6 October 2021 Summer of Seether Sacramento Day 3 Life In Miniature

I think I must have been a little melancholy yesterday or full of myself.  40,000 people at a festival.  That makes me 0.0025% of the day's population.  I will be caring about : 1. My husband.  Will his bad knee hold out walking around the festival. 2. Where is the closest bathroom. 3. Seeing Seether.   4. Listening to music that is Not Seether.  5. The 39,998 other people, where they are from, what tattoos, if any, they have so we can admire each other's artwork, what bands they like.  As Seether sings, "Cause nobody gives a fuck."  In this case, that's a good thing.

When I'm coming home from the festival, that will be my fourth Seether concert in the last 6 weeks and my fourth Seether concert ever.  I've been following everyone's comments over the summer as you all comment on the shows, 

"On my way to the Myrtle Beach Show last Thursday. THEY KICKED ASS!!" "Had a great time in Tampa. Seether was heavy." "I love them live, they are the real Rock in Rock Concert." "Seether in the Atl... This is how it's done!!!" "Finally gotten a chance to post about how AWESOME Seether was last Sunday at Pointfest. I swear they just get better each time I see them, my friends that went for the first time said they were awesome!! Can’t wait till they come again!!"

Well said, everyone. I love watching the concert clips that you post and following them around the country through your eyes. I love Seether music and I love Seether fans. So, some of us that have been to more than one concert this summer have noticed the setlist is a "SET" "list". Some have wished for more song diversity and even complained at the repetition. I understand what you are saying and have thought about it. I have listened to interviews with the band on this very subject. When they first performed at OzzFest in 2002, they stuck to the heavier songs-Gasoline, Needles, etc., because they thought the lighter songs (Fine Again, Sympathetic) wouldn't play as well to to the expectations of the audience at Ozzfest. Over the years, when they have played new songs, the audience was not receptive and wanted to hear what they knew. The hits from the radio. There is a wide range of audiences going to their concerts, some people have never seen Seether and are just waiting for the band Seether is playing with. Some people have every CD Seether has made and know all the words to the songs. The band has to set a balance for their audience.

Let's pretend you can pay for your own private Seether concert and they will play everything they ever recorded. Or, creepily, you have them locked in the back bedroom of your house to play just for you. Buy the CD's instead people! So, Para Bellum is their 8th album (not counting One Cold Night, the compilation, etc.) and they usually have about 14 songs per album, 3-4 minutes each for an album that runs about 50 minutes of playing time. So, if they played every song on every album, just for you, they would be playing for about 8 hours straight. You would have to feed them and give them bathroom breaks at least. Another point. If you watch the "behind the scenes" recording of Fur Cue, Shaun has his handwritten lyrics in a stand in front of him. Later it's a tablet. These are song lyrics HE wrote. I challenge you to remember the lyrics to eight albums worth of songs and sing them on stage while playing a musical instrument. Eight albums, 112 songs, more or less. Tell me what you had for dinner Thursday last week. I know from making a work schedule that I can't tell you what the schedule is for this week, only the schedule I'm working on which is four weeks from now. You get my (rather belabored) point.

My first Seether concert was this year at the Western Idaho State Fair. One of my first thoughts as they came out and started to play was, "They look just like them." As dumb as that sounds, I thought more about it and I think it's the perception of life through years of watching TV and now computer and phone screens. "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." In this case, "People on your screen are larger than they appear." So I watch actors on tv pretending to be other people saying lines written for them. Even news reports are "scripted". I've watched interviews with Seether, concert recordings and studio sessions and they seem like real people. You always hope that your favorite musician doesn't turn out to be an asshole in real life. Too bad they can never be tired, sick, grumpy or be having a bad day. They never hear the end of it. Back to the concept of Life In Miniature. Before the concert in Idaho, I'd only seen them on a small screen. I'm used to watching people pretending to be other people or people on their best behavior being interviewed, or people doing their jobs reporting or promoting their music or what have you. Why is it a surprise that when John, Dale, Corey and Shaun came on the stage in Idaho, they looked like them? Who else are they suppose to be? What did I expect?

This is a strange, almost optical-illusionistic view of the world. And guys, I've watched recordings of them in concert for months before Idaho and still. Don't comment that I am just singular and wacko in my own world. Even if you think it's true. If they look like them and sound like them, are they really them? If Seether falls in the forest and no one is there to hear them, do they make a sound? Well, yeah. They can hear themselves talk and sing and everything. They don't even need us to be there to listen. They have cell phones and talk to people and vacuum (Shaun) and cook fish (Dale) and play music with their kids (John). Corey does stuff too, I just haven't seen interviews with him as much, but he looks like a real nice guy. As hard as it is, when we are watching them play, they are doing their job. It's a job they love for the most part, but they could retire tomorrow, just play for family and that would be it for us. David Lee Roth just retired. Wait, how can you retire from your life? You don't, you retire from your job. Enjoy Seether while they are still working and buy their CDs. "They got bills to pay, They need somewhere to stay."

I'm here all week, try the veal. Ba-da-boom.

Em

P.S. For you Seether trivia fans: The album with the most songs is the Deluxe version of Disclaimer II with 20. The one with the least is Disclaimer with 12. Disclaimer also has the shortest song and is the shortest album with Gasoline at 2 minutes 49 seconds and a total of 45 minutes and 1 second. Karma & Effect is the longest album at 1 hour 49 seconds and the shortest hidden song, Kom Saam Met My, 2:18. No Jesus Christ is 7 minutes, 6 seconds on Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces. Unless you count Plastic Man on K&E, which I don't because 5 minutes of the 8:48 minutes is silence. You would think D2 at 72.57 would be the longest, but once you count in the bonus tracks, I-Tune track and B-sides, Finding Beauty comes in at 75:19. If you got this far, you are as nerdy as I am.