse Music years ago, right after it first came out. I gave it a listen, and since it was cheap, bought it on the spot. I liked it just fine. Heavy, electronic, sci-fi, right down my alley.

When their second album came out, i heard a song on the radio and was vastly under impressed. I didn't buy the album, and promptly forgot about them. Years later, my dear friends Matt & Haley insisted i check out this new RPG video game, Dragon Age: Origins. I did, and freakin loved the game. that's a review for another time, but when I beat the game, I sat down to pay respect to the creators by watching the credits. There was this song that played over the credits, and it was awesome. it fit the tone of the game, and I loved it. ANd listened to it like five or six times because the credits were ridiculously long and it was on repeat over them. So I did research, and found out it was the debut single for TStM new album "This Is War," which was not out and would not be out for several months.

I marked down the release date, and found myself at the store on that day to buy it.

The whole album was awesome. Epic, soaring, coherent, brimming with emotion, strength, tragedy. It lived in my headphones for a long time (also, one of the best album covers of all time: they collected thousands of headshot pictures of fans, and used each one for a cover. There were about 2,000 unique covers for the album). I picked up their fourth album when it was released, and liked it just fine. The songs were just as strong, but the full depth of emotion wasn't there.

I caught several live shows (on tv, recorded), including festival concerts and acoustic sets. They pulled off all of them excellently.

I was excited to see them when the tickets went on sale.

I showed up at the end of the set of the opening band, and I have no idea who it was. I was okay with that. The crowd was full of fresh-faced college kids (I mean, the show was on campus at SJSU). I expected to see more emo kids with purple hair and mohawks, and there were a few, but mostly it was yuppie white college kids. But they were all into the band.

The band is made up of three people: Jared Leto, singing and some guitars (dual hollywood star who appeared in the TV show My So-Called Life and movies, including Requiem for a Dream and American Psycho); Shannon Leto, drums; and Tomo Miličević, guitars. in the studio, they add a ridiculous amount of production, keyboards, sound effects, percussion, and bass (synth and guitar). More than the three of them can produce live.

Rather than fill out the live band and rearrange the music for live performance, they use backing tracks. this is hardly novel or unusual in the music biz; artists do it all the time these days. There's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, but it does have it's limitations.

You have no flexibility in your arrangements or performances. Everything has to be played the same way every time. Most importantly, you can only perform songs that you've prepared and queued up for the show, and pretty much in your pre-ordained order.

This was the flaw of the show. They came out and did thirty minutes of songs. Jared Leto is phenomenal at interacting with the crowd and involving them in the show, and this crowd was an adoring and active participant. Then the other two disappeared back stage, while Jared remained with an acoustic guitar. he asked for requests, and the audience screamed out pretty much every song they hadn't played yet. he gave the appearance of listening to the crowd, but I suspect he had a couple very specific songs he planned to play or chose from. Why do I suspect this? Well, when the crowd banded together and started chanting collectively for "This Is War," he was forced to acquiesce. He tentatively played a little, and sang over it. He had to stop several times while he figured out what to play. he didn't even finish the first chorus before he abandoned the song completely, saying "I've never played that song acoustic in my life!" I don't knwo if that's true or not, but I was disappointed, doubly so. This Is War is probably my favorite by them, and him playing it (poorly) acoustically meant they weren't going to play the song with the full band.

After fiddling around on a few songs with the acoustic guitar, he called the rest of the band back out, and they rocked for another few songs. During their main set finale, they blasted two huge confetti cannons on the side of the stage, launching so much confetti into the air I couldn't believe it. With the fans and drafts they made, it just seemed to hover and sparkle in the air above us, slowly descending and blanketing the crowd. It was a rather spectacular effect; i was impressed.

And then they were done. The crowd hooted and hollered for a few more minutes, and they came back out. they gathered a bunch of people on stage (like i've seen them do often at televised concerts), did one more song, and then they were done.

time elapsed from beginning to end of show? Little bit less than an hour. Seriously? that's all I get? The set list was seriously lacking. They played all of their newest album, which they are touring in support of and I expected. They played a small selection of the popular songs from the third album, but hardly all of them. None from the first or second albums. One 45 second unreleased, untitled acoustic song that apparently is played in most of the shows.

Seriously, that was way too short. Shortest major live show I've ever seen. When I saw Weezer a few months back, they were only a little bit longer, but at least they played all of their major hits. When I've seen the Foo Fighters, you have to drag them off stage closing on 2 1/2 hours. their encore was almost as long as TStM whole set.

So, final verdict? Atmosphere, lighting, effects, and stage presence? Outstanding. Music? A really loud version of what I play in my car stereo; good songs, yes, but nothing new brought to the table. Set list? Disappointing; too short and missing several important songs.