Live Goods: Kings of Leon at Key Arena

Emerald City Comicon Saturday tickets secured, I sent an open invite advertising a weekend of good times in Seattle to friends.  One couple accepted and asked if there was any interest in attending a Kings of Leon concert.  If it was going to entice them to come up for the weekend, sure, let's go!  I immediately asked myself, "who the fuck are Kings of Leon"?  A quick Myspace search later (50 million free songs, do it) and "oh yeah, the Fire Sex song" realization hit me.  The show was held in the Key Arena, former home of the NBA Super Sonics and next to the Space Needle.  To prepare, milady gave me a KoL playlist of some of their popular tracks and their recently released 6th album, Mechanical Bull.

The formed in Nashville band led by brothers Anthony and Ivan Followill put on a solid live show.  Vocals were excellent and it was surprisingly not deafening loud.  Lead singer Anthony interacted lightly with the crowd, culminating in asking everyone to turn on their phones and light up the arena for a tune.  I can probably count the number of concerts I've been to on two hands so I don't know what passes for a good show these days. I also didn't realize that their catalog was so deep, providing enough low key energetic guitar based rock tracks for a 26 song set list.  Immortals, Super Soaker, Pyro, Radioactive, Don't Matter, Use Somebody and Notion all sounded great live.  I basically surmised that Sex on Fire would either be the last song of the night or they wouldn't play it at all as an artistic choice the way Oasis stopped playing Wonderwall live.

In addition to nearly 2 hours of music, Kings of Leon employed lights, lasers, vignettes of women, cars, flowers, etc to make every song seem like a music video.  It got a little dicey when one song had the bright stage lights pulsing rhythmically and seemingly inviting an epileptic seizure.  Into the final stretch of their tour, Kings of Leon put on an excellent performance and was a nice addition to our awesome time in Seattle.

Danny!