Better Than Ezra – 4/14/22

                Sometimes gambling pays off, even if you don’t win. Foxwoods Casino treated people with a player’s card to a free concert on April 14, 2022. Just respond to the email and show up…which I did. I decided to go catch the show with my buddy Frank. His thoughts on seeing the band were, “they kinda suck, but it’s free. Sure, I’ll go.”

                I’m no Better Than Ezra expert or mega-fan, but I did own their album “Deluxe” back in the day. If I paid attention properly, they started off the night with King of New Orleans from their “Friction, Baby” album. It was a decent start to the night. The lead singer was a bit quirky, danced pretty lame, but he was having a good time and that’s what matters, right?

The played a few other songs that I did not recognize. Like I said, I only had the one album. Now, while they have their fair share of original albums and songs, these guys were also a solid cover band. They played for over 90 minutes and fill the night with several covers including a mini medley of Rush tunes, Tom Petty’s Last Dance with Mary Jane, Ah-Ha’s Take on Me, the 90s hit Laid by James (from the American Pie movie), and Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. All were respectable covers.

They of course played Good during the night – they had to right? Though I was sort of surprised this wasn’t the finale or encore. Check out the audio I grabbed at the bottom of this post. Some time after Take On Me they played A Lifetime and then Desperately Wanting. Two things about Desperately Wanting worth mentioning. One – I would’ve sworn this was off of their “Deluxe” album because of how familiar I am with the song, but apparently it’s off of “Friction, Baby.” Two – perhaps Frank helped me realize why the song was so familiar as we used this part of the show to go take a leak. Frank said as we were leaving the arena, “If I wanted to hear this song, I could go to any grocery store in America.”

                When we got back, and sometime after Laid they played Juicy which I was sure was another quality cover. But damn, the Google tells me it’s their original from the 2005 album “Before the Robots.” The eventually got into In the Blood which (if memory serves me) closed out the main part of the show. For the rest of the show, they played a bunch of songs off of their 2001 album “Closer” which I am not familiar with at all.

All in all, they sounded pretty good. Was it loud and heavy? No, but that’s ok. The crowd wasn’t impressively large. There is a balcony at this theater and I think it remained empty the whole time. I got the email only a week prior to the event, and it was a Thursday, so perhaps it was just a timing issue but who knows. Anyway, live music is back and I’m loving it. Go to a show if you haven’t been recently.