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Jet

September 26, 2006 by Tom

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Last night we got the chance to see Jet on their U.S. mini-tour in support of their latest album, Shine On. Beth had bought me tickets to the show for my birthday and like I mentioned previously, I won a pair of tickets from XRT to see a private performance before the show later that night. So after an excruciatingly long 5 hours of work we headed downtown. Neither of us had been to Vic and I had no idea it was so close to my favorite little venue in Chicago, Schuba’s Tavern so that was a nice surprise.

The private show consisted of about 100 people and the band played 5 songs for us and then did an interview on stage. XRT’s interviewer really sucked. He had the right idea with his questions, but was really bad at forming them properly to get the responses he was looking for. Nic Cester (lead singer) apparently was losing his voice so while he sucked down on some tea with honey, they played a few songs that his brother Chris (drummer) sings so Nic could rest his voice. Chris was pretty funny on stage, cracking jokes left and right. It was a really relaxed atmosphere and completely unplanned for the band since they discussed what song to play next after each tune although I was bummed it wasn’t all acoustic (which probably would have worked better for Nic’s voice). I ended up getting a guitar pick from Cameron too. From memory the setlist went something like:

Holiday
Skin & Bones
Look What You’ve Done
King’s Horses
Rollover DJ

After the show they told us all they were leaving tickets for everyone at the XRT event at will call for the show later. Great, ‘cause it’s not like we already bought some or anything. Chris was just getting off work so I gave him a call and told him to get his ass down to the Vic for a free ticket which he finally agreed to.

After that we wandered around for awhile and got some snacks at a hot dog shop. Since Erum lives right there we were planning on meeting her, but she was at school still so we headed to Schuba’s for a drink before heading to her place. We only stopped in for a short time and I immediately got hit with a “fix my computer” request, so after fixing Erum’s laptop we headed out for dinner. We went to this pizza place on the corner of Sheffield and Belmont, right next to the Vic. Neither of us were really hungry so we just got some appetizers and then Chris came to meet us.

We finally headed into the venue and timed it perfectly since the openers had just finished up. We grabbed a spot in the balcony and waited for the show to start, but once it did we realized our seats sucked thanks to the blinding lights pointed directly at us and the terrible sound in the balcony of the Vic. Not wanting to deal with those two flaws the whole show we headed down to the floor and found a nice spot to the right side slightly elevated. The sound difference was amazing to what the balcony had. Since Nic was still sick the show ended up being really short, probably about 75 minutes long which probably would have annoyed me if we didn’t see the earlier show. I’m impressed with this band every time I see them though. The new album is rock solid and it took balls to play the majority of it before it was even released. The new tunes sounded great live with the only flaw being the thumping bass line during their masterpiece, the title-track Shine On. A security guard (same one who got us the guitar pick) gave Beth a setlist while I was getting some beers so she gave that to me after the show, so you all benefit from an accurate setlist for the show:

Come On, Come On
Get What You Need
Holiday
Skin & Bones
Look What You’ve Done
Bring It On Back
Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
That’s All Lies
Rip It Up
Cold Hard Bitch
Stand Up
Take It Or Leave It
Get Me Outta Here
Shine On
Rollover DJ

Please go see these guys if you can. They’ll be back in the U.S. for a full tour to support Shine On in a few months and it will be worth every penny to see them.

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