Will the Future Blame Us

Dear Setlist.fm User haloeighteen,

Thank you for submitting a setlist for the May 6, 2006 Our Lady Peace concert at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. I don’t know what moved you to contribute this listing, but as an attendee now 19 years removed from that night, I appreciate your reconstruction efforts. You see, that was my first concert, and beyond a few sonic peaks (scream-singing along to “Clumsy” and enthusiastically making out with my then-boyfriend during “Somewhere Out There”) much of the setlist has slipped from my memory.

I have no way to verify your memory. I sure wasn’t keeping notes at the time: if you took out your cell phone at a show to tap out the setlist in the mid 2000s people would have found it dumb and strange. But your reckoning feels correct in both mood and shape. OLP was touring Healthy in Paranoid Times—in retrospect, a bit of a clunker—and the show was saturated with new songs. There was just enough old material to satisfy the crowd: “Innocent,” “Waited,” and “Superman’s Dead” all made the cut, with “Starseed” to close out the encore.

I still have questions for you, haloeighteen, but I know you’re unlikely to respond. Do you remember screaming along with Raine Maida? Was it your first show, or were you older and more seasoned than me? Did you already know better than to wear the shirt you bought at the merch table? Are you now old enough to wear that same shirt to a 20th anniversary tour and have some 19 year old ask which vintage store you bought it from? Did you remember your earplugs? Do you also hate the accoustics in the Jubilee and discover years later that it’s designed for opera, not alt-rock? Do you stand at the front or the back of the venue? Do you enjoy feeling the bass thicken your blood?

What I do remember from that night was that I loved the noise. I loved standing too close to the speaker stack and dancing with all my friends. I loved post-show shit talking on the train ride home where we ranked the setlist and bitched about the drunks in the crowd. The night happened once, but the feeling is renewable for as long as I can buy concert tickets. So thanks, haloeighteen, for reminding me where that feeling started.

Yours in tinnitus, Ellie