No Doubt Concert review

Mel & I went to the “No Doubt” concert at Rexall Place last night. We were both in the mood to get to the concert as early as possible (as Mel is an avid souvenir collector) so we planned our evening to get to Rexall at 6:00pm. There is a restaurant right beside Rexall called “Fireside Lounge” that we thought we’d check out for dinner due to its convenience. The restaurant was a little dive-y looking but they made really good fries and cheesecake for a reasonable price. As a bonus the restaurant offered parking for the concert for $10 and it turned out to be right across a small road to Rexall.

We lined up for the concert shortly after 6:00pm and the line was nice and short at that point. Doors opened around 6:30pm and we were able to get right up close for the souvenir booth. There was one long sleeve No Doubt shirt I would liked but it only came in small, medium & large, then there was a super cute Paramore hoodie but it only came in small & medium. Concert shirts tend to fit small so I like to get the 2XL. There was a cute black No Doubt hoodie that came in 2XL but it was $85 and I thought I probably don’t need to buy that. So I told Mel that I wasn’t going to get any. She was like “well I’ll buy you one cuz I owe you like three birthday presents”. I put up a little tiny bit of a fight but not much so she got me the black hoodie. It’s super cute looking I think and soft and comfy. Melody got a hilarious T-shirt that has the tuxedo on the front, No Doubt branding and tour cities on the back. After the concert I took a picture of us in our clothes (took a few practice shots but eventually got a good pose).

The first opening band was Bedouin Soundclash and they started at 7:30pm. I had seen their name but didn’t think I knew any of their songs. They had a ska sound and it turned out that I did know one song, I think it’s the one called “When the Night Feels My Song”. They performed well for an opening band, its just hard to get into them when you are not familiar with the music.

The second opening band was Paramore who I was really looking forward to. I had pre-downloaded some of their songs (so I could be a little more familiar with them), so though I couldn’t sing, along most of them rang a bell. Their first song was “Misery Business” which I love and their last song was one of the two from the “Twilight” soundtrack that I also knew. I was pretty happy with their performance but disappointed with our nosebleed seats (Section 208 Row 30) because we couldn’t really see them. I’ve been pretty spoiled with good seats for so many concerts:

Black Eyed Peas 1st Time – 100 Level
Black Eyed Peas 2nd Time – Seated Floor
Nickelback both times – General Admin Floor
Justin Timberlake – 100 Level
Offspring (this June) – 100 Level right by stage
So You Think You Can Dance Canada – Seated Floor

The experience is very different on the floor to 100 level to 200 level and my fav is seated floor followed by 100 Level (as I’m too old to enjoy sweaty general admin floor anymore).

As a quick side note, the girl seated next to me wasn’t there during the openers but showed up for No Doubt. She was probably late teens or early 20s and her and her 2 friends had clearly been drinking for a while. As she started to dance around her giant backpack purse kept hitting me which was uber annoying. Then they knew the 2 girls seated directly in front of us so they kept leaning around me to talk to each other. Though we were in the 200s we spent almost the entire No Doubt portion on our feet. I probably would have had an aneurysm from annoyance if she hadn’t suddenly noticed my baby belly. She is my first official “stranger sighting” that knew it was a baby belly rather than just being overweight so I forgave her for all her annoyingness LOL She told me “congrats” told me he/she would like No Doubt (to which I said it’s a boy), and then asked me if I had a name picked out. Then she told her friend who said I should name him something that ended in “N”. Too funny.

No Doubt took the stage at about 9;30pm and their performance was very enjoyable. I had seen them "live" on the Ellen show and was less then impressed with how they sounded so was admittedly worried that they wouldn't sound very good. However, all the songs that they didn't remix sounded quite similar to the original recordings. All the remixes were really well done and the only song that sounded weird to me was "Just a Girl" and I think its just the way they choose to performed it (if you saw it on Ellen she did it the same way). The stage was very futuristic/modern and very different from anything I've seen before. With all the concerts I have seen, I could have used a little more "stage show" from them. I mean they danced a lot, had high energy and great screens with new video footage to watch but it was missing something. I also found that there were quite a few songs that they played that I didn't know. I'm pretty sure they played all the songs I'd be interested in (opened with Spiderwebs & closed with Sunday Morning, heard Hey Baby, Just a Girl, It's My Life, Underneath It All, Hella Good just off top of my head) so I can't really complain about not knowing more songs. All in all it was good but not great.

Today my muscles that are under my belly are very sore. I think that is probably the longest I have stood for a long time so I guess they aren't used to holding up the belly...kind of sucks :-)