Concerto 2: One Republic

I'm in love.. Did I already tell you?
In love with a band that is.. ;-)
Must say that I drooled like a sixteen year old girl at the performance of the last band I've seen: One Republic. They are a bit poppy for my taste, but I still kinda love them for now. I think they can be classified as pop-rock in general terms.
I saw them a few weeks back in Amsterdam.. I took a nice little walk through the city, untill I came close to the Melkweg and had no idea where it was exactly. Luckily there were some guys that could help me out. I learned my lesson last time and didn't go early anymore. However, I forgot that this band attracted more sixteen year old girls, who are (compared to people in their thirties that were attracted to the Stereophonics) really fanatic ;-). The line was not too long anyway. It was long fifteen minutes later though. Waiting wasn't too bad since I had some eye candy standing next to me :-). I had never been to the Melkweg, so I expected a cute little Paradiso-like hall. Nuhuh. Yes little, No cute. It's much smaller that the HMH (which was already surprisingly small)! The stage was quite low, which was nice because I was standing really close to it. This time I could seriously touch the singer (which some people even did!). I was not that desperate though.
Because the hall was so small and there weren't that many people in the beginning (i guess it was not even sold out) the performance was really similar to seeing some friends of mine on stage. They also kept goofing around informally which was fun :-).
But the performance.. wow.. they are really really good! There was also a cellist! And everyone played great! The singer did great, also some really high parts, which I really liked. It was beautiful. Also, they didn't copy their songs exactly (like for example a performance of the Killers I saw) but put in some nice changes, interacted with each other etc.
They only have one album out, so they also played some The Verve and "Umbrella" from Rihanna. I had to laugh because I thought it was a joke, but maybe it wasn't..? Nevertheless everything they played sounded great and they talked a lot with the audience (not just the normal "we love to be here Amsterdam!"-crap) which makes the overall experience so much more enjoyable. The guitar the singer played on was apparently horrible because he smashed the first one and stopped playing at the second one (owned by the Melkweg I guess). And then the sound technician of the Melkweg started to play a long with several songs! Hehe that was really hilarious and kinda cute.
At the end of the concert I was floating on a little cloud of music-happiness ;-)
And afterwards the drummer and guitar player even came out to give some autographs!
Overall it was quite surprising for a band that is quite well know through their hit "apologize".
I expected a bit more diva (hehe) behavior, but they were really nice and down to earth.
Me happy ;-)