Painting the town Maroon

Maroon 5
April 29, 2011
Stadium Putra Bukit Jalil
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The labour day weekend was definitely an action packed one and we had Maroon 5 to thank to kick it all off. Admittedly, we aren’t super fans of the five-some but the urge to NOT turn the radio off whenever a song of theirs comes on is a compliment, grouping them in the 10% that is NOT classified as ‘garbage’ (by our standards). What sets them apart from overly autotuned and sampled “artists” out there is their unyielding musicianship and soul. FYI – if you’ve read our previous post about Justin Bieber, well we’re not exactly big fans of how his ‘team’ market him to be, but we have to admit that little dude has some musical skills too (just youtube his drum solo!) Anyway, this post isn’t about the Biebs but rather Adam, James, Jesse, Michael & Matt – the five that make women swoon and go maroon in the face.

We could give you a song by song breakdown, but honestly we only know 7 songs by them and it just so happened they performed six of those songs! It was also kind of relief there was no opening act. No disrespect to local acts, but 99.9% of the time, people are here to see the headlining acts (esp. in Malaysia where foreign acts are few and far between) and no one is interested in foreplay when it comes to concerts (that – and we seriously recycle the same opening musical acts!) It’s not like M5 needed anyone to warm up the stage because the second the lights went out everyone went into a screaming frenzy.

We do have to grumble a little about Stadium Putra in Bukit Jalil. The acoustics were, well, how do we put it, kind of underwhelming. We stood all the way in the back in the freestanding Zone B area and it seemed half of the stadium was filled with yelps and screams of fans while the other (front) half was the band. It didn’t feel and sound very “stereo” which made the concert feel a bit dissonant. Also, what was up with the projector displays? They were the size of some meeting room screen projecting powerpoint presentations. That aside, the band delivered and performed in full body and soul. Personally, the thing about going to shows and concerts is not to watch/listen to a band and hope they sound exactly like they do on record. It’s the extra element the musicians put to change it up a little that makes seeing a band ‘live’ all worth it. Maroon 5 did just that. From their Tina Turner cover of ‘What’s Love Got to do with It’, to their extended She Will Be Loved sing-a-long and in general, the rest of the songs having extra life and pizzazz than they sound on CD. There were people dancing in groups, slow dancing with eachother, unified arm sways across the arena and your occasional bored boyfriend. Surprisingly, we were taken aback and impressed by the killer guitar solos in their set. If you closed your eyes, you’d for a second think you were at a Metallica concert (like really closed your eyes). And when you opened your eyes again, you’d think you were at some ‘handsome boy modelling school’ giving lessons on how to make love to your mic. Yes, Adam Levine is a sexy man and is like a modern day Jim Morrison, but look beyond that and you get a solid pop-rock band with immense stage presence and what it takes to make it harder to breathe (esp. for the ladies) – namsayin!? We regret leaving before their encore though because we missed an apparently ‘epic’ closing with their song Sunday Morning – also the 7^th song of theirs we actually know. C’est la vie!