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Some people might prefer to stay inside a warm place on a cold evening, but the blood-pumping and diverse rock music during the Switchfoot concert Friday was more than enough to get a person warm.
The concert started a little before dusk with Aria Decline as the opening act. As concert goers flocked to Alumni Park, Aria Decline’s upbeat tune brought the audience into the concert mood of bopping heads and being engrossed by the music.
The band, comprised of Mitch Jenkins, Jackson Conrad, Aaron Burch, Nate Highfield and Jacob Parnell, showed why their group was named winner of the Battle of the Bands earlier this month as they performed their unique rock tunes, which the band members like to describe as “Weezer meets Queen.”
As an independent band yet to be signed a record deal, the band members said performing for Switchfoot was huge.
“I’ve been listening to Switchfoot since ‘Legend of Chin,’ so, performing for them was like a prayer answered,” said Burch, drummer of Aria Decline.
Though Aria Decline is not trying to fit in the contemporary Christian music category, as Switchfoot is, the band members hope their positive music can help others.
“There’s people out there that need to know there’s got to be something more to life,” Parnell said, alluding to one of Switchfoot’s song “Something More.”
“God has put music in our hearts, so we’re going to keep on doing it,” said Burch.
Soon after Aria Decline performed its set, the second band, Sweet James, performed their distinct rock music. Sweet James is comprised of Andre, Justin, Brett and Paul, four very different individuals from all over the world (from Brazil, to Canada to the United States) yet they all share the common ground of their love for music and they sang passionately during their performance Friday night.
Sweet James gave the audience a taste of both mellow rock that was Dave Matthews Band-ish as they sang “Nothing I could say/nothing I could do/nothing I could offer was good enough for you,” from their song “Smile.”
“We had a blast,” said Brett, the band’s guitarist about Sweet James’ performance that night. “It’s what we love to do.”
The audience got a taste of another style of rock music as The Colour performed after Sweet James. The Colour, a band connected to Biola University, presented the audience a very lively performance. The lead singer danced across the stage as he sang the band’s Beatles-like songs.
The band’s animated personality was the perfect prelude to the evening’s main performance from Switchfoot. By the end of The Colour’s set, it seemed like one could not stop the excitement of rock music.
After a half-hour wait, Switchfoot finally came out as the audience cheered and roared. The band started their set with “Adding to the Noise,” a song from its newest album “The Beautiful Letdown.”
Switchfoot’s surf-rock music was the perfect tune to jam to as the evening temperatures dropped. Songs like “Gone,” “More than Fine,” “The Beautiful Letdown,” and “Losers,” not only got the audience to sing along, but also to jump and dance in the cold night.
Lead singer Jon Foreman even stepped off the stage as he sang, “Ammunition,” and to much of his fans’ delight, crowd surfed during the upbeat, blood-pumping song.
Besides making the audience happy with its more familiar recent hits from its newest album, Switchfoot also played several songs from its two previous albums, such as “New Way to Be Human,” and “Learning to Breathe.”
Although it was somewhat disappointing that the band did not sing any songs from its first album, “Legend of Chin,” or their witty tune “Company Car,” from their second album, Switchfoot’s set list had the more popular and familiar songs that newer fans would recognize.
Foreman and his bass-playing brother Tim also did their famous high jump during “You Already Take Me There.”
Of course, besides pumping the audience’s energy with its upbeat tunes, Switchfoot also performed some of its slower, more mellow songs like “On Fire” and “Only Hope.”
The band ended its performance with “Meant to Live” as the audience sang the song out loud in the background. As the band members left, the fans were not yet ready to end the night. The crowds cheered for an encore and, of course, Switchfoot came back on stage and sang “Dare You to Move.” The thought-provoking song, which says: “I dare you to move/I dare you to lift yourself out of the floor/I dare you to move/Like today never happened/Today never happened before,” was the perfect way to end the show. It summarized what Switchfoot is all about—four fun guys who love music that moves people.
Though Switchfoot, which has been around since the group met in their college days at the University of California, Santa Barbara, may fall under the contemporary Christian music genre, the band’s recent mainstream popularity shows that good, positive music can come a long way no matter the genre.
Overall, the concert surprisingly provided music fans a taste of many different genres of rock songs. Even though the night was cold, audience members were warmed with pumped up energy from the four bands that provided an evening full of cheery and encouraging entertainment.
Submitted February 26, 2004
MALIBU, CA
