I just got back from the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in Saskatoon at the Credit Union Center. You have to wonder why Regina doesn’t have a concert facility to attract concerts of this magnitude. By closely examining the highway both before and after the concert it wouldn’t take much to figure out that probably 80% of the people at the event were from Regina. With crowd support so high, artist would definitely take a look at Regina if a decent facility was in place. Nonetheless, the show must go on.

To start off the night, Mars Volta opened up, and again underwhelmed me with their whole act. The 9 person or so band didn’t seem to have any sort of cohesion that is needed to resemble music. The music felt unorganized and didn’t sound very good at all. At some points, it felt like the band wasn’t all playing the same song. So after an unpleasant hour of the noise, they got off the stage. The applause they were given was because they were done playing and not because they played well.

After a little break to remove all Mars Volta’s equipment, the Red Hot Chili Peppers took to the stage. They played really well, and put on a fabulous show. They had some very entertaining video being broadcast on four separate moving screens behind the stage. The video was actually from cameras that moved around the stage. The video was then dressed up in some special effects to create very entertaining videos. The music was very diverse, they played a bunch of songs off the new album, as well as some of their classics. Then it was time to leave, but it wasn’t over. After about 6 or so minutes of cheering they came back out and played 3 more songs. Then the jam session started up. Anthony Kiedis (lead singer) sat down and let Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (i think . .), from Mars Volta, come out and jam. They kept going on and on building off each other trying out different things, changing it up, always building. Very intense stuff, and surprising to hear. The jam session seemed to last 20 minutes or so. Anthony Kiedis had left after about 10 minutes when he had heard enough and left. During the jam session it looked like John Frusciante was having some problems with a monitor. He kept motioning to the roadies and pointing to his ear. He looked frustrated.

Another thing I should mention, Saskatoon has some of the worst security. Maybe it’s just because of the band that was playing, but they didn’t heavily search for cameras or anything. So many idiots were trying to take pictures in the concert using their flash from way back. Somebody has to tell them that the flash won’t help. Another security lapse was when some idiot got on to the stage and was being stupid. He touched the lead singer and looked like he was going to hug him, and after that he ran off the stage. The whole time, no security went up to take him out. The whole thing was very disapointing, and luckily, made Sasktoon look like a hick town.

Overall, it was a great show with a lot of enjoyable music. The band wasn’t afraid to improvise portions of songs, mixing it up, and thus freshening it up for everyone. The sound was clear and didn’t suffer any of the ill effect that Mars Volta seemed to have. I think it is official now though, after watching The Mars Volta open for two different bands, both times sucking, they officially suck. Red Hot Chili Peppers officially rock!